Quick, late flight

I had to take some rubbish to the ‘déchèterie’ at Rouffignac today – two old pieces of carpet that the previous resident had left behind half buried in the ground. I should have got rid of them ages ago really, but I only got around to digging out the largest piece earlier this week. I hadn’t bargained for the fact that they would be resurfacing the roads from Plazac to Rouffignac today so by the time I’d discovered that they were blocked, reversed my car and trailer and found my way there and back by incredibly circuitous alternative routes to the south and north, a job that should have taken an hour or so at most took at least twice that.

Then I had to pick up a few things at Intermarché by which time it was late afternoon, but on the way home I realised that despite the vis being somewhat poor, the weather was bright and warm with little or no wind. So after I’d unloaded my shopping, as the days are now getting longer, I quickly threw a short local flight together to make up for the disappointment of yesterday and headed over to Galinat. I decided to head north-west via Les Versannes to La Douze, a commune that sits on the main road from Périgueux to Le Bugue, and then return to Galinat via the overhead of the chateau where we hope to establish the new airfield, taking a couple of photographs along the way. You can see how poor the vis was from the first shot below with the sun behind showing Rouffignac in the distance, and it was much worse looking (and flying) towards the sun, of course.

The next few shots are of La Douze, which I was surprised to find I hadn’t taken any shots of before. This is an unflattering time of the year with drab colours and little or no foliage on the trees, so I’ll have to make sure I return later in the year when it should look much more attractive.

Finally, the only shot that turned out to be usable of the two that I took of the chateau in whose field we hope to establish the new airfield. The second picture was taken closer and showed more detail but unfortunately had too much vibration in it.

The field in question is the one to the left of the chateau going towards the white building in the top left hand corner of the picture. It could never be described as ‘over long’ but at around 275 metres with an up or down-slope depending on whether you’re landing or taking off, it should be adequate for any but the most slippery of ULMs.

So that was it, just a short flight of 35 minutes, but it made up for yesterday and with rain of varying intensity forecast for tomorrow and the next several days, it’ll just have to do until the weather picks up again. That’ll probably be around the middle of next week – that’s if the forecasts can be believed.