I was rostered to fly the tug on Friday 11th June, as Juho was not available. My plane had its first 25 hour service (on its third engine) on Thursday, so I flew up on Friday morning. Arrived about 10 am just in time to meet Vic, Al Giles, Gerhard and Jim Burson for a cup of tea. It was very cold. I don't have any cabin heat yet - but its coming!
Vic and Jim got the Puchatek out and I got the Tug ready. Jim had been flying with Ian during the week, and and done quite a bit of flying in a Jabiru, though not quite enough time to get his pilot certificate.
I did 7 launches for the day, all with Vic and/or Jim - although the sun came out, conditions were very still and there was no thermalling to be done. Jim did three solo flights - so another first solo for LKSC!
Ray and Marga Tilley turned up during the afternoon, John Williamson from Tassie and his friend Cree (short for Lucretia I think) and Rob from Central Coast Club and his friend Tom, from Canada arrived in the evening and we all spent a very convivial evening in the club house in front of a roaring fire!
Saturday was a busy day for Gerhard, who was instructing, and there were quite a lot of people to fly with. Rob fixes appliances for a living, and finished the job he started on our dishwasher last Easter, replacing all the rollers on the trays. He seemed most enthusiastic to fix things all over the club house - great to see!
I spent the morning replacing the bungees on the undercarriage doors of the Mozzie - thanks to John Clark, who had all the necessary materials to hand, and saved me a trip to Bearfast in the the morning. Phil Anderton flew the tug, and there were about 14 launches during the day. Soaring was possible from about 1300 to 1545, but not easy. Max height I got was 4000 feet ASL, but someone reported 4400! My best climb rate was a boomer of 2.7 kts! Chris Carr managed to get as far away as the Carrols, and so did John Clark, but I think he needed the iron thermal to get back. There were clouds in the distance to the west, but much to far away to get to.
We had a magnificent Christmas dinner in the club house prepared by John Hoy and Pam, with help from Marga Tilley, Fiona Singer, and several others - a marathon effort and greatly appreciated by all. Unfortunately no Christmas Pud - as someone left it at home - but we had apple crumble and custard instead.
There was a very heavy frost on Saturday night so I had to wait for it to melt of my plane before I could take off to come home - at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Not sure what the gliding was like on Sunday, but the winch was out I know. Perhaps someone else will write the story?
I posted the photos I took of the festivities on the yahoo group site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lksc/photos/album/466925684/pic/list
