All the gliders were out of the hangar and equipment ready before the 9:15am briefing. Duty Instructor Mike Sloggett, ably assisted by James Flory and Martin Woolner, (and later on Simon Minson too) started their way down the extensive two-seater list! First launch at 10:08am, just missing the cheap launch rate, but pretty impressive from the west end of the airfield.
However, after the first two launches it was decided to move the Launchpoint to the middle of the field, the winch then having to shuffle around too.
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| Overcast skies early on (Simon Minson) |
Flying continued, with Robert Lee taking the two booked Trial Lessons, both of which enjoying the experience. The two-seater list was a challenge, with four ‘family and friends’ flights, three cable breaks, blue card conditions for a couple of hours, a deer running across the launch line, the cable constantly falling in the next field and a loose horse on the airfield, it was a struggle to get through.
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| Clouds breaking (Simon Minson) |
However, we eventually made it through the majority of the list, apologies to those members that didn’t get in the air. Thanks go to the Inspector team for completing the DG505 3000 hour airframe check and bringing the two-seater fleet back up to 4 gliders.
Statistic of the day, there were 6 father and son combinations on the flying list - Is this a record? Dixon, Lean, Hier, Green, Rigby and Hender.
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| The setting sun ( Simon Minson) |
Congratulations also to Kevin Fairburn, who completed his Bronze flying assessment with Martin Woolner. We finally packed everything away by 6:30pm. Thank you to everyone that helped through the day, and stayed right until the bitter end, 40 winch launches and 4 aerotows in total. - Sally Hender
