Wednesday 27th to Thursday 28th Jan
Wednesday 27th. With a light to moderate W’ly blowing, preparations for winch operations were soon put in place only to be forestalled by the arrival of light rain mid morning as a weak front slipped south. However, the rain did not last too long and flying commenced with one of the club K21’s, the Astir and the Discus utilised. In all 6 winch launches were flown as well as a single Rotax Falke flight, with Bill Payton having 1.3 hrs in the Discus and Albert Newbery/Reg Rowlinson an hour in the K21, eventually gaining to around 1000′ QFE. Cloud forming on the hill was a feature of the day and flying was terminated when this thickened and lowered.
Thursday 28th. The wind had veered into the NW but remained light to moderate and, with a cloudbase of around 2500′ QFE, AT operations commenced off runway 02, the conditions generating the usual sporty climb outs. These conditions, normally restricted to the first few hundred feet of climb, were a feature of the whole climb but early flights found little usable lift with flight times in the 15 - 20 minute range. Around midday, a few convective looking clouds started to appear and George Rowden, flying the Astir, utilised a street of these, finding occasional strong lift and having just over an hour in the air. 11 flights were flown in total by the Astir and K21 with a number of pilots requiring check flights after the long weather induced lay off. Sue Aherne, flying her check with Albert Newbery in K21 had the longest 2 seat flight of the day, 20 minutes, before having 31 minutes in the Astir. With the field fully thawed, the end of flying saw the aircraft in need of a good wash, so it was all hands to the pump. However, the pump supplying the water for washing decided to refrain from collaborating so it was back to bucket, brush and sponge as the following photograph shows.
All hands instead of the pump