The weekend was pretty interesting, albeit challenging in spots. Saturday was pretty full-on as we had six trainees scheduled to fly. This meant that the day was severely overloaded given we had just one operational two seater. One of the trainees decided she’d prefer to drive around on the slasher to actually flying, which took a little pressure off, but it was still really challenging. Please have a look at the day’s flight roster and see how busy the day is BEFORE adding your names to the lists, particularly if you need the two-seater. More than 3 or 4 people needing the two-seater means that nobody will get a lot of flying in it.
On the bright side, Cath Conway managed to take the Ventus out to Blanchetown and back. She had been hoping to do a 300km XC but, due to a catalog of difficulties wasn’t able to launch until late in the afternoon. Teal had just-shy-of-an-hour in a Ka-8. Since there was so much lift happening north of the airfield he thought he’d give Derek’s Mini-XC course a try. He completed the first couple of turn points but then discovered that all the lift disappeared south of Stonefield.
Sunday saw Cath, Derek, Tom Wilksch, Simon Hackett and his son Gabe, Andrew McGrath and Teal on field. Gabe was introduced to his very first winch launch which produced a big grin when he arrived back on the ground. Everyone else took turns at the Janus. Teal got the Ka-8 out, flew her up to cloud base and spun her back down. Simon demonstrated “launch mode” in his nifty high-performance Tesla car along the “cricket pitch” on RWY 11. That thing has more acceleration than a winch launch!