June 9th 2010

                                      Flying Evening at Little Snoring

On a rather overcast evening of the 9th June 18 NES members arrived at Little Snoring airfield hoping to get aiborne. In the event some of us did and some didn't!

Unfortunately not long after we had arrived low cloud spread in from the coast making anymore take-offs unwise. Even those flights that had started had some difficulty seeing anything on the ground or even in the air as towards the end most flights were flying in ten tenths cloud; only the early flights could clearly see the runway on final approach.

At one point one of the later flights dropped to 800 feet to see what the visibility was like; even at that altitude ground visbility was intermittent. This particular flight briefly broke through the cloud over the Pensthorpe Lakes. This took place just when Kate Humble was making her intros on the BBC's Springwatch programme causing slight interruption to her delivery as was noted by several viewers. Thankgoodness for the accuracy of GPS navigation as this particular flight's final approach only obtained visual at about 100 feet!! Unfortunately because of the weather conditions no one took any photographs hence the lack of the accompanying support to this report!

If the flying was lacking the McCauley flying club made up for it with their enthisiastic hospitality with the laying on of a splendid barbecue! Many thanks to them for this.

Richard Aldridge              June 2010