Recent News. July 26th 2014

Recent News: 
July 26th 2014 
Les Sharp provides the account of what happened. Four hardy souls answered the call to test the winch. The day showed some early promise for aero-towing if one had a deep pocket. Cap cloud over Fanthams Peak and a gap with what appeared to be rotor downwind was tempting, but first the winch had to be tested to prove that the repairs were successful. Glyn and Tim set out to do that while Jim Finer and I got WZ out D'Id it and towed it out to 09 threshold. While this happened, Glyn's trusty Hilux was seen speeding down the runway attached to the winch. Glyn was first to try it for real and as there were no problems with that launch I volunteered to go next. The air was calm apart from the vario making interesting sounds on base leg! Next up was Jim Finer with Glyn and having survived that, Jim did one with me. Although Jim found the take-off fairly exciting, he did take over during the climb on both launches, flew the circuits and landed well, especially considering the time lapse since he last flew WZ. To finish off the winching trial I did another launch and headed towards a sunny spot that was near the end of the downwind leg, circled a couple of times in something nearer to zero sink (enough to get an extra minute), and landed. We then got TE out and I aero-towed behind JTA to the West where the sky looked promising, got off at 4000ft and tippy-toed around the face of an ever shifting convergence (or was it a rotor line?) Taking five minutes to gain 100ft. At one point I got to 800ft above my release but then lost the plot and headed back to the field via some likely looking clouds, gained about 400ft from re-join height over the golf course, but was soon downwind for 16. The head-wind was only about 10 knots, but a final approach from a nice safe height became a no-brake approach that was just maintaining the desired profile. One hour total for the first soaring flight of the season.