Wot… No Pix?

Should hopefully from now on be a thing of the past!

First thing was, took my good ole Minolta digital camera down to Ken’s at the week-end and took a few shots of the field from which we’ll hopefully be flying at some time. Weather was sunny and bright, field was being mown by the local farmer’s tractor. Conditions – more or less ideal. Took shots. Result – rubbish! Exposure a total disaster, and I’ve found this quite a lot with this camera just lately.

ACTION – order a lovely new Pentax 7M pixel Optio S7  😉

Have now got it – it’s tiny and really nice. So now there’s no excuse – expect to see a few more pics in future postings 🙂

Couldn’t resist slipping this pic in here. What a nice piece of kit it’s turned out to be! 3x optical zoom plus 4x digital, 23MB internal storage (and an extra 1GB fast memory card that will hold about 1000 pics cost only an extra £10!!), 2.5″ LCD screen, captures sound and movie clips and all only 85.5×53.5x19mm. How do they do it.

Moving on…… we nipped down to Medway Microlights as well on Sunday to get the info we need, on membership, training, hangarage (if we decide we’d like to have any part of our training on our trike), stuff like that. Was rather quiet for a week-end but we had a very pleasant couple of hours drinking tea and chatting with staff and a couple of members.

Ken’s now thinking of training on a 3-axis aircraft rather than a weight-shift (which ours is) because at the end when he’s got his licence, he’s thinking about splashing-the-cash and going for a 3-axis with an enclosed cockpit. An Instructor we spoke with thinks that he should make a choice because the skills required are different and not immediately transferrable. For example, with a weight-shift, you push the bar forward to ascend whereas with a 3-axis you pull the stick backwards. This can obviously be quite critical at certain times – eg when you’re flaring to land  😕 – and it’s at times like that when stress can be relatively high for a student that accidents can happen, if they keep switching from the one type to the other.

He doesn’t have to make that decision quite yet as after a small recent op he can’t fly yet anyway, but he probably will go 3-axis I think.

I’ve taken the decision to start dual training as soon as possible. Unfortunately I’ve not had the time this week (I wanted maybe to do a couple of hours on Wednesday but I was too busy with work commitments) so whether I’ll be able to do any this week-end or have to wait till next week, I don’t know.

I’ll let you know as soon as I do 😉

Oh – by the way – we have managed to get a bit more work done on our trike. The week-end before last I replaced the dodgy cabling. Well, almost. There’s a panel-mounted single fuse in the circuit and that turned out to be naff, so I couldn’t finish the job. Have looked for a replacement but not found one yet. But we will, we will….