Sunday 21st to Tuesday 23rd February
Sunday 21st. A front moving northeast over the site brought a morning of snow that deposited around 5 cms on the airfield, the generally light wind starting off in the E and then going into the NNW as the front passed at around 1300 hrs. The passage of the front made little difference to the temperature that remained below freezing all day. Most members left the site in the morning due to the possibility of being snowed in and, with clearing skies not appearing until around sunset, no flying was possible.
Monday 22nd. With another front staying well to the south, partly sunnyskies and a light to moderate NE’ly wind should have resulted in a flying day. However, a lack of members meant no flying was possible.
Tuesday 23rd. Members turning off the A170 onto the metalled road to the club were met by a road closed sign but the reason for this was not evident until later in the day when the local council put up some warning road signs on the approach to the club picturing a glider. I asssume this refers to the dangers of low flying gliders to the passing motorist and not an attempt to put people off gliding. It certainly didn’t put off the club members who turned up today and flew in spite of a snow covered airfield, a wind chill of -5C and a freshening ESE’ly that posed some challenges for operations off runway 20 in terms of circuit planning and cross wind landings. 7 ATs were flown into increasingly cloudy skies, including a Trial Lesson pupil. In the absence of much usable lift, flight times were generally in the 10 - 15 minute range but courtesy of a 3000′ tow, George Rowden was able to give Trial Lesson pupil David Gallier a 20 minute introduction to gliding and Chris Thirkell managed 16 minutes of a 2000′ tow. Derek Smith took the Rotax Falke for a trip to practice field landings before operations ceased mid afternoon as the cloud base lowered and the wind continued to freshen ahead of an approaching front that promised more snow.