A week of sunshine and high temperatures weren’t the only records being broken a number of record breaking launch counts were achieved. Sunday the 24th gave us an astonishing 55 launches – most number of launches for a February day (previous best was 47 in 2009). Across the month there were 20 launches (previous best 214 last year). Year-to-date (i.e. from start of October) 1,010 (previous best 991 in 2018). However, when it came to flying time the numbers weren’t far from average (below for the month and above year-to-date). Even with a week of summer into the month didn’t help as the high pressure that planted itself resulted in naff all soaring opportunities. For weekend flyers the month would have felt far from fab – only 3 days flown ( 2 weekends) in the month, while the mid-weekers flew every week (helped one week by “Wednesday” being movable).
For the mid-weekers it seemed that Rob J was the one to beat when it came to soaring. On the 6th his 31 minutes left everyone astonished when the best anyone else could manage was 12 minutes. On the 13th his 13 minutes only made second place to Rowland P’s 21 minutes. On the 21st he was at it again with 38 minutes while only 2 others (out of a total of 26 launches) just crept into double digits. On the 27th Rob’s 17 minutes was no match for Bill C’s 21 minutes. Yet again the most of the rest of us (40 launches in total) failed to make double digits.
We celebrated the last day of “summer” on the 27th in shirt sleeves and beany hats eating Tony P’s home baking plus donuts and sausage rolls (supplied by Stan O).
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