Great Turnout and Scary Flying Today at Ditchling Beacon 1 Feb 15

Hi all,
What a strange day it turned out to be !
I was heading to Ditchling village to find the road was closed..... followed the diversion to Hassocks to find ... the road was closed !!!
Ditchling was shut !
I back-tracked to Clayton windmills and then to A23 / A27 and approached the Beacon from the East.
I called Paul to tell him to do the same and we were able to make the car park.

Les C was there to meet us, followed by Dave W, Ian D and Adam S all of whom had the same story to tell 'Ditchling is closed !' they said..  'yes we know' we said. Thanks to Dave W we found out that it is being re-surfaced.
We decided to fly to the East of the car park, so we crossed the road and I chucked all our models into the air. Paul had his Dragon, Dave had the Spectre, Ian had a Wildthing ,Les had a Middle Phase and Adam had a Phase 6.

After that I was able to launch my own trusty Ninja straight into the barbed wire - twice !
The wind was howling with a N Westerly at 40 mph and the East hill wasn't really working at its best, so we all decided to decamp to the West slope.
We were joined by Jeff O who had come from Essex for the day and Graham T who had brought his dad's Ninja. The Westerly hill worked much better and we all had some flying time in the fierce and wild conditions.

 

We clocked the wind at over 40 mph and windchill at -4.
We were also joined a bit later by Bernie J who brought his dog (not to fly .... just for a walk !)
By 11:00 most of us had been beaten back by a combination of wind, snow and freezing body parts, except Jeff who soldiered on till I don't know when ?
Thanks very much to all of you who joined us today in the freezing and windy conditions, it is very much appreciated, especially considering that it wasn't a lovely summer's morning.
See you all up a hill soon,
Rob
Paul will upload vid, etc... soon.........