Recent News Feb 15th 2012

Good to report that we’ve had another good week of gliding activity.  Thursday the 9th of Feb. was a brilliant day well exploited by the two enthusiasts there – Tim and Glyn.
First though, they had to make adjustments to the Pawnee fuel mixture cable which was signed off by Chris Wishnowsky of Flight Tech.  Tow pilot Ralph Gibson was then to find that the throttle cable was sticking.  Les Sharp flew the aircraft to NP the next day where the problem was addressed.

Back to Thursday though, a line of towering cumulus covered the area well out to and over the hill country.  Both Glyn & Tim had long flights.  Three and a half hours for Glyn, covering a lot of ground in the PW5 and making a good number of long straight-line flights before turning into lift to gain height.  I arrived down at the field to find Glyn had landed and Tim was still airborne after four hours aloft.  Glyn needed little prompting to encourage Tim to try for the five hours.  Which he did and did well.  He found evening wave over the Midhurst area and maintained height at just over 5000ft for most of the time.  Just after the five hour mark there was a plaintive plea... “Can I come home now?”  “No” was the reply, “stay for another fifteen minutes”.  He obliged and landed having been aloft for five hours, thirty minutes.  Well done!


                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     
Now there remains the height gain to do which shouldn’t be too much trouble.