2-3 Min Flights
As Frelon confirms, at Kenley we had a 'leg of mutton' shaped field that was also restricted due sports facilities.This not only gave us a poor length option but was quite challenging on cable breaks.However the upside is that Kenley has enjoyed a very long secure tenure and is not an MOD asset that can be sold off.
All our operations were at the lower heights and final turns very much a 200 ft job due to the lack of space,and lack of spoilers. My point was/is that for us this was the 'norm', so Cadets had to be able to make accurate safe turns despite not having an ideal amount of time to practice.In hindsight we probably should have introduced use of spoilers (that came on an advanced course) at the ab initio stage due to our situation. The simple fact is we were so privileged to be operating at this famous Battle of Britain airfield we just made it work and of course the Mk3 fitted the purpose very well.To increase the 'safety aspect' for first solo's our CO instigated a low use cable reserved for these launches, another case of common sense working well, and keeping the operation safe despite operating restrictions.