Sun 26 October

 We had a extra hour in bed this morning, and this seemed to provide a positive attitude in the clubhouse, with a good number of members in the clubhouse ready for the 9:15am briefing from Duty Instructor Ron Johns. It was another iffy forecast for the day ahead, but with the early conditions looking favourable the hangar was emptied and airfield set up quickly, and the first launch taken just before 10:00am.

 

Sally Hender with Ron Johns (Rob Hender)

Ron did an excellent job on the airfield, working as the only instructor, so restricting the number of flights for the trainees, but efficiently getting through the list. We had a slight snag when we had a cable break, with the winch drum suffering a little damage, which meant we were using a single cable, but we carried on regardless! 

Paul Summers - still in shorts!! (Sally Hender)

 Private owners Pete Startup (230) and Simon Minson (SM) took flights but couldn’t manage any great distance due to the conditions, but Pete stayed up for just over 2 hours. We paused for a quick lunch break, to give Ron a rest, but on resuming flying it became apparent the cloud and rain were moving in on the airfield quickly, so the decision was made to end flying early while all the Kit was still dry! Unfortunately, this meant two of the trainees didn’t get to fly. We managed to get everything packed away by 2:30pm and hunker down in the clubhouse with the log fire/coffee and cake before the rain came in. Thanks to everyone for a great effort. - Sally Hender