All entries for Sunday 09 October 2005

Flying and frozen butter

Today I took 7 random new people off gliding for the day. We had a good day in all, I got everyone two flights, one of each type which was great since it was really busy and coventry uni had turned up with several people. Some of them even got a third flight and one got todo some aerobatics.

As for me, I had two winch flights. Last weekend I hadn't done any winching for a long time and made a complete mess of a couple. So when I went up today I didn't expect it to go well, especially since the winching had generally been quite bad today. As it happens they both went extremely well. A couple of people on the ground even commented that my flight looked very good all round. So today I'm happy.

The winch driver was new I think and things were a little hit and miss all day. On the first launch, the glider didn't get more than 8' from the launch point as it was snatched forward and overshot the cable. The second flight broke something half way up and did an 'advanced' landing very quickly at the other end of the airfield. It slowly improved throughout the day apart from one noticeable launch where the T21 (a big ancient glider made of a wood frame and canvas, with no canopy) dissappeared down the field and refused to take off. I went down on a tractor to fetch it and came half the way back without noticing the winch cable was caught up on it.
(I'd like to point out, for the benefit of those reading who dont know gliding, this is not at all normal and also not actualy dangerous, launch failures is something you practice often and can cope with easily)

Also I seem to have solved a community problem. My tutor was asking me if our heating worked, it doesn't. We spent some time trying to find out why it was off, eventually deciding it might be todo with the thermostat which consists of a small electrical component in the hall. My solution (as opposed to submitting a fault report) was to wedge a block of frozen tesco value butter on it. We now have heating!

Today is definately a good day.

: 09 Oct 2005 22:50 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem