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Club Clothing

Has your club clothing shrunk in the wash?
Is it covered in rings of grease from rigging?
Have you had it since 1985? 
Is it covered in winch transmission fluid?
All embroidered with club logo. (this is navy blue and yellow)
If you dont want to search how about one of the standards below:
    Red long sleeved rugby shirt £23
or Beany Hat £10
or Navy blue Softshell jacket £52
or Maroon t-shirt (long or short sleeve) £10 (also for some members hi-vis yellow!!)
or Rigging Apron Mocha £12
or Fleece, Forest Green £18
(prices approx depending on quantity we order)
email me with your order petejdsmith (at) gmail.com dont forget to include size and any colour options.
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Sunday 6th July

Luckily the forecasted showers in the afternoon failed to materialise so we managed to get a full day of gliding in.

With the westerly cross wind launch heights were not fantastic but we were still able to get some soaring in.

All in all we had 32 flights, the longest flight was a meagre 28 minutes with the next longest flight of around 18 minutes, modesty prevents me from saying who did those!

Colin mended the leaking exhaust manifold on the Skybrid winch in double quick time which gave Jim McCormick and I a chance to test the reserve winch before the Skybrid was returned back to service.

Tony Chapman unselfishly volunteered to be ballast and the link to the  resulting video is below.

All in all a very pleasant days flying.

Phil 

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Wednesday 2nd July

With a promising looking day forecast there was a flurry of rigging activity, including those “on a mission”.  Justin B for Silver distance, Steve B for Gold triangle and Colin B for lots of kms.
First a short check flight and then the next instructional flight turned into a modest triangle taking in Burbage and Hungerford.  As the day progressed the cloud base increased from less than 3,000′ to over 5,000 (just).  A third of the flights were 50 minutes or more (Steve B’s 3:59 qualifies as “more”)..  Whilst some folks were lucky enough to get a couple of the longer flights others only got short circuits.  Naff all wind resulted in modest launch heights and no chance to escape a sink hole if that’s what you were launched into.  Even Fluffy Harris couldn’t keep the K7 airborne for long (unlike Sunday when the Olly responded to his magic touch).
After a 3 hours in the back seat Colin had returned and offered to trade places.  I sat at the launch point at 16:30 in the LS3, looking at a not so promising sky and thinking maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.  1,100′ launch but found some weak lift which eventually (about 20 minutes) got me to 4,000′.  Shortly after found something to take to 5,000′.  After that it was a romp off to Newbury then Andover (left Andover at 4,000 and arrived back at RIV at the same height without stopping to turn anywhere) then off to M4 north of Hungerford for my high key.  Paul P launched a few minutes after me and also managed to scrape away and soar the K8 for an hour.  Unexpected bonus at the end of the day.
As to the “men on a mission”?  Justin landed at Aston Down to claim his Silver distance.  Steve and Colin abandoned their tasks but covered a fair amount of ground.  Hopefully they will add their accounts to this blog.

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Wednesday 2nd – Silver Distance day

Not exactly the day that the ‘met’ promised. Cu from horizon to horizon, but top cover gradually increasing throughout the day. En route climbs below 3000ft were painfully slow and by the time the rate perked up you were in the murk at 4500ft. Access to anything north of Oxford having been blocked by a couple of dozen odd folk jumping out of serviceable aeroplanes and to the East the skies cleared for the occasional Royal gin party at Wimbledon, the only way to go was West.

Nevertheless a few of us rigged; Steve B declaring a 300k triangle (Kingston Bagpuize, Taunton) and me 200k (Gloucester, Frome). Meanwhile Justin B had decided to take his Pirat to Aston Down for Silver Distance, proving to be the only one of us capable of actually completing a task on the day.  The sky went blank for me at Gloucester and I guess the same happened to Steve when he got to Frome. So we both scampered back as the western skies turned to milk.

Reading Stephens account of local soaring conditions it appears we should have gone N, S or E – any direction but West!

However I did achieve the modest distinction of visiting Aston Down three times in one day, twice in the air and once with a trailer. Well done Justin.