A week after my last visit to the slopes and I find myself there again, this time flying from "The Pool". A good blowy though slightly milder day but all the same standing exposed to the wind made it feel pretty cold. There's a nice thing about this site though, the pits is in a hollow behind a bank which is so sheltered from the wind that even wing bags don't get blown around. So we nip up the bank for launching and landing and in the mean time carefully step down the bank to fly and shelter from the blow.
Actually some of the time I was able to have the sky to myself so I stayed on top of the bank to get in much needed practice. If anything I seemed to need it more than ever with what seemed like a very twitchy model on launch even with the lowest rate setting. That situation wasn't helped when I forget to pull down my goggles and my eyes soon started streaming. Not the best idea I've ever had but I decided I could pull them down over my glasses whilst I was still flying. So I found my self with my glasses dislodged, the goggles half on and the twitchy model somewhere out there. I quick moment of panic and I found the model and brought it in for a landing pronto. I'm happy to say the remainder of the flights that day were without incident. It was only in conversation when packing up that it became apparent that my nose balance weights were missing . I'd put them there as a temporary measure months ago, liked the effect and planned to do the job properly at a later date... in the mean time I forgot all about it and didn't notice the absence in my preflight check. Huh no wonder it was twitchy !
Anyway it had been another good day with lots of practice at flying a
tail heavy wing in a strong wind, next time can only be better .
