There has been a distinct lack of blog entries for a while but then the weather has been rubbish. Even with a good Bank Holiday weekend in prospect we are heading for the lowest number of days flown in August.
Enough of the bad news, the good news is Wednesday was a good day with 42 launches, 25 folks flew and 6 private gliders rigged. Not at all easy, everyone I spoke to found it difficult to find the centre of the thermals and get strong lift. Some really good looking clouds and streets that simply did not deliver when you got to them. When Trevor G takes 3 launches in a day you know it wasn’t easy to get away. When Rowland told me he had only had 15 minutes flying I commented that was pretty good compared to quite a few launches. However, Rowland clarified that was the total time from 3 launches. Fortunately, he did get some soaring on his 4th launch.
Where the Duo Discus got to in the 2 hours it was away I don’t know. Colin B took to the sky with Melksham and Lasham in mind but returned an hour and a half later reporting returning from Newbury in sink all the way. On his return he kindly took over as DI to enable me to get some “quality time”. After a while I was at Andover and topped up with a climb to 4,000′ at Andover. From there no more thermalling and it took just 500′ to get back to the club, another 500′ got me to the M4. I turned back south and got back to the high key area at 1,000.
The two trial lessons were totally delighted with their flights and we welcomed a new junior member James K. James is an experienced solo pilot with competition experience. Welcome to Shalbourne James. Some thought that another new member had arrived. It turned out that when Paul P’s wife started taking bookings from local farmers to hire Paul to stand in a field with his arms outstretched Paul decided it was time for a haircut. See if you recognise this chap with the new (brutal) haircut.
A big thankyou to Carol P without whose help it would have been a struggle to get through the flying list. Also, a massive thanks to James H and Colin B who had put in a huge effort over the past week to get the project winch ready for the next stage in the project. Towards the end of the day the winch we watched the winch being towed away to the SkyLaunch workshop.
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