The day was blue and sunny with some scattered cu but there was quite a brisk southerly wind, and it was cool. The blipmaps were not very optimistic, however they were wrong again!
Ian Barraclough and I were working on the engine of the ASH 25 and after talking to Marketa (Czech blog reader) in the morning, we decided that if the engine was working we would do a test flight. As the wind was southerly, and we were taking off from runway 14 up the hill, we decided not to fly two up for the test flight. I took off at about 1300 hours and found that the engine performed flawlessly - after I had adjusted the carburettor in accordance with the instructions. I could feel that the day was quite good, but the thermals were a bit broken up low down because of the wind. When I got to 5000ft it was so unstable that almost no turns were needed - I could fly from cloud to cloud without turning in a convergence area that that stretched from the north end of the Kelvin range to Werris Creek, where there was a blue hole. I was able to fly for about an hour and a half without turning.
On the way back from Werris Creek, without turning I climbed from 4500 to 6500ft flying at 50-60 kts without turning. On reaching the top of the Kelvin range I set the McCready to 8kts and flew all the way back to Keepit at 120kts. Then I hit the southerly wind at Keepit, ran out of energy, and was unable to complete the planned kangaroo run! I did a low but safe circuit but the air on arrival was quite turbulent.
An unexpectedly good day!
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