Kemble Information

Well things looked good this weekend when I left home, but as I got closer to Kemble the cloud gathered. When I entered the club house (in their own words) six grown men were gathered looking at the sky. One of them was my instructor Stuart who sadly told me the cloud was too low and too solid to do slow flight and stalls for which we needed plenty of altitude. I hung around for a little while to see what would happen - the weather was right on the edge of clearing up, but I was to have no flying today.

So Stu took me for a tour of Kemble Operations and the Control Tower. Glenn was running things in the tower and it was fascinating to see how things worked from this side. Each aircraft has a card and plastic holder which Glenn was putting in different places on a special rack to indicate where it was - on the runway, taxiing, circuits, flying in the local area or passing through. Things looked quite complicated and he was only looking after six aircraft. One cheery thing though was just how many people got RT stuff wrong - there's hope for me yet. The aviation world was firmly divided into newbies getting RT wrong and sounding nervous and those real old hands who confidently got things wrong or were simply unclear. Stu explained the importance of keeping the messages short and accurate - the tower has a lot of people to deal with and one shouldn't hog air time.

I was happy to see the return of Zulu Whiskey to the club after weeks being away for repair. She'd only arrived the day before and apparently Zoe was seen to do a little dance. Zulu Whiskey has been away for months for service and was waiting for parts from the States. It was also nice to see one of the Piper Cubs I'd seen at Duxford in July at Kemble today. She was refueling while we were in the tower but sadly I missed the takeoff. All of this just serves to fire my enthusiasm and I just want to fly. I'm sitting here with rain lashing against the window yet again this summer.