It's a Friday and considering it's still only late March, a very nice day - surprisingly warm for the time of year. At Rissington Airfield, it's almost always cold and windy but today it's really quite warm; so warm that after getting G-BYJA out I decide to take the doors off so that Tony and I don't get cooked in the Perspex bubble canopy. Before we set off, we're told that a visiting aircraft may arrive at some stage.
Another unusual feature of the weather is the lack of wind. With no wind direction we could use any runway but Tony picks zero-four, probably because it's very long and is better surfaced. I taxi us to the threshold, turn onto the centreline, stop and check all the instruments.
Pulling in the pre-rotator clutch lever I bring the rotor up to 100 rpm, soon after, 140 rpm shows on the meter so I let go of the wheel brakes, give the engine a bit more power and pull back on the stick to get the rotor up to flying speed using our forward motion. Today though the rotor seems very sluggish and despite adding more power and going quite a lot faster, it takes much more of the runway to get the rotor up to the necessary speed to take off.
But we do eventually take off and after building up sufficient airspeed, climb to 150 ft or so, throttle back a bit and level off. We seem to be almost at the end of the runway but Tony seems unconcerned and suggests that we can now descend for landing. Down we go at the usual steep angle; ease off the power but keep the airspeed up. The hard tarmac comes towards us fast and we level off as we near the ground. Touching down, we're still travelling fast but pulling back on the stick allows the rotor to act as a big airbrake and we come to a halt before we run out of runway!
We go around for another take-off/landing which is slightly better, but still not tidy. As we taxi back we receive a radio call from the incoming aircraft asking which circuit/runway to use. Tony gives him instructions as I pull over to the side of the runway at the threshold to wait for him to land. A minute or two later I spot him coming in from the east and he's soon drifting down over us to land out of our sight over the brow of the runway. Once we hear that he's turned and is on his way to the hangar, we try another takeoff and fly over him.
For the last take-off of the session, Tony suggests a circuit. This will be a right-hand circuit, the opposite of my previous one. We take off and once up at a few hundred feet do a sharp right turn to take us over the karting circuit (not in operation so no problem) and then right again to fly back parallel to the runway a few hundred metres to the east of it.
Some way below/in front of us there's a white van where someone's working on some aerials, so Tony warns me that we shouldn't directly overfly him. A little wiggle soon fixes that and we stay legal and safe. Two turns later (or maybe one big one) and we're lined up for the runway and descending for another fast landing. This circuit was a bit neater than my previous one, but given the light winds, I had no excuse for it being untidy. Here's a plot of it superimposed over the Google satellite view of the airfield:
Taxiing back to the hangar, we reflect on the lack of wind and the difficulty of learning in such conditions. It's a great deal easier when there's a 5-10 mph headwind as it gives more time to react and a lower groundspeed.
At the hangar we find the lovely little plane that we saw landing earlier:
Enough for today; next time we'll aim for a day with a better windspeed.
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