Everyone was at the club bright and early for the first day of the July course. With the weather looking good the two K21s and a Junior were brought out the hangar and the airfield setup. We all then went inside and had a welcome briefing from course instructor's Martin Woolner and James Flory before having a quick lesson on how to use RASP from Gordon Hutchinson which ended with the famous line "never trust the forecast".
Once we'd got all the admin out the way we looked out the window and saw that it was drizzling and the cloudbase had dropped to about 600ft. So to pass the time the course members (Stuart Thomson, Kevin Fairburn, Arthur Hayhoe, Aaron Harris, Jorg Beasley and Chris Woodward) received a winch launch briefing from Martin followed by a cup of tea.
It was then decided that the cloudbase was high enough to fly and so Jorg jumped in with James for a few flights meanwhile Kevin worked on some circuits with Martin followed by his first (simulated) launch failure.
Chris taking full advantage of the Junior today (Connor Williams)
Chris Woodward took full advantage of being the only solo pilot on the course (for now) by completing several flights in the junior. Next up with James was Arthur who got close to solo a few years ago and is now back as a member. He enjoyed getting reacquainted with the K21 and hopes to be solo in the not to distant future.
Grey skies still (Connor Williams)
After a quick lunchbreak flying continued with the sun teasingly appearing for a few minutes before disppearing again. However, a few flights after lunch Stirling noticed an issue with the winch which led to a halt in flying for about half an hour whilst he temporarily fixed the problem. After this quick break the sky started to get a bit more soarable with some thermals and the ridge beginning to work thus leading Stuart and James managing the longest flight of the day which was exactly 1 hour long. Flying finished at about 17:00 with everyone agreeing that a good days flying was had. - Connor Williams - Logger and Blogger
P.S Thanks to Stirling for winching all day.
