The weather forecasts for the last few Club days have been a tad challenging for instructors trying to guess as to how accurate the forecasts would be against actual weather at North Hill. And today was no exception with various forecasts suggesting a limiting cloudbase to start and end the day albeit the updated forecast this morning indicated that the actual weather might be better than initially thought.
With members on family commitments, egg hunting or not sure whether flying would happen at North Hill today, there were only a small number of people at the Club first thing. After discussion as to who could do what and whether we had enough to start with winch launches the eventual decision was to take a K21 and the Perkoz down to the West end of the airfield pending the expected arrival of a tug pilot to allow some flying to take place and maybe more members to allow winching. Duty Tug Pilot Peter Stapleton arrived as scheduled (prayed for!) and by mid-morning flying was under way.
Cloudbase was not a problem as had been expected and visibility was reasonable so several members took advantage of the reduced price aerotow launches until the arrival of a few more members and another instructor meant that the winch could be set up at the East end. Carefully avoiding the seeded area - but no sooner had we started to make progress with the flying list the wind, which had been an ‘interesting’ Southerly cross wind, started to become a tail wind!
The new seeded area just waiting for some rain - looking forward to matching stripes (Mike Sloggett)
After suitable discussion the only correct decision was to change ends - with an even better decision being to have lunch and let the wind settle down. By early afternoon it had, which meant that the decision to change ends was a good one and as the afternoon developed so the flying list progressed - with various members making good use of some weak lift to the South of the airfield and with Dave Perriam keeping Junior FZF aloft for just over an hour for the longest flight of the day before being ‘invited to land’ to let others fly.
By late afternoon the list had been completed for those who wished to fly and so it was time to put the gliders and ground equipment away - as ever we made the most of the day through great teamwork from the members present, Thank you to all involved (and a special mention to Pete Warren for helping out in the back seat for most of the day). - Mike Sloggett (ed: thanks to Mike for covering both am and pm Instructor duties today)
