A fair crowd turned up to be greeted by a brisk westerly wind and lurking low cloud, expecting to aerotow but inspection of the field bought the good news that winching was possible and the field set up accordingly.
Launch Control (Library pic Mike Sloggett)
The duty instructors carried out a check flight, tasted the ridge and concluded that flying was possible and worthwhile. - And so it was.
Initially the cloud base was limiting launches to about a thousand feet but that improved to as much as 1700 feet, the ridge worked according to ones skill level and the club aircraft averaged 18 minutes a flight. Two privateers Pete Startup 230 and Eric Alston G29 had long flights - two to three hours - setting the target for the rest of us, Everybody managed two launches and some managed lunch as well.
A quite satisfactory day - 24 winch launches in all. - Glenn Turpin
