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Chatteris 24 April 2004
Well, the first sunny fly-in of 2004, what a beautiful day it was. At the beginning of the week we were all watching the forecast for the weekend, it showed sunny, no rain drops and almost nil wind on the BBC 7 day chart. We all kept very quiet about it so as not to put the usual mockers on it when we plan too early. The closer the weekend got, the more amazed we were that it still showed sunny & no wind, at this rate we will actually have to look at the proper met forecasts as might be going flying!
Saturday dawned, an lo and behold the weather was fantastic. Rosemary and I got the Thruster ready at Stock and started the engine at about 10am. After my first ever aborted take-off ever (apart from practices), the brakes were locking on slightly, we took off without any problems. We met Pete at Chelmsford and flew together for the journey. We flew over Rayne to see if Ginge and the others were ready, they did not seem to be so we flew on to Chatteris. It was a lovely flight with not too many 'bumpy bits'. Once clear of the Stanstead zone we went up to about 4000' to get above the thermals and the light clouds, it was so smooth, you could fly hands off.
A few miles from Chatteris, we started to descend and could hear that they were parachute jumping over the field. Pete called them up, no answer. Called them again, no answer they were too busy talking amonst themselves. Finally when they realised we were going to go in whether they liked it or not, they condescended to speak to us. Basically there was no wind so we had the choice of 10 runways, we chose the longest :-)
Now if you look at the airfield charts for Chatteris it says that the parachute landing site is to the north of the field.... Don't you believe it! As we were landing they were landing to the north, to the south and in front of us, quite off putting, but the jump master had given us permission to land, so... As I came in to land I was trying to slow down on a fast bumpy runway and this 'man' stood in the middle of the runway telling me to turn off at the next junction. Unfortunately I was going a little bit faster than he thought. I could see his face go from a self satisfied, 'we are here first you can turn it there' look to a look of doubt, then a look of horror as I was heading for him and was not going to turn in there as he wanted. He then tried to decide whether to stand his ground to protect his half of the runway or move, he moved. As it happens I did then slow down enough to turn where he wanted me too, I am not sure that he did not think I was trying to have a go at him or not :-)
In the end there were 6 planes from Essex, Myself & Rosemary, Pete, Bob & Mick, Joe, Ginge & Passenger, Brian & Brian, and Steve. The BBQ was all you can eat for £5 including both food and drink. Many thanks to Deepak for this. We were all sitting out in the sun talking about life and flying and generally enjoying ourselves, as you do when you go to these places. Joe left first and we followed very soon after. The journey home was again very smooth and we got home a lot faster being on our own. We saw several other microlights in the air, everyone who could fly that day was flying I think.
If this is how the summer flying is going to be, I say bring it on!
Tony Harrison-Smith
Pete's edit to add...
Steve and I left later than everyone else and decided to pop up and have a look over the cloud. We were at 7500ft before we were clear of all of them. As we were in unrestricted airspace and always in sight of the ground, this is perfectly legal... and damn good fun. It is a bit chilly that high though, but well worth it for the
view.
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Essex
Microlight Club