1 Feb 2010

Message from Hannes

Dunnottar delivered. Saturday afternoon Kevin Storie and some of his students were at the winch park and did some flights.

 Sunday morning saw many pilots creeping out from rain hibernation eager to fly. Unfortunately we had some winching problems with several line brakes on a newly serviced winch but later on it seemed to get better.

In the morning  winch park expert Clive stayed up for almost two hours above the field. He was later joined by Bradley and Gary du Plessis. Gary Lewis and Charles Swart had good flights and almost went XC.

 There was a deceiving 4 up thermal at the corner of the base that vanished the moment you released so the better option was to hang on and take the next thermal on the south (toilet) corner.

I got a nice one there and it looks like my new baby is now starting to find thermals more easily. I sat over the Industrial park for almost 20 minutes  flat turning a very gentle and wide thermal and worked my way slowly up to ceiling. I had a nice gentle flight all the way to Nigel and then back to Mckenzieville.

The flight is nothing special compared to some other awesome recent flights by others but very uplifting for me after a period of bad flights.

Later on Gary du Plessis had another one of his favourite to the Nigel dam and back flights.

Over Nigel residential areas children were swimming, playing on jumping castles and you could see plenty braai fires.

 With a massive storm today during lunch hour it certainly seems that we must make good use of sunshine these days…