Tuesday (Day 3)

Woke up to it being far too windy to work at the airfield, so after a lay-in we started some ground school, which took up pretty much all of the day. Many topics were covered such as first aid, take-off and landing, pre-flight motor checks and meteorology. All interesting subjects and it was worth taking the time out to listen in to the advice given by four experienced instructors.

Thankfully around 5pm the wind dropped so it was a mass exodus down to the airfield where almost all of the instructors got into the air, as did Eddie (again) and Ken, another one of the trainees. For Dave, Tim and I it was more ground handling and I had the benefit of Piers experience helping with a few reverse launches. Piers is overseeing the instructors here and although my launches were hardly textbook, they were vastly better than yesterday. I even managed to keep the wing in the air for about ten seconds, a huge improvement on previous days. Because the light was getting low there was just enough time to run through a couple of forward launches overseen by Alan, who had had a brief flight beforehand, and these went really smoothly. It's too early to tell whether I have "cracked it", as the guys here keep telling me I will do, but it was reassuring to get things right.

A special mention must go to Ken, who has a talent as an after dinner magician. So far there has been the levitating bottle, disappearing salt and length-changing rope. If only he could make his snoring disappear it would be the mark of a great magician. No such luck so far....