Last flight of 2017 accomplished Roll on 2018

[Martin Church]

Was nice to see a few of you at the Sheet today. By the time I had got there the weather had deteriorated & the wind had got up to over 30 knots. I had a poorly ballasted first flight of my Jedi lift in rain, all ok though. Second flight with an extra 4 brass slugs in the fuselage had it moving a little quicker but still it needed more ballast. Then the mother of all storms arrived with rain & hail stones wind now gusting to 40 knots so a day of it was called & we all ran for the cars.  

I am planning on going again tomorrow as I like to fly on the last day of the year & the first day of the next, kind of a tradition for me. Hopefully a few will turn up & make it an enjoyable social occasion.

Happy New Year Everybody see you all in 2018.

Martin

[SilentPilot]

No flying for me, I ended up drawing the short straw and having to work the night shift, a lovely 1900 - 0700 to keep me going

My most notable year end flight was about 5 years ago. I was wave flying above cloud in my L-23 when the gaps closed below, I quickly entered a spiral dive and went through a gap that I knew wasn't far from my airfield, upon descending below couldbase I did a quick 360 to assess my location, this was when I realised that I was far too low to get back safely. Ended up in a field barely 5km from home (literally a stones throw away). It was getting dark by now, we loaded up a trailer with egg boxes and set off mob handed to retrieve the glider. Upon getting there it was quite clear that we couldn't manage it in the fading light so we agreed with the farmer that we'd come back the following day to get it. He, rather helpfully I might add, agreed to take down some low fence wires to assist us. 

So the following day - which happened to be the following year - we got our glider back!!!

I think to this day I hold the record for the closest outlanding and the longest retrieve given that it spanned two years  

Tony