With clear blue skies and a frosty airfield, pilots were up at the club getting out the gliders at 8.30am! James Flory and John Pursey making a start on the two-seater list, Josh Batchelor taking the first launch at 9.59am at the reduced rate! It was very deceptive from the ground, but the wind was much stronger above 400ft, with three consecutive weak link breaks were soon demonstrating.
So with Nick Redfern on the winch duly informed, launches proceeded with just a few coffee breaks to avoid the showers. Walk in trial lesson, Ella, enjoyed her flights with James Smart, promising to return soon. Unfortunately we had to cancel the afternoon booked Trial flight due to the deteriorating weather.
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| Connor Williams preparing for a flight with no instruments with John Pursey (Mark Courtney) |
Conditions became progressively challenging throughout the day, so when duty instructor Glenn Turpin took over for the afternoon a yellow flag replaced the Red, but within an hour this was changed again to blue! However, with feedback from Nick of a launch of 2350ft solo in a K21, Hans Jenssen became everyone’s favourite winch driver and the queue for flights increased!
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| ASW20 in sporting conditions (Simon Minson) |
With the two-seater list completed by 2pm, some of the instructors took their opportunity to grab flights, especially when 230 (Pete Startup) pulled up to the line for a launch, (achieving 96 mins) with SM (Simon Minson) following. Flights became longer, and Stuart Procter and Lisa Humphries reported a 2300ft launch, two up in a K21! With the rain looking closer and closer flying was finished at 3pm.
Dan Hender taking a turn in the winch with Connor Williams (John Pursey)
In the simulator room, Pete Harmer and Stewart Henshall worked hard to finish installing the new control mechanism (with thanks to Peter Smith for the engineering and John Davies for courier). Test flights showed a vast improvement in control handling - please do not change any of the settings.
Thanks to everyone for their help today, we had limited numbers, but the airfield was run very efficiently. Sally Hender
