Saturday’s forecast suggested it would be flyable after the clearance of a second front heading south. However, we were initially greeted by rain and low-cloud followed by low cloud that reported higher at met stations north of us and then, frustratingly lower.

We decided to hang on until after 1200 when the first front went by and somebody caught sight of just a bit of blue sky. The remaining band of willing pilots readied and launched the two-seaters just as the second front was passing. The second front was tame with a high-enough cloudbase and it couldn’t stop us as we provided training flights for our ab-initios and early solo students. Due to a short-ish flying list by the time we started, we were able to go round the list twice for instructional flying.

Sunday looked rather better forecast wise from the get-go although the wind promised a cross-field stiff blow. We set up on the south stub as early as we could and got to flying after our CFI Steve gave us a demo of parachute operation (using an expired chute) in the morning briefing.

It was really a bit parky and it paid to wrap up warm (or bag the job of driving the cable retrieve which has a good heater!) Some of our members appeared to go into their winter hibernation states at the launchpoint but we had enough heroes to keep the operation going. We made good enough progress that we were able to offer the student pilots extra flying towards the end of the day and the instructors put solid effort into making sure everyone was satisfied!

39 launches in all for Sunday.