Sunday 15 October 2023
We had a good day at Halton with a small, but perfectly formed team. We achieved 39 launches and 8 hours. The hog of the day was Taff Williams with 1 hour 11 minutes in his Olly 2b, closely followed by Mark Durden on his 750th flight at 1 hour 5 minutes.
Congratulations to Gareth Allenby-Jones on his first solo flight! We also had 3 re-solos from other club members.
For the expedition members up at Aboyne, the weather in the morning was not so good, so they started with a late breakfast at the famous café ‘At the Sign of the Black Face Sheep’.
They prepared the gliders for a mass launch at around 2pm, with Phil MacKenzie in the Discus 2cT (R6), Martin Langford in his LS6c (335), Ben Manning in his ASW 20 (574), Paul Field in his Ventus 2cT (V66) and Jan Brouwer and Laurence Weeks in the Duo Discus (26).
They were aiming to fly in some wave, but were all back on the ground within 30 minutes. At around 4pm, Mike Entwistle from the Black Mountains Gliding Club in Talgarth, who is joining the expedition for the week, got airborne with his Mosquito. He picked up some wave and had a great flight.
This encouraged Paul Field to go for a second attempt at around 5pm. He also soared in some wave and both landed just after sunset. We packed up in the dark.
