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Shenington Regionals

Wow, what a week! Myself, Claire and Jim are now back from the Shenington Regionals.

On the flying side we flew cross country on 7 of the 9 days (and scrubbed from the grid on the other 2); the competition organisation’s ethos of trying to get everyone round and the no suicide mission pact showed what a fantastic week of weather we had. It wasn’t always great, although sometimes it was, and it was sometimes challenging but generally it was always possible, more on that later.

More importantly on the social side it was great to go flying with 100 mates and we were very well looked after by the club, members cooking food and arranging evening activities, the highlight without equal being Flt Lt Rusty Waughman DFC’s talk about 30 flights to Germany he did…                      …as pilot of a Lancaster. A man of great heroism but mostly humility “I don’t know why they gave me the DFC, I presumed the squadron had a few extra left over to give out.” Thank you, Sir.
Rusty Waughman...

 

Some pictures, mostly from the resident photographer Damien of Airframe Photography

Day 2 launching! Day 2 launching!

Day 4

November....

More sitting around...

Last day launch....

Last day finishes!

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It didn’t always go to plan.

 

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Fancy Dress Party, Film theme, James Hunt from Rush.

 

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Fancy Dress Party, Film theme, Claire’s prize winning Maleficent from Maleficent.

 

Thanks to all at Shenington, what a fun week!

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the hot weekend

Sunday’s briefing “The bad news is that the trigger temperature is going to be very hot, the worse news is that we are likely to get it…”

Saturday was hot, blue conditions persisted with low broken thermals until the late afternoon when Cumulus appeared, if you could get away and head off to the east where there was better conditions it was great, otherwise it wasn’t. A lot of gliders rigged to try their hand.

Sunday was hot, but said trigger temp was reached early allowing soaring, difficult again to get away but if you did there was some lovely conditions to be found.

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Chris launches in his new toy. (Martin Hoskins photo credit)

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Jonty sets off for another 1:59 flight attempt, he overshot and got 2:06 and an XC endorsement leg.

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Chris launches his Ventus

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Martin cranks up the A/C

 

Finally on Sunday we were joined by Newbury ATC, Thanks to Richard who flew most of them, they all seamed to enjoy themselves and were a great assistance, with clearful help running the airfield.

https://www.facebook.com/211NewburyATC/posts/1522168267846443

 

 

 

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April Showers, 1st W/E June

The forecast for Saturday had remained relatively stable for several days before hand, thats a good sign. Even better was that it was a nice forecast, although somewhat westerly with cirrus rolling in and maybe some rain in the late afternoon. Galvanised into action by a text from a friend, a simple “Look up, Arcus ;-)” as the so and so passed overhead, Phil’n’Carol, Pete’n’Claire and Jim launched to do laps of Wantage, Devizes. Jim and Claire’n’Pete did two (Pete did one and Claire did one) and Carol’n’Phil did a single one before landing for a crew change. The cirrus came in on the second lap and although it was still working OK, it didn’t look too inviting. After the second lap we local soared for a bit just to get the next hour – OCD kicking in. We had just put the covers on when the rain arrived :-). Looking at the ladder it was better to the North East although those late back got cut off by the cirrus.

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Devizes looking north west – in the centre, really really really small is Bannerdown’s K18 being aerotow retrieved by their Falke after a successful Silver Distance – well done!

Sunday was a day to have breakfast al fresco, although by the last mouthful of weetabix it was clouding up already and it really just got greyer by the minute. Claire and I flew N for 90mins and Trevor rigged the Jamjar so there was opportunity before the greyness turned to sqallyness and then dampness, again just as we had de-rigged.

 

 

 

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20&21st May – Jim and Jim

Jim and Jim were duty but they had swapped. That meant that Jim got all the bad weather that Jim usually gets on his duty days but that Jim got much better conditions. But of course as Jim was Jim and Jim was, well, Jim things were somewhat confused.

On Saturday it was overcast, showery and blustery but that didn’t stop Jim (as Jim remember), Martin and Bob (as themselves) from knocking out some training circuits.

On Sunday it was much better and many people not called Jim rigged, as well as one called Jim. Jim instructed of course. Equally confused was Phil who got in the wrong Janus with Claire. In the afternoon it was hard to get away but things picked up with good, if shifty (its an F!), climbs to 3500ft. A Jim and Pete’n’Claire did short 100k tasks with it blueing out with sea air at about 4. The BBC World came to film young people’s views about the election which will then be dubbed into Russian, expect Putin as PM.