Saturday 20th February
Saturday 20th. A very light NNW’ly and sunny skies saw operations start on runway 20 at around 1000 hrs and then switch to take-offs from runway 24 and landings on 20 later in the day as the wind backed into the SW and strengthened slightly. A total of 27 ATs were flown with the clubs K21s, DG1000, Discus, DG303 and a single private owner, Steve Ball in his LS8, taking to the skies. Pre midday, there were no soaring flights but cumulus started to appear thereafter for a restricted period allowing 3 flights of over an hour and 11 flights over 30 minutes. Steve Ball in his LS8 justified his rigging time by having 1.3hrs in the air while John Marsh/Mr Chiolley had 45 minutes in the club K21, the best of the day’s 2 seater flights. Chairman Graham Evison regained his instructor rating under the eagle eye of Dick Cole and the flying day was well and truly rounded off by the first solo of 2010 by Mark Hillyer in the K21. Congratulations Mark.
After washing the aircraft, packing the hangar and retiring to the bar for some liquid refreshment, the members moved to the briefing room to listen to Ron Beezer give a very informative talk on the crucial importance of angle of attack in avoiding winch launching and landing accidents. As well as basing his talk on actual events, a video of changes in angle of attack during winch launching a Puchacz was used to underline the points raised, the video also being used to demonstrate a high speed stall in the same aircraft.