Month: October 2023

Proof that the “flying season” is not just the summer months, the fly-in at Kingsmuir was held on the first weekend of October. With the RV in bits for its annual, once again it was time to get the Cub out…

Kingsmuir is a grass strip set in lovely farmland in east Fife, just north of the village of Anstruther and quite close to the “Secret Bunker” Cold War museum…

It was a bit of a breezy day but the wind was forecast to be blowing straight down the grass runway at Kingsmuir. A straight line track took us past the confluence of the Tay and the Earn:

…and we were soon on the ground at Kingsmuir. I would have been first in from Perth but managed to fluff up the landing spectacularly with a massive bounce. Discretion being the better part of valour and all that, it was safer to power up and fly another circuit, this time to an acceptable touchdown. The delay meant that Norman in the white Ninja managed to get in first (the green one is based at Kingsmuir):

As more visitors started to arrive, the clouds gathered as well. At one point we were all huddled in the BBQ marquee as a rain shower passed through…

Proof that I could have got the RV in…here’s Pete’s RV6 parked up after the 5 minute hop over from Leuchars. Note the aircraft parked on the other side of the runway by the old clubhouse, there were about 20 or so aircraft there…

Archie and Graham got airborne to get this shot before everybody disappeared:

A fun day out. Now back to putting the RV back together…

Got to love the sound of a small Continental engine at idle in a vintage aircraft…

End of August – time for the Montrose Air Station Heritage Centre’s annual open day and fly-in at the “pop-up” airfield. I missed the Saturday due to work, but Sunday looked OK, even if the weather forecast wasn’t perfect. The Cub was dragged out and fuelled up:

And off we went. There were a few showers around, but they were widely spaced and easy to avoid, like this one at Forfar:

Arrival at Montrose was via the overhead, to get the lie of the land, followed by a low approach and go-around to check the runway, and finally touching down on the slightly bumpy pitches…

It wasn’t as busy as 2022, maybe the weather put some people off; I did have to shelter in one of the marquees for ten minutes as a quick shower went through, but the grey skies were mostly threatening rather than delivering…

Grant from Aberdeen was there again with his collection of military vehicles, including these Jeeps:

As the day wore on the weather slowly started to deteriorate and I decided to get going back to base. Here’s a radar screen shot of the route just before departure. Some heavy rain returns on the picture but no cloud forecast at lower levels so we could pick our way through…

Even the heavy rain areas were not too bad after all. I decided to stay low and enjoy the views from 500 feet and 65 knots. One advantage of such a slow speed is that you get a lot of time to study features on the ground as you gently trundle past:

With 10 miles to run to Perth we were out of the rain zone and in lovely clear weather, more than adequate for the task at hand. Our favourite river confluence basking in sunshine…

It’s a great day out – we’ll be going back next year – got to keep the fans happy., and the bumpy grass runway is good fun…

Next year I’ll be retired so will have both days free – a chance to do some “Cub Camping” and spend the night under the wing? Maybe…