Recently, we attended a fly-in at Chirk Airfield and camped out there for two days. The Airfield is based in Northern Wales, atop a hill with spectacular views and flying around the area.
The scenery takes in lovely old villages, water dykes, and castles. It was a really fantastic experience flying over and viewing all this great history.
We met great people there all very friendly and as usual they were very impressed with the great engineering of the Microlite Aviation Flexwing trike, and the ease of flying with a small aircraft.
The flexwing showing the short takeoff and landing characteristics of this great little aircraft, half the time we took off across the runway,off the terra-firma in around 30metres.
The weekend wasnt without its mishaps and excitement not needed, i had a heat sieze on my motor and it wasnt because the motor was leaned out too much, (it still had factory setting), it turned out to be the incorrect oil and mix ratio, this engine runs on a richer mix of oil/fuel ratio. Never the less the factory have replaced the piston, the piston sleeve( after a light honing ) being okay after this mishap.
It was a good test in the training and the valuable things learned whilst training that helped me to get back and land engine out.I was at around 1800ft when this occured over the valley adjacent to the airfield, i executed a light turn and headed back to the field in a best glide approach. on reaching the finals of the field i still had too much height and executed some slip turns to bleed off height, keeping an eye on the runway and my landing point. All was going as planned until i encountered a bubble of air just before touch down and the aircraft ballooned a little, this now became interesting as the the runway has a pretty steep slope to it and i found that the aircraft kept following the slope down, i thought i was going to run out of runway and eventually got it down about 100ft from the fence...phew!
There were a lot of Powered Paragliders there, all having a great time in the great conditions that the weather provided over the weekend. There were a couple of ballons that flew from the field on Sunday morning, great sight to see.
Also thanks to Tristan who showed us a collection of rare aircraft in a hanger on the airfield that his Dad had collected and was in the process of restoring. Also the flexwing that he has been developing at the airfield for the sub 70 class. There is also a model coal mine on the field that his Dad built to educate the local school children on how lie was being a coalminer and working underground, great stuff.
Nigel ran up his new Air Conception Powered Paraglider, breaking in the motor and all went well there.
All in all it was a great weekend, met great people and made new friends. Loooking forward to future events like this.
See you in the Air, take care.