Cracking week-end, brilliant finish

After enjoying the satisfaction of getting the X’air through the permit procedure yesterday, it was almost too much to ask that I’d get a great day’s flying in today as well. But I did!

I really enjoyed dropping into Stoke yesterday and I’m so glad that I’m moving MYRO up there in a few weeks time. The absence of camaraderie really detracts from Linton as a place to fly from and I got fed up with constantly being the only one flying there week after week and month after month. But camaraderie is something that Stoke has in spades, along with a bit of banter, some leg pulling, in fact all the things that go together to make up a lively club. One of the things I enjoyed yesterday was bumping into Tony H-S and his wife Rosemary. We’ve been exchanging messages for months now on our blogs and the microlight forums but the first time we met was two Tuesdays ago at the first Stoke club meeting that I went along to. It was good to see Tony and Rosemary again at Stoke and I look forward very much to the opportunity to get better acquainted in the future.

But what about today? Well, high pressure is in charge of our weather just now so we had another settled day with sunshine, clear skies and not too much wind. So I decided to top up MYRO’s tanks, take the spare fuel with me in a jerry can and head off up to Whitstable. My plan was then to drop down to low level for a bit heading west along the shoreline, then to climb over the Swale estuary to the northern side of the Isle of Sheppey. Then I wanted to repeat the low level flight I did last week down towards Sheerness before climbing again to cross over the Medway estuary to the Isle of Grain and a landing at Stoke. Then, after the mandatory chin-wag, mug of tea and slice of cake, to head back to Linton via the west side of Rochester.

The flight went perfectly as planned. The vis on the return legs was rather poor because of the sun combining with a low-level haze layer but it wasn’t that bad and anyway, my little GPS makes it easy to maintain a course with very little effort. I landed back at Linton just as John was getting his AX3 ready for a local flight and in the time it took me to put MYRO to bed, he was up and down. I finished off with a few cups of tea from a flask that I’d taken with me, a ham and pickle sandwich, a packet of crisps and a crunchy Braeburn apple before heading off home. A perfect end to a great microlight-flying week-end, I think 😉

I took the camcorder with me but was unable to use the connection lead because of the sound fault that’s bugging me that I think is due to the mic socket in my camcorder. The recording is pretty good and includes my landing on runway 06 at Stoke, so I’ll see if I can put something together to include here on My Trike. So watch this space 😀