Date: 26/2/2014

Time: 11:25 - 12:00 (GMT)

Aircraft: EuroFOX - G-UFOX

Playing in the Clouds

The forecast for today isn't too bad and I don't have any meetings scheduled - so I decide to go for a quick flight and be late for work. I send a text to Jon (a director) to say I will be late - his amusing but thoughtful answer was "You're always in late, but you don't usually send me a text - You OK?".

As always, everything takes a lot longer than you expect. When I get to the airfield, I can see Colin's car and the covers off his plane, so I give him a call to find out where he is. When I meet him, he has some unfortunate news - his trim tab has been damaged in the wind.

Then I meet Mark who is the chap who is erecting our new hangar. He now has the main cover on the hangar frame and it's looking good. The rear panels and the door to go.

Eventually I have the plane prepped and I am warming her up. I have also bought my new little Mobius 1080p video camera along and I investigate where I can mount it in the cockpit. With the mount I have with me, the only sensible place I can put it is is hanging upside down from a roof chassis crossmember. There is a menu option that you can set to rotate the picture by 180 degrees, but I don't have my PC here to change it. Never mind, I can flip it by post-processing with software later. Also without a monitor it's a bit of a guess if it is pointing in a decent direction.

Once warmed up I leave the parking area and then follow Colin down to the threshold of 21. I take off behind him and start to follow him to the north. My plan was to do a bit of a local and then do some missed approach practice back at the airfield (as it is too soggy for circuit practice). However, I am very quickly seduced by the clouds and cruise climb up to go and play with them.

Beautiful views and great fun drifting around the gaps in the clouds. This is one of the great privileges of flying. I also attempt to get the glory (halo) but never quite catch it. Lovely!

Eventually, I come back down north of Kingsclere and then head back south to the airfield. There, I join overhead for 21. No circuits allowed today, due to the wetness of the runway, so for my first approach I come in to a low hop - all good practice. On the second approach I land, but deliberately to one side of the runway, to avoid wearing the centreline, which looks somewhat muddy.

Bit of a video here.

Great!

 

 

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