In addition to Michael Murphy, getting current again in gliders after a 3 year lay-off, I had Peter Robinson and William White from England, and Ian Gostelow and Max Clothier, pre solo club members to train. Vic Hatfield came out to assist with the instructing.
We got the gliders ready but postponed flying until after lunch. It was still a bit wet, but we thought it would be OK to fly, and that we would be able to land into wind in the triangle. WRONG! I had the first flight with William White. He was here last year and flew with Garry and myself, but didn't quite get to solo. He had done another course in England before coming back to Keepit. He flew very well, and landed perfectly in the triangle, into the SW wind as planned, but the glider pulled up very short. I thought he had used the wheel brake, or not kept the stick back, but no - the glider wheel had ploughed a deep
furrow in the mud, and was totally bogged.We warned Vic and Michael Murphy in GFP (Twin ll) not to land in the same place, so they stayed up for an hour and a quarter. Meanwhile it took two motor bikes, the dune buggy, a large shovel and lots of people to extract the Puchatek from the mire!
Vic flew with Michael Murphy and Peter Robinson, both of whom flew solo again by the end of the day.
I flew with Max Clothier and managed to make him feel sick and Ian Gostelow. Neither had done much thermalling before as they had always visited in the winter before.
Because of the late start, we kept flying until it got dark - last launch at 2000! After that Vic got on the tractor for a bit of mowing, but soon had to give up due to lack of light.
No comments:
Post a Comment