My name is Pete and its been 3 months since my last flight. On Saturday, as I felt quite rusty, I did a couple of hours ground-handling at Mercury in very light NE.
Sunday was W so headed to Butser. Had 2 short flights with rubbish landings including being dragged through cow pats in the bottom of the bowl. Decided to spend the rest of the day fixing my landing technique before I hurt myself. There didn't seem to be much lift about anyway. Had 2 more short flights with excellent landings. 'Excellent' meaning landing softly on my feet within the field I was aiming for without getting more cow-muck on me or my kit.
By about 3pm most people had gone home and it was getting a bit late for that lunch I'd promised my driver so decided on one more top-to-bottom. If I could pull off another good landing I'd go home feeling pretty pleased myself.
At launch it was a bit tussly but with some encouragement from Stu I got off. Penetrating over the trees was really slow but once past them I started to go up. And up and up. I kept stumbling through patches of lift generally slowing down while going through then turning round for a second go. Not quite managing to circle, but it worked. I eventually topped out at about 1400 feet ATO. A experienced pilot would have been making XC plans but I was just "I'm actually doing it" and "Wow this is awesome" and "where's Butser".
I'd been up for about 40 minutes and decided that would do me, after all I was only doing a top-to-bottom. I did manage to dig out my phone for a couple of snaps on the way down. Total flight time was 57 minutes and I landed gently on my feet in the right field and without acquiring any more excrement. I'm over the moon and been boring everyone I know (and some I don't) ever since.
Pete
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