After a few weekends delayed by weather, Neil Gatward (left) was sent solo on Sunday by our CFI, Mike Black. Congratulations Neil! Onwards and upwards!
Some great photos from John Campbell, flying in R1 today with Ellen out on our Dallas ridge. Some weak wave around that gave them nearly an hour of late autumn soaring.
The crew making great progress with laying the Perfo reinforcement at the west end, extending runway 08 by around 70 solid metres. Well done to the crew who turned up today to get this job done. We now have a 70 metre run extending what was a fairly solid 08 grass runway.
After the flood. It's taken a while, but the joiners and painters are now done with the major repairs following the burst pipe earlier in the year. Now Toni has performed her magic on the interior and we have a clubhouse fit for the next several years. Really looking forward to times when we can get back to being sociable, as well as offering some fantastic flying!
A very productive weekend for the start of our soaring week. The rest of the week's weather isn't looking brilliant, so just as well!
Saturday morning's showers gave way to sunny spells in the afternoon, with winch and tow launches going on till around 5pm. Some got up to and beyond an hour of local soaring. Our power contingent departed en masse for a fly-in at Kirriemuir, where there were apparently about 50 visiting aircraft across the day.
Sunday was again a mix of winch and tug, with Luke being sent off to re-solo after the lockdown six months.
Today's been pretty gloomy and rainy, but we're also seeing great progress in the clubhouse refurbishment, ably supervised by Toni.
Our fingers are crossed for better weather later in the week.
Photos from the back seat of R1 lateon Saturday and Luke about to take his second solo flight.
We're getting excited about some developments at Easterton!
There'll soon be a new entrance, taking a more direct route into the site. This will let us extend runway 08 by about 80-90 metres, with the first stretch being laid with Perfo, taking launches as far as the strip we carefully prepared a few years back.
And the latest arrival, courtesy of Fulmar, is a Skylaunch winch, running on LPG, which should be here as soon as travel restrictions allow our friends at Lossiemouth to collect it for us. This should revolutionise our winch launching capabilities.
Photos show the space the guys have made in the hangar and the winch sitting ready for collection. In the meantime, instructors and tuggies have been hard at work refreshing currency, so with luck it will be all systems go from 12 April.
