High Altitude Cub

Winter weather can be tiresome. If it’s not wet and windy:

It’s snowy and windy:

But just sometimes, it can be lovely. Cold and clear with unlimited visibility and light winds:

Then it’s time to get the hat and gloves and warm coat on and get the Cub out.

Airborne with the smoke from the fire giving a good windication…

We decided to head north to the hills:

The Southern Cairngorms:

Following the road up to the Glenshee Ski Centre…

All that crappy flying weather with its extensive snow did have benefits to others. The ski centre car parks were full, with the overflow car parks in use. Lots of people visible on the slopes, just little dots from 5000 feet:

Unfortunately in order to take pictures with the phone I had to have the windows open…and it was ******* freezing! Some more shots through the open window and door:

Heading home and descending into the (thankfully) warmer air, the previously seen smoke had spread out a bit, and was indicating a very gentle flow to the southeast. In aviation terms, wind calm.

Weather like this tends to generate a lot of activity. Here on the 80 year old Cub’s modern navigation/traffic display (also called iPad with Skydemon!) you can see two aircraft in the traffic pattern at Perth. Not shown are the other four aircraft which weren’t fitted with “ADSB-out” – the circuit was chaos for a bit so we held off for five minutes before calling Perth Radio for rejoin.

The Cub can cause its own chaos in the circuit with its slow speed compared with the Cessnas and Pipers of the commercial training school. We do fit in beautifully with the club microlights though, so it’s just a matter of timing the run in.

The extra time spent holding away from the airfield can be used to warm up the pilot!