Author: Blogger

Its not often that there’s a blog entry about our summertime weeknight activities… Most of the time a slick crew of members turns out to support the club by flying organised groups of visitors until the sunsets.

Monday was very similar to this pattern with a group of Walsh Common scouts turning up to have some airborne fun, however the slick crew turned out to be not only slick but also unusually large in number so we wheeled the k8 down to the launch point, Alan P taking off and spending 17 mins flying around in something before landing and letting other 3 members have some daylight. Even the CFI couldn’t match that after we had dragged him kicking and screaming to the glider (not).

So this is summer?  That would explain why the weather prevented us from flying the previous Wednesday and weekend.  This Wednesday didn’t promise much but at least we were able to break the bounds of Mother Earth – if only for a few minutes.  That was until the sun broke through and Paul P proved it was possible to break the double digit barrier with his 21 minute flight.  Over the following 2 hours about half the launches got some soaring with an empty launch point for a while.  Justin B demonstrated his scratching skills as he clawed his way up from 1,000′ to 2,700′ – the first 300′ taking lots of patience and tenacity.  The exercise to see how much ground we could cover for a given height was blown when we arrived at Hungerford having lost very little height passing through large areas of weak lift.  Bill C took longest flight honours with 1:15 in the Vega. “Normal” service was then resumed and it was back to circuit bashing.
We were pleased to welcome two members of the Southampton Uni gliding group and the son of a former member who last flew at the club in the days that Ralph Jones was a member (many moons ago).  They helped keep Bob B and myself fully occupied in the back seat.

The weather guru wasnt sure and had us all confused over what advection was – its simple really 
durr!

Anyway despite that we went flying using the standard technique of throwing gliders skyward until they stuck. Variously different pilots added velco , pritstick(TM) , treacle  and drying weetabix to the upper surfaces of their wings until Phil and Carol tried a Cumulus cloud  – this seemed to do the trick! After that most people got a soaring flight, though those practicing circuits also got a few of those…

In addition a guy came to watch for a while:  the chap used to be a member of the club and was in the Pirat syndicate but then he moved to Canada in 1986. You may remember him – his name is Colin Aldridge.

What the forecasters promised the weather failed to deliver but it was good to see the sun (even if the wind was surprisingly cold).  The forecast was responsible for persuading 5 gliders to be rigged.  Once rigged they waited and waited for the promised thermals and in the end just flew anyway.  When Trevor G and Bob B only get short flights it tells you it isn’t easily.  Only 6 of the 33 flights managed 40 or more minutes.  Modesty prevents me from mentioning who was the only person to manage more than an hour (with 1:24) but then I had an incentive – being airborne is a great way to escape hay fever.
Quite a number of Lasham gliders scrapping around near us.  Two dropped in and reported that there were lots of landouts.