Shalbourne Gliding – OLD WEBSITE
A friendly gliding club in Wiltshire
Or is it? I’m sure it’s got a name, I’ll have to Google that…
Anyway smith shut up about such inconsequential drivel…
The unnamed Saturday was actually quite good, the same airmass as the oh so good Friday giving strong climbs, yes the spreadout made finding a climb close to a lottery or maybe the subject of a future masterclass… But it was good fun!
EDIT Holy Saturday
And “good” it was. I promised cracking launches plus thermals popping and the C team delivered – almost 27 hours off 32 launches. I saw lift of 7 knots (on the averager) and visited cloudbase at 4,500′, maybe others topped those.
Good turnout of private gliders rigged – Nimbus, Cirrus, LS3, LS7, Duo Discus and Jantar. Only 3 on the instructor’s list though and each of them got in over a hour of flying.
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| Great Bedwyn from a check flight |
Longest flight honours (time and distance) went to Pete Smith who visited Northampton South, Chieveley and Calvert Rail Junction to clock up 320km. The sky kept delivering all day – it took Paul P half an hour to hangar fly the Puchaz and Andrew B (yes, he flys as well as fixes gliders) took 40 minutes to hangar fly the K13 (resorting to spin and stall exercises and deliberately flying through lift).
Colin returned from the weather check reporting “lift everywhere” and having to side-slip along the downwind leg. The advice to his syndicate partner – “it’s worth rigging”. LS3 rigged and the word from Colin in the back seat was “sorry, it’s as if there’s been a complete change of air”. Alan P had been airborne for some time so something must be working. Straight off the launch into a reasonable thermal which stopped dead at 2,000′ by the inversion. No matter, plenty more where that came from, or so I thought. Nothing found to impede my inevitable descent to Mother Earth. Launch number 2 turned into an epic scratch – half an hour off only 2 thermals, each providing a gain in height of 500′, gives an idea of just how feeble the climb rate was. All good character forming stuff I suppose. Mine was the second longest flight of the day, beaten by Alan P with over an hour in his Skylark. How he managed that length of time is a mystery (especially, it was suggested, given the soaring ability demonstrated on the previous couple of flying days – one wag observed that maybe he should stick to yellow aircraft and avoid blue) but impressive.
The day ended prematurely when the intermittent problem on with the winch was no longer intermittent and the starter motor gave up.
Airfield is open all 4 days #shalglide