It seems the weather gods left the apprentices in charge today.  It was a lovely clear, warm morning with the promise of great flying as cloud started appearing so the apprentices got that bit right but they forgot to warm the air enough to generate some thermal activity near enough for us to use.  At least it wasn’t as cold and windy as last week so that pleased us.

 

I guess we cannot complain though since it appears someone organised a very heavy dew there to go with the soggy patches where we eventually parked the van on 12 so it took a bit of time to dry things out.  We also had to encourage the busy GA traffic to use 12 instead of their preferred 30 before we could commence flying.  All that aside, we were a hopeful bunch.  John Knox had Pat with him today and he rode with the van as our cavalcade escorting CQC and GQA made its way there under Bob Turner’s supervision.

 

We were supplied with plentiful numbers of instructors for our small group; Bob assisted by John Clayton, Barry McCarthy and Garrett Russell who was immediately put to work taking Ken Mitchell off for first go at the great looking sky. Tuggies were in ample supply as well with Karl Bodi deciding it looked a perfect day to defer work for a day or so and, of course, we had Steve Bowtell ready to take over once John’s time was up.  As a result we saw Karl have two glider flights looking for lift and Steve took Nathan off in an equally fruitless search before taking his place in SPA.

 

If honours must be awarded, they go to Bob Turner and Karl who came back after 34 mins. Kevin Rodda and John Clayton were early starters but the sky was still cold and uncooperative. Barry and Kevin made a slightly better combination later in the day but despite that sterling effort we were happy to sit and chat and watch passing traffic.  Eventually, JC and Garrett took a low tow before Garrett found out for himself just how far CQC will go landing without airbrakes.  For some reason everyone intending to fly this afternoon decided this was exactly the time to fly so a planned take off on 30 had to wait quite some time - but no one was in any hurry.

 

After only 11 flights we decided we had wrung the best out of the day and packed up after dispatching QA with Bob Hainsworth and Karl on a tie-down flight followed by Garrett and Ken again in CQC, by which time everything was pretty well back and ready to be put to bed. It was quite nice to wrap dry gliders away in their covers in bright daylight as Bert and Speedy called in to check if they had missed something.  Sadly, they had missed nothing special.

 

Stats for those for whom these things matter:  four flights in QA for 1.22 and seven flights in CQC for 1.29.  Well, one day we’ll get all the elements together properly and then …

 

Judith, on behalf of the Friday crew