Saturday 8th December

Saturday saw the K8 emerge from the hangar for the first time in a few weeks and rewarded us with launches up to 1,900 feet.  Pleasant day for the time of year and we managed 23 launches.  Steve took longest flight honours with 13 minutes - that's Steve's B, G and O, each getting same time.

Sunday 23rd

Dry day, wet airfield and the C team were in attendance just waiting for anyone escaping Christmas shopping.  Only our illustrious chairman fell into that category.  We decided to wait for an hour before getting the toys out in which time a shower came through which put an end to any ideas of the field drying out a little.  Broken guttering on the clubhouse was fixed (mainly involved watching and passing things to Chris K at the top of the stepladders) and Colin B and I rubbed down part of a wing.
Hopefully with Christmas out of the way and the days getting longer we'll start to see a bit more flying.

Sunday 16th Early Celebration

As promised Sunday was the better day of the weekend and those arriving at the airfield were greeted with a clear sky - and a winch problem. Fortunately the #2 winch, on its new trailer, was ready do go and after a short delay we were ready to go.

You don't expect much in December, except cold and misting canopies, but for once the conditions were ideal. After three flights with me in the back, Selvam convinced me he was ready so his fourth flight of the day was on his own. Just in time, about 20 minutes later a big heavy shower arrived forcing a quick return to the hangar.

Well done Selvam.

Saturday 15 Dec Blue sky, sunshine....

...and nobody to fly I sat in glorious isolation until just before 10am when Ken, Graham and Richard arrived and Ken, Richard and I then picked on Graham, making him to multiple Qfe/Qnh /Flight level calculation examples whilst we sat back, drank tea and made helpful comments. Then we went home again.

Wednesday 12th December

Another modest turnout where check flights were the order of the day.

With Colin still under the weather I made good use of a day off and persuaded Chris Keating, Rob Jarvis and Rod Harris to fly their annual checks with me.

After much bung pulling, spinning and general out of positioning all three passed their annual and P1 mutual checks with ease so well done to them :-)

Paul Bryant also demonstated some very capable spin recoveries so is now "Off Checks" as well.

With only a light SE wind launches to 1800 ft were the norm but with zero lift the 3 longest flights only acheived 10 minutes. All in all we only managed to log 25 flights but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.


Phil

Wednesday 5th December

A modest turnout to see if there would be enough of a northerly to provide some fun on the ridge.  It did provide launches to 2,000 feet in the K13's but limited ridge lift.  Still, most folks got into double digit flight times but the best on offer was 20 minutes.  Most of that was spent doing micro-beats (i.e. figure's of 8) in the bowl.  Modesty stops me from revealing who had that flight.