When I arrived, there was no one else there so I slowly trudged up the steep slope to the flat top of the common and began to take the Elegant out of my bag when I realised I'd forgotten one vital item. The tailplane! Doh! I was so looking forward to giving that a test flight too.
Not to worry, I still had all the items needed to fly the Whisper which I assembled. Upon switching her on and testing the controls, I found that I had a dodgy, intermittent fault with the right flap, which I had repaired 2 weeks ago and was fine flying all last weekend.
Well I wasn't going to let a flap stop me so up she went on the bungee, launching her over the slope.
There wasn't any slope lift and I couldn't find a thermal so it was a short couple of flights.
By this time Chris and Mark had arrived and Mark had with him a Xperience Pro F3J machine, but I'll tell you about that maiden flight in another post.
Third flight of the Whisper and by now there was enough slope lift to just keep me in the air until a thermal came my way, which it did and I spent about 20 minutes cruising around. So deciding to bring her in I picked up another thermal and she was heading up to the top floor again so I headed down wind, away from the slope, with the intention of circling to lose height, but she just kept going up, past the 500' mark I would say.
Well, it took me over 10 minutes to get her down to a height where I could take her back for a long approach, (no crow remember) and a nice touch down.
I'm certainly loving this thermal soaring lark more now, and when I can combine it with slope lift on light, marginal days, it gives an extra dimension to glider flying.
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