Nipped down to the field today to pick up MYRO’s logs and other papers that Rosie still had. The temperature was below freezing and I was surprised to see just how much snow there still was on the open area in front of the hangars and on the runway itself. The field is at the roughly the same altitude as our house but whereas we now have just the remains of the light dusting from New Years Eve, the field still has a couple of inches of cover at least. I guess it’s because it’s closer to the coast and is the first area to be hit when the winds bring in wintery weather from the east.

It was good to be back there though as I haven’t flown for several months because of the time spent working on MYRO right through the summer whenever the weather was good enough. I just couldn’t afford to miss any opportunity and I know that it will be worth it in the long run. As always, although there was no flying going on, there was someone there to chat with and that’s all part of the fun. The dog became very impatient because all he wanted to do was go off to investigate all the interesting scents around the place, so eventually we did. Rosie’s trailer was more or less where I left it when I returned it after picking up MYRO but she had made little progress on re-erecting her polytunnel hangar and part of what had gone up looked to have been blown down again with some tubes looking a bit bent and slightly the worse for wear.

But there’s just something about being back on the airfield among aircraft. Time flies and pretty soon we’ll be taken by surprise as always when the green shoots of spring start to emerge. I can hardly wait this year and I’ll be raring to go to get back up there along with MYRO 🙂

We’ve had some awful cold, wet, windy weather since my last posting which is no fun believe me when you have to walk a very active dog three or four times a day and every time he comes back soaking wet and plastered with mud and muck. But we’ve managed to get through it while still retaining (most) of our sense of humour and last night I enjoyed the pleasure of seeing in the New Year with a few friends over a nice meal, a few glasses of wine and some lively conversation.

2009 was not without its sadnesses. A very old friend went on holiday to Spain almost exactly a year ago with his wife and a couple of friends and unfortunately never returned. He’s greatly missed by all of us and will always be so. And in November I attended the funeral of my father-in-law. In some respects I was lucky that I was only touched twice by such events in 2009 because several of my friends have told me that they lost a number of people who they were close to during the year.

But on the brighter side, my mother who was 90 this year moved down to live with my sister and her husband and when I visited her on Monday last for the first time since her move she was looking really bright and well, so that’s a blessing. Also, although none of us knows for sure how much longer the effects of the credit crunch and the recession will last, I’m fortunate in that my own business seems to have weathered the worst of the storm fairly well and I have some interesting new developments coming along in the pipeline which I hope will make additional new contributions in 2010, one of which I’ll be sharing here in due course as it’s microlight related.

But the main issue for 2010 will, of course, be MYRO. I still need to find somewhere to keep and fly MYRO from and this will become more pressing once the weather begins to improve. I’ll shortly be tackling my friend again about whether I’ll be able to put MYRO onto his property in Kent and that would be my preferred choice even though the landing and take off distances are all a bit short. But even if I couldn’t keep MYRO there for the long term, it would be a good place to finish the final assembly and get the wings back on so it’s ready for Permitting. Someone mentioned a couple of possible locations in Essex a few weeks ago and I think I’ll follow those up too. The only thing is that if I had to go that route, the expense involved could mean I’d have to sell one or more shares in MYRO off which I’d prefer not to do if I could avoid it. But we’ll have to see.

I’m typing this looking out at a day that’s cold with a clear blue sky and with a light sprinkling of powdery snow on the ground from last night. So as usual we come back to the weather. 2009 was another generally poor year for microlight flying although from the comments made by a few on the BMAA forums, some pilots still managed to get quite a few hours in. I hope that today is a harbinger of things to come weather-wise in 2010 and that we can look forward to many more days without rain, low cloud and high winds than we enjoyed in 2009.

So on that note here’s wishing everyone a happy, safe and peaceful 2010.