Essex Microlight Club

Our next club meeting is Monday 14th April, at 7pm for 7-30 at Stewarts Bar, Western Road, Billericay.

The weekend of the Kimbolton fly in was coming up so I checked up on the e-group. It seemed that several folks were planning on going so we all aimed to be there on the Saturday.

Saturday dawned a bright warm day with the forecast for it to continue like that for the entire weekend. Brian was up at the airfield bright and early cleaning and .D.I-ing DF, John, who as usual would accompany us in his 912 Blade had pre-rigged his wing the night before so we were well set for a good start.

Having dressed warmly for the flight it was a relief to climb away. the air was mildly thermic but less than I had been expecting. Gliders however were making the most of the conditions with both Wethersfield and Ridgewell active. Passing Haverhill we climbed to a comfortable height and flew almost hands off into the wind. At 3500' we reached our turning point at Waterbeach and were amused to see every light aircraft that we spotted so far below us that they appeared to be scuttling across the fields. For most of this leg I was unable to see Grafham Water because of the haze but on spotting an airfield about 6ml of our beam it was apparent that there was more crosswind than I had allowed for. Brian spotted Grafham so we corrected our course and headed towards it. By this time the radio was sounding busy as one aircraft after another called up for airfield information. One even queried was that really the runway, I guessed that I knew what he meant as the aerial photos that I had studied the night before showed a long very narrow runway and I thought that the other was somewhere amongst the kart track. As we grew closer we had a wonderful view of a glider as he worked his thermal by making sure that we passed upwind of the thermal track we were able to pass quite close (relatively speaking) . It was a beautiful sleek modern machine that looked so right in it's natural environment. We came in sight of the runway it looked just like the picture and there was a bright orange X-Air on final. We had heard some people being cut up on circuit we called up ,nobody else admitted being there so we joined and did a farm strip constant aspect circuit that left on room for any nonsense. As we taxied clear we heard John who had followed us but with a larger circuit get chopped up on final by two other flexwings, so he went round again.. Following the Marshall's directions we parked up near the florescent X-Air and among some posh Eurostars. It gave me a lot of pleasure to see DF sitting with all those new aircraft and not outshone by any of them. So we refuelled DF and ourselves and sat down with Tony H.S for a natter as he munched his way though the biggest burger that I have ever seen. He had flown in from Stoke with two others. One of these was Karen wife of Cris Draper of Medway Microlights. They were chafing about the flight down, height keeping and the rest. It also seemed that we were missing one of the flexwings from Stoke. It got a bit worrying when it was confirmed that he had left some time ago and should have been with us by this time. Tony tried ringing around to try to trace him but without any luck until we got a message that he was down in a field out of fuel. Still the main thing was that he was OK, his machine was a bit damaged but he was alright.

We strolled around looking at other people's aeroplanes and meeting new faces and saw a nice brisk demonstration from a naked Chaser we then pushed off for a gentle bumble home. With a friendly tail wind we were back at Rayne in just over an hour having had splendid views over the fenland.