Five pilots chanced the weather today and it turned out to be a gamble that paid off!
Flying was again from the main North/South runway, the wind was 3/6mph and the surface dried out by 11am.
Lots of flights were recorded, with only one mishap, a model tip stalled on landing knocking the undercarriage off.
Paul had a lucky escape, running through pre-flight control surface checks the elevator control clevis snapped, a lucky escape indeed and highlights the importance of a thorough pre-flight check routine.
The promised sunshine didn’t appear and it was a grey overcast day, model orientation was a challenge in the morning and Steve’s high visibility glasses were in demand !
The wind direction meant that we were again on the North-South runway with the wind coming directly down the centre.
Two maidens today, Paul flew his Sukhoi 29 and Andy had one flight with his 4m Vertigo F5J. not a day for thermal soaring but a good day for trimming, and as luck would have it, it flew really well, just a few evenings now programming all the thermal mode mixes in!
Everyone had a good day, with no mishaps recorded.
The forecasted rain turned up at about 2pm, so a leisurely pack up and home to get those lipo’s storage charged.
To say the conditions were mixed today would be something of an understatement, we saw everything but snow!
Arriving at Dishforth to torrential rain and the prospect of no flying to the sun briefly “cracking the flags” to wind then flat calm then swinging wildly making it interesting for us glider pilots, the power flyers having awkward wind directions but this didn’t stop the flying and at the end of the day a good time was had by all.
My first flight saw abundant lift as the sun dried up the runway and I clocked a 28 min “test” flight while Paul who was already flying when i arrived clocked a 45 minute flight.
Next flights weren’t so good and lift became harder to find until we were flying in near dead air and decided to call it a day.
to sum the day up i’d say challenging but still fun!
Saturday at Dishforth was a Borderline no fly day due to the wind which was gusting to 26mph! What a contrast to the previous week when runway temperatures were in the mid 30 degrees!
We elected to fly from the North South runway which gives plenty of space to allow for swing on take-off and extended downwind finals.
6 members along with 2 prospective members flew today, all power as the conditions weren’t the best for thermal soaring.
Not many flights were recorded due to the breeze, and all but one had a fly, it was still a worthwhile exercise as a social gathering and the banter was great fun.
Landings were becoming a bit precarious as the wind speed increased, and it was decided that in the interest of safety (and the risk of breaking a model) we’d end flying at about 2pm.
Saturday was probably one of the hottest days at Dishforth this year, with a recorded 36 degrees on the car outside temperature gauge!
There were 3 silent flyers and 4 power flyers attended today, the site was in good condition but there was a lot of activity off the runways as the farmer was mowing and bailing the grass, this affected the choice of flight line for the Glider pilots who ended up on the North South runway quite a way down towards the hangers.
Andy Shutt and Paul Wellacott were flying their 2 meter competition gliders trying to better their flight times set last week, the wind was coming directly over the fence from the A1 which made conditions tricky and low level lift was very disturbed. Mike Harris was Flying his favoured ‘T’ tail models and had some good flights, but by 1pm the ground was so heat soaked that lift was very sparse.
The power pilots had a good day too, as there was a steady breeze and little to no gusting the power flight line was busy, the only disruption to the day was when the wind swung later on which forced a change to flying across the main runway and using the end of the “dirty” runway.
all in all it was a full day of flying and flying concluded at around 4:30pm.
Fantastic start to a Bank Holiday weekend and with the weather forecast being for blue skies, low winds and the highest recorded temperatures for a bank holiday weekend in recorded history so i was expecting crowded flight lines, loads of people out and a packed parking area.
This turned out not to be the case, there was a steady breeze blowing up the dirty runway all day so we were all parked on the main runway so no over crowding! The breeze made it comfortable and the clear skies ensured that you got sunburnt (at least i did!!). I was somewhat shocked that there weren’t more members out, it was really just the usual culprits! flight lines were therefore not busy and there was lots of flying. Not much more to say really, below are some snaps from the day. Enjoy.
Adrian seems to prefer flying his heli’s this way up for some reason! Guess it saves buying a lawnmower!!!
The Weather forecast all week has been changing from sunny to torrential rain to gales and then back to 20 degrees with sun so who knew what we were going to get on Saturday!
Well as it happened we got most of the above (well not the rain anyway).
For such a nice day there wasn’t the size of turnout that you would expect, the morning started off overcast and dull with a thick cloud layer which meant that it was on the cold side but it wasn’t too windy.
As the day progressed it didn’t lighten up and the promised sunshine looked like it was never going to arrive, but after lunch the sun broke through and the wind dropped to next to nothing and i managed to run through a few batteries with my 4mtr span Hyper Ava.
Inky had a maiden flight with the above plane, this picture really doesn’t do justice to how PINK it actually looks (which was a good thing as the cloud made visibility a bit of an issue). Plane proved to be a bit twitchy at first but this turned out to be a setup issue which was easily resolved, notice the amount of up elevator!
Richard flew his EDF Hunter and brought his turbine plane along for some taxi testing but due to time restrictions we didn’t get chance to do this, all in all it was a great if quieter than normal saturday!
Well the Beast from the East has gone and the Pest from the West only lasted a couple of days and finally we have had a day that was perfect for flying.
The wind was light not blowing more than 5 mph all day and it wasn’t too cold, these great conditions managed to flush out a good number of members and a few interesting models
As April is just around the corner and we have historically always seen a spike in “incidents” in April it had been decided that today the theme of the day was to get someone else to look over your model before you fly to check that everything was ok.
Danny and Joel brought along a new plane and Frank obliged by giving it a once over before its maiden flight, don’t know too much about this plane apart from the fact that if looked great in the air! Hopefully Danny will pen us a couple of lines about it for the next issue of Propwash? what about it Danny???
Steve got some air time in with his new plane and Richard flew his ducted fan plane too (sorry didn’t manage to get a snap of that).
I unfortunately had to shoot off so couldn’t get any pictures of the afternoon session but as the weather brightened up I am sure that fun was had by all!
Just a few photos for the website. Saturday started very gloomy with light rain, Once on the airfield however the rain stopped and the wind was light and quite a few members turned up and by 1.00 the sun was peeping through.
Ian had his “new” (30 years in the build ! ) aerobatic model for a test flight but was thwarted by a broken throttle arm. Richard had his EDF L39 Albatross with a new fan/motor combo which demonstrated a stunning climb rate. I had excavated my old EDF Supermarine Attacker from the recesses of the shed and fitted new lipo packs… I had forgotten what a fun model it is. Steve Rickwood has now put his starting problems behind him, the DLE 55 was really on song and the model really performing well.
