Thursday 21st to Tuesday 26th January 2010
Thursday 21st to Monday 25th. Thursday and Friday maintained the cold, cloudy and moist ESE’ly airstream of previous days with a clearance to brighter conditions coming too late on Thursday to permit flying. Friday turned into a very wet day with rain, heavy at times, from 11am to 5pm. Saturday had a light W’ly, but with low cloud preventing flying and although Sunday saw very light winds and partly cloudy skies with the site under the centre of a low pressure system, no flying was again the order of the day, although the main reason was a lack of customers. Monday reverted to the dull, overcast conditions with low cloud as the wind went back into the NE’ly quadrant, these conditions again preventing flying.
Tuesday 26th. A very light E’ly with a high overcast that slowly thinned allowed flying to take place for the first time since the middle of December 2009. 8 ATs were flown off runway 24 with landings on 20, with one of the K21’s, the Discus and Astir being flown. George Rowden took the first flight of 2010, solo in the K21, and was congratulating himself on some very accurate flying until he realised the string was frozen solid. Meanwhile, Dave Campbell set a new club record if not a new world record by achieving all the following firsts on the day. First tug flight, Falke flight, instructional flight and soaring flight. The latter was in the K21 with Frank McLoughlin, 30 minutes being achieved in weak lift that kept them at around 1250′ QFE for a while. David Bradley had 25 minutes in the Discus off a 3000′ tow, while Steve Briggs progressed from a flight on the simulator to a check flight in the K21 before having 2 solo flights, one in the K21 and the other in the Astir. Colin Troise had 2 solo flights in the K21 as the photo below shows. Visibility was intially poor above 2000′ QFE, but improved into the early afternoon before thickening cloud advanced from the NW as the wind went into the S and freshened slightly. The opportunity to get into the air allowed the still significant amounts of snow behind walls and hedges to be seen as well as a still frozen Gormire Lake, while the extent of the tree felling to the E of runway 20 could be appreciated. A few patches of ice still remained on the metalled access road although the major potholes on the club access road have been filled.
