Friday 29th to Saturday 30th January
Saturday 30th. Overnight snow had reclothed the airfield in white, but insufficiently to affect operations, as the wind, while still in the NNW, had decreased in strength and skies were clear and sunny. The overnight fall of snow had left the A170/Sutton Bank a little slippy in places for early travellers and initial preparations to open the hangar doors were frustrated by ice in the floor tracks. Determined work by Robin Hutchinson with a screwdriver soon sorted that particular problem, as the photo below shows, and a group of well attired members assembled in the freshly painted briefing room for the morning briefing.
Not quite opening time
The Ice Man cometh and chippeth.
Subsequently, 13 ATs were flown off runway 02 with landings on 300, mainly by the two club K21’s, with most pilots renewing their currency after the long weather induced lay off. With only bits and pieces of lift to be found, most flight durations were between 15 - 25 minutes, but Roger Burshall/Jamie Davis had 32 minutes in the K21 with the help of a 3000′ AT and Sue Ahern had 27 minutes in the only Astir flight of the day. The usual sporty take offs/climb outs were complemented by some tug induced blizzards as the photo below shows.
Look no tug.