Wednesday 29th November

It was certainly a day to get wrapped up against the elements, the wind was a strengthening Northerly and with an overnight frost, the resulting wind chill factor made it quite bracing to say the least!

Interesting cloud formations (John Street)

 The DG505 the K13 and a Junior were soon at the launch point a couple of launches later with poor height achieved we decided to look at launching from the Southwest corner. As so often with a strong Northerly it is difficult to judge which end to fly from. It seemed whilst standing in the Southwest corner there was an advantage to fly from this end with a slight Easterly in it,-- so the gliders were flown up to that launch point.

The launches and landings were quite interesting in the gusty conditions, one practice launch failure was especially interesting as the cable was reluctant to release from the K13!

There were no trial lessons today and most of the flights were short except for Roly's epic 19min on the North ridge -  it seems obvious this white gloves gave him a distinct advantage over the rest of us.

A team was busy rigging K21 HCX after its Annual (thanks Ian) and it will be ready for flying on Thursday. - John Street.

Day 6 - Road trip to Poland

So, having enjoyed our stay in Poland it was a question of an early alarm call today ahead of going up to the workshop at Zar Airfield to collect the London Gliding Club trailer and related paperwork for their K21. In leaving the hotel we discovered that overnight snow had turned the area around the hotel into a winter wonderland.... 

Zar airfield looking different after the snow (Mike Sloggett)

At the workshop we had an opportunity to see a K21 from Holland which has had a week of the existing paint being taken off entirely by hand ahead of the next stages of the refurbishing including repainting of the glider top to bottom or should that be wing to wing...

Refinishing (Mike Sloggett)

And then it was time to leave - as the kilometres up into the centre of Poland went by it was evident that the overnight snow had been widespread but overall the driving conditions were good.

Driving conditions were good (Mike Sloggett)

Joining the A4 heading West the snowy countryside steadily turned green and our journey out of Poland continued, well on into Germany and with around 490 miles of driving completed between John and Mike we decided to stay overnight at Eisenach leaving us with just over 400 miles to Dunkirk to travel on Thursday ahead of our ferry crossing just after lunch on Friday. - Mike Sloggett