On Sunday after a couple of dozen launches the winch gave up the ghost. James H was quickly on the case on Monday when he removed the transmission cooler to find it couldn’t have cooled anything as it was gummed up on the outside with an 1/8” oil/dirt mix and the fan was not working. The transmission cooler was removed, but a fracture on the inlet pipe meant it was U/S. A call to Skylaunch secured a spare cooler/fan and UPS delivery for Wednesday morning. James (plus helpers) fitted the new bits and we were ready to go by early afternoon. Gliders at the launch point when freak weather delayed the start of flying – I believe the meteorological term is “rain”.
While the winch was being worked on other members set to derigging the Vega, cutting grass and working on a method of securing the hangar curtain at the bottom (and possibly other jobs that I didn’t spot).
A huge, huge thanks to James H to sorting out a problem with the winch that, without his efforts, could have grounded us for some time.
We got flying shortly after 14:00. Circuits were the order of the day with only 4 flights (out of 27) of around 30 minutes and Colin B taking the last flight of the day in the K8, returning just over an hour later (and then only landing because he’d seen the rest of the toys being put away).
Those with an interest in stats may like to know that June was a record breaking month for number of launches in the month of June and the second highest for the number of launches in any month – 450 launches. Previous best was 365 in 2010. June 2010, however, clocked up more flying time compare to this June (18 hours compare to 145)
Lottsa brown fields around
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