With a day of steady high temperatures likely to mean limited soaring no surprise that few private owners ventured to the Club to fly today. However it was good to see that on the flying list a couple of previous visitors had returned suitably enthused from their Trial Lessons in recent weeks - with a fairly lengthy two-seater training/check list and a similar single seat list as well as several booked Trial Lessons, it was evident that today would be a long hot one!
All four two-seaters and a Junior were soon being brought out of the hangar and with daily inspections completed the gliders were walked down to the North West corner of the field, with the winch set up on the North East side.
New levelled area showing some nice green stripes (Mike Sloggett)
The morning’s flying activities included:
James Smart being put through his paces in the DG505 by Simon Leeson before being successfully signed off to fly the glider ‘back seat’.
Mark Courtney helped out with some check flights for Sam Slattery, whilst John Sillett took Sam - one of our returning visitors for some further flights to build on his Trial Lesson experience.
With the temperature continuing to rise it was an easy decision for everyone to stop for lunch and rehydrate suitably
After lunch it was on with the flying with Mike Sloggett taking Luke the second of our returning visitors to experience the ‘fun’ of winch launching.
We welcomed back Roger Davis a ‘lapsed’ glider pilot from Rattlesden who is staying in the area for a few weeks and showed Mike that the years away from gliding had not diluted all his skills as Roger made the most of the limited thermals around the airfield.
During the day K6 DRE was rigged and flown by various of our junior pilots including a conversion for Charlie Broderick, whilst the Junior was flown by several solo pilots.
Tom Sides and James Smart looked after today’s Trial Lesson visitors, and Falke (VG) completed some local soaring flights.
By late afternoon with everyone having flown and energy levels reducing it was time to complete hangar flights - Mike Sloggett
