Got Popham Sat morning thinking the weather was iffy. Read the TAFs and METARs and wondered what windows those reporters were looking out of becuase they didn't seem to resemble what I was seeing. The weather wasn't a complete no-go but was in the marginal "decision-making" band. Clearly worse or clearly better weather would have been a no-brainer. But couple the iffy weather with complicated procedures, unfamiliar territory (have only flown into Kemble once years ago) and a bunch of amateurs who don't read AICs, that all started to look decidedly unattractive. The final input into the decision was that it was less than an hour's drive from Popham and, while it would have been nice to fly in, once there I wouldn't have been doing anything with the airplane anyway - it was only a means of getting to the event. If the trip was going to be hard work and the drive was short, there was really no point in flying. So a fellow Pitts mate and I drove in.
Had a decent time but more because of the company we kept, as is usual with these things. The Rally is a good event, but not a great one. There was really nothing there that would have made me want to go other than the meeting up with some mates. But, then again, I'm not a builder or tinkerer, so I'm the wrong target market, I suppose. It would be a shame if it didn't happen, but there will have to be more there in the future to attract me. The stalls were somewhat thin on the ground, I thought, and didn't offer anything really very different from previous years that I could tell. A shame AOPA weren't conducting a symposium on their latest political efforts and trying to drum up membership, same with the PFA on the future of GA in an EASA world. There were a couple of talks I should have gone to but got distracted. Those may have been worth the price of admission.
Thought the Spitife Mk26 was impressive and the Alpi Pioneer 300 looked a pretty cool ship. There was some newish technology there which may represent the future of light aviation and that was good to see.
Best part of the whole event was having dinner and a wee dram of the Knob with our own Trapper69 Sat night. Great evening of story-telling and basking in reflected glory. Thanks, Trapper! That was an evening I'll long remember.
Pitts2112
PS - since it\'s supposedly the busiest piece of GA airspace in Europe during the event, it was a real piece of shortsightedness for the Met Office not to have a live weather station on the field giving TAFs and METARs, expecially since people are trying to make weather decisions from all over Europe and given the variation in weather around those hills.
Pitts2112