Happy New Year to everyone, and welcome to the first blog of the New Year! Sir Chris had spotted the day on the forecast weather last week and put out the call for an Ad-Hoc Day. For the first flying day of 2023, the members were extremely keen on starting the year, as the first arrived at 7:15am to unlock the gate, with the gliders being taken out of the hangar at 8:30am. Flying started at 9:40am, when the canopies were finally clearing, with a test tug flight by Stuart Procter, to check the state of the airfield for launching/landing.
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| Waiting for the Pawnee to return (Simon Minson) |
With both sides of the flying list having 17 names on by the time flying started it looked like a busy and challenging day for the instructors and tug pilots.
The decision was made for reduced-price aerotows to 1500ft only and restricted initially to one launch each to help with currency. With so many on the airfield quick work was made of retrieving and launching, the only wait, was for the tug to return each time. However, with Stuart Procter, James Flory, Pete Harmer and Peter Warren sharing the tug duty, there was never a break, other than to quickly refuel a couple of times, with great teamwork.
Small amounts of orographic cloud today (Simon Minson)
We had great response from the instructors, as well as those flying the tug sharing the two-seat flying, we had Glenn Turpin and Simon Minson stepping in to help, which actually meant the two seat list was quicker than the solo list!
We had visiting pilots from Brentor, who happily flew, John Allan taking a turn in the DG505, and Richard Roberts bringing and rigging his own Discus (V5), flying, then packing it away again to take it home, now there’s commitment!
Rich Roberts in V5 visiting from Dartmoor GS (Rob Hender)
Flying continued throughout the day, finally finishing at about 3:00pm when we completed the list, so the gliders and vehicles could be washed down in the daylight.
A great start to the year, thanks to all that stayed and helped until the end, and to Jonathan Erskine for his assistance in the Launchpoint - Sally Hender
