January 2025

I opened my logbook last week, freed several species of moths long thought extinct, and realised to my horror that I hadn’t been flugelling for four months. Good grief.

Even worse, outside the house everything was draped in freezing fog so thick that the cat could only dimly be seen wandering around the garden with a torch in a bid to find the house and locate his second breakfast, notwithstanding the fact that he’d only just had his first five minutes earlier.

However, a quick call to the airfield revealed that the sky there was as clear as gin, and what a tonic it was when an hour later I found myself pottering around at 1500ft looking out at Belfast and all to the west buried under pristine fog, while to the south, the snowy peaks of the Mountains of Mourne glittered in the sun.

Fellow Newtownards pilot William McMinn was out the same day in his EuroFox, and his photo is one of a happy dozen this month which proves yet again that winter flying can be among the best there is.

Followed closely by summer, spring and autumn flying, of course.

Geoff Hill, MF Editor