Weekend report April 27 - 28

The only day of our weekend was very strange.  We had everything on Sunday: drizzle, low overcast, high overcast, sunny periods, and one six-knot thermal.

And only one runway available.  It is still very swampy at the south end of 04/22, and the airport remains officially closed by NOTAM.  Apparently, it is too difficult to close just one runway.

The best part of the day lasted about half an hour, and Dennis was able to take advantage of it in the Blanik.  The 2-33 and 1-26 also had their first flights of the season.

Moshe and Rick instructed and Andy towed.  We bootstrapped our way through annual field checks, and now Andy, David, Dennis, Don, Eric Henry, Kari, Moshe, Rick, and Tim can claim recency, if not currency, in our aircraft.  Actually, Andy, Dennis, Eric and Tim have been flying all winter, so they're way ahead of the rest of us.  Kari won the spot landing contest.

Don gets full credit for painting the instrument panel of the 2-33 and installing the Fokker needles in the Blanik control system.  Andy checked out the towplane and declared it airworthy, and Henry worked on the 1-26 trailer.

The golf cart saga is too complicated for a single news post.  Suffice it to say there was at least one of them running all day.

Feels like zero

The first Saturday of the soaring season dawns with low overcast and drizzle.

I decided to check the weather, and it's worse than I thought.

Ahead of the game

With patches of snow still visible here and there, and with mud everywhere, a few optimists came out early and assembled the 2-33 and the Blanik today, five days days before our scheduled Assembly Day.

The whole thing was Dennis's idea, and doing it on a Monday puts us in a good position to do checkrides on the "official" Assembly Day weekend.  Bravo, Dennis!

At the end of the day we heard that runway 5/23 is open.

And the soaring conditions looked perfect.  Here's hoping that we won't miss too many more days like today.

Andy says the towplane is ready, so we're good to go.