Although the sun was shining brightly it was a quiet day in respect of members on the flying list with around 10 present. (Although many more members were busy with various preparatory tasks for Competition Enterprise which starts next Saturday)
Instructors for the day were James Flory, Glenn Turpin and Pete Warren. The latter two were not rostered but both stepped forward and covered 5 of the 19 dual flights.
Glenn focused his time on doing 3 flights with Junior member Dawson Panter-Wray, and to Dawson’s ‘delight’ (well we think it was delight) for flight no 1, Glenn appeared carrying a simple white circular stick-on soap holder. To the more knowledgeable, the soap holder quickly turned itself into a handy ‘altimeter coverer-upper’ so Dawson had his first (and probably not his last) experience of flying without an altimeter.
Just before mid-day Pete Warren flew Karen Mears as his ‘Friends and Family’ flight, and then late afternoon Pete and Stirling Melhuish took the ‘dual pundits of the day’ award with a flight time of 41 minutes.
James, as lead instructor, efficiently worked his way through the training and currency list flying Lily Sanders-Page, Jon Erskine, Karen King and Paul Warren.
Steph & Stirling's neighbour Ting (Steph Heide)
In respect of trial lessons, all who booked turned up and Tom Sides flew 5 winch launches. One of those was Fengjuan Li (a neighbour of Stirling and Steph) who, like the other two, loved the experience and whose partner reliably informed us that the photos and video will soon be circulating widely around China!
Despite being low on numbers, the ‘can do’ attitude of all present meant the day ran seamlessly and well done to Lily, her dad Alex and Dawson for showing such tremendous willingness to learn. - Karen King
