Saturday 7 March 2020

Mill Hill Saturday 7th March 2020

The forecast for today was SW between 9 and 20 mph, so we went to Mill Hill to do some gentle flying.
When I arrived there were two other fellows already there doing some combat and I asked them whether they had called Air Traffic Control and they said yes and were given the OK.
Paul then arrived, followed by John M and we all started flying (the other guys stopped the combat and flew more respectfully). I had my Coyote, Paul had his Highside and John flew his Wisel.
After about 10 minutes in the gentle breeze, the wind got up and became quite turbulent. John and I landed our light models, but Paul was able to remain aloft with his heavier Highside.
I had a couple of flights with the Coyote, but then it got too blustery for such a light plane, so I landed.
Paul was doing a brilliant job of landing without flaps (how ?) as usual with his Highside, but one landing skidded all the way along the grass and took off again - was that intentional Paul ?

Robin A joined us and flew his home-made white wing which also had some difficulty penetrating the wind, but Robin did well and managed some brilliant landings.

Meantime John rigged up his newly acquired (from me) Starlight 3000 (which I got off Chris Foss) and I launched it into the wind and it went straight and true except for needing a little down elevator trim.


After some trimming and testing the flaps, John gave an expert landing considering the blustery conditions. He decided that was enough for the day.
Later, Rob P arrived with two models, one I can't remember (sorry) and the other was a new Mini Graphite. After we range tested the Mini G Rob launched it and it flew brilliantly with another great landing so that Rob could make some more adjustments to the mixes. Later he told me that he had 10 more flights with it, so that's well and truly 'maidened'.

By the way we all had our Operator IDs on our planes despite not needing them until end of June and the other two fellows also had done the same.

A great day but very cold and we retired after about an hour and a half.

Rob 

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