It was my third trip up to the field yesterday. The previous trip there had been about a 2mph wind and by the end of that day, I was soloing my Prangster and doing good landings. I was quite pleased and confident in my flying at that stage.
However, coming up to the site yesterday, I could see things would be different. The windsock was out horizontal, the wind about 16mph. Now, I was instructed to go up by myself again like I did on Sunday. I had never flown in winds like this before. The take off was a bit hairy, with the buffetting wind upsetting the balance a lot, but I managed to climb up nicely and did a few circuits. Then I started practising my approaches. Now, at this stage I should point out that our field is in the hills of the Peak District. The wind across the patch was unstable and unpredictable, but I landed the plane okay (if not very smoothly, but it was very hard).
Then I was told to practice my deadstick landings. I had done very little of these on the calm day, and so I was understandably a little nervous. The easy ones from downwind the patch were okay, but when I did the one upwind (as if just taken off, but at about 400ft), I made the mistake of turning downwind and then trying to come about. I very nearly got it right, but the wing tip just caught the ground as I leveled her off, and the plane did a series of cartwheels across the patch. I was lucky, only one of the wing-band dowels had snapped, nothing else was damaged. I don't know if I would have been so lightly let-off if I had been flying a balsa model.
Anyway, first flights in the wind . . . t was something else all together!