AUGUST! Sheep, blown tyres, winching, chopping wood & more..
The last few weeks have been up and down with weather and maintenance!
Stewart Hills has been providing great photos and information on what has been happening at the gliding club in the last few weeks. We are now operating two-seater, with a few instructors keen to do so and with both wearing masks!
"The tug went for its annual maintenance earlier on in August thanks to the help of 6 days work, from Craig 2 man-days, Pete 4 man-days, Ian 5 man-days and me 6 man-days. So that is 17 man-days in total. Many thanks to all who helped" reports Nick Norman our tug master. Most of the work was completed at Aboyne, on return, the Robin got a flat!
Whilst the tug was away, the winch was working well. David Weekes retells the weekend here: "Well we had a pretty good winching weekend. 18 launches on Saturday, 14 today. Gabby scored the one aerotow as the tug left for Aboyne. Following all John's ministrations, the winch behaved impeccably. Only one cable break all weekend (lots of simulated ones though). Jordan went solo both on winch driving and glider flying. James also soloed on winch driving but it was a bit choppy this afternoon for a solo winch launch.
On Saturday Bob Forrest got away from a winch launch in U9, as did Alison in the Ventus. Paul had a go later but cheated by firing up the engine at the top of the launch! Most of the rest of the flying was by Paul in the backseat of FYA and various instructors in PK.
We would have done better on Sunday but kickoff was first delayed by an invasion of sheep on the airfield and then having to change ends due to adverse wind. Then at midday, the wind was definitely blowing from the south at the south end of the runway and from the north at the other end. After a pause for it to sort itself out, we changed ends yet again. The afternoon was distinguished by the return of ALF who tried for the longest flight of the day from a 1500 foot launch but was defeated by Jordan who had found the one thermal of the day on his flight (11 minutes!). Stewart was the other winch launch soloist of the day. Tony tried hard but had to leave early for Cumbria."
Back to normal on Saturday 22nd August. Stewart comments, "A varied day with low cloud and showers over Kingussie heading towards Glenfeshie. Cloud base was around 2300' QFE and 2800' QFE over Glen Feshie.
There were 4 Flights, with Pete Smith going first and got a reasonable 24 mins, this was followed by James Cochrane who went solo in PK. After doing 2 Aerotows for Rodger Stewart jumped into the Astir and managed 40mins.
A visitor from Stratford upon Avon who is a Silver C pilot went up with Ray Hill, his partner, is a member of Portmoak."
Thanks to Miles for chopping logs at the other end and Stewart and Rodger for towing! I wonder what the rest of August will have in tow for us!!
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