Not quite the first launches in 2022 – Mike did those yesterday – but a flyable day was forecast, the only doubt being the possibility of the field being too soft. As they did yesterday, we used the white Landrover as our launch point control. The headlamps were the emergency stop light, operated from the high beam “flash” stick and not requiring the ignition on to do that – very visible from the winch and easy to line up.
We had to limit ourselves to one Puchacz only, because we didn’t have a full duty team and only two non-duty but experienced pilots turned up. That was a pity, because the wind had more south in it and less strength than forecast but that meant we had good launch heights and the ridge worked. George and Graham demonstrated that on their first flight.
The launches were at or above the broken cloudbase of around 1300′. We did eight in total and most were soaring flights over ten minutes, except for a high weak link break and check flights, including a simulated mid launch failure. George, with his extensive ridge flying experience, did the longest flight of course, 20 minutes.
Thanks to all who turned out; we could have done with a few more!
Phil G