Author: StephenO

After a lack lustre August, September got off to a fantastic start on Sunday the 1st.  August ended up being not as bad as I had feared.  It wasn’t the least number of flying days for an August (1 better than the lowest), nor was it the least number of launches (about average).  Flying time was another matter.  Previous worst was 85 hours (2006) and a best of 189 (2017), this year came in at 78.

Sunday 1st September was a very different story.  To my chagrin I wasn’t able to get to the club that day.  Instead, tortured myself by occasionally looking at GlideAndSeek and looking at the sky.  Hopefully, someone who was there on the day will make a contribution to the blog but in the meantime I can report that Chris B in the Ventus, Jim C in the Nimbus. Pete S plus Claire W in the Janus and Phil M plus Alex J in the other Janus all went walk-about and there were several other flights of over an hour who may or may not have gone somewhere.  Duty instructors Richard D and Laurie C were kept busy and in the afternoon Martin H and Colin B helped out with some back seat flying.  Richard reported climbs of 6 to 8 knots to 5,500′.  Matt B was flying the club’s Vega and was seen on GlideAndSeek a good bit south of Lasham, returning to the club after 5 hours and 2 minutes to bag all 3 Silver elements in a single flight.  The K8, on the other hand, did not return (well, strictly speaking it did but by road on its trailer).  Report on the land-out can be found below.

It looks unlikely we will have a repeat of last months performance.  Lowest hours for September is 37 hour (2011).  On Sunday 32:31 was clocked up!  I will just add that last September achieved the highest number of hours with 146 hours (quite a margin ahead of any other year, second best was 121).  It’s the first Wednesday of the month, as I write, and the sky is looking very promising.  So, why am I writing this instead of flying?  Bringing my gaze down from the sky I can see the trees dancing in the wind   Fingers crossed for tomorrow (and enough members turning out to fly).

A Tale of Landing Out

by Martin S

I had been advised not to go downwind in Denzil, but I was overconfident after the ease of soaring and even reaching 5400ft, plus seeing Matthew’s upwind return from near Petersfield.

Starting a final glide from 4000ft over Andover did not register as a concern when I started back.  I was going to return via the wind turbine at Linkenholt but turned west when I became unsure about the lack of clouds.  From then on it was directly into headwind with our airfield remaining resolutely in the same position on the canopy for the next 15 minutes as it slowly dawned on me that I was losing the final glide in.

Looking at the k8 polar curve:   Best speed into 15 kt headwind seems to be between 45 & 48 kt which was what I was doing.  I was getting a steady 1.5 to 2 down on the vario.   27 L/D at 45 kt.  But against 15 kt headwind L/D falls to an effective 18 to 1.  I don’t think I can blame sink because, by calculation, 16 km into 15 kt headwind requires 5100 ft for 800ft arrival height.  It all tallies:  losing 200 ft per minute and I was indeed about 1000ft too low by Vernham Dean.

From the log I can see that there was still lift around.  But for me only one broken blue-sky thermal at 1200 ft, with which a better pilot might have saved it.  But I needed to focus on a field.  I reckon I touched down at 20kt ground speed, straight into wind, slightly uphill, wide field.  Much easier than negotiating a cross-wind landing on a narrow, glider-cluttered, grass strip at Rivar Hill!

Conclusion:  Complacency which on another day could have been escaped from by a lucky thermal.  On this occasion:lessons learned the hard way.  Also a good start to my landing out record.But I don’t intend to be chasing Nikolai on this activity.

Denzilwas very cold at all altitudes.  I would have come back ssssooner if I hadn’t been wearing my flllleece.  I was glad to be out of it after an hour. Ozzie suit next time.

Big thanks are due to:  Bob Symonds (who was on the phone before I was unstrapped) plus Pete Smith, Claire Wilson & Jim Clarke

For those with what3words app on their phone, I came to rest at  triangles.glosses.rushed

There has been a distinct lack of blog entries for a while but then the weather has been rubbish.  Even with a good Bank Holiday weekend in prospect we are heading for the lowest number of days flown in August.

Enough of the bad news, the good news is Wednesday was a good day with 42 launches, 25 folks flew and 6 private gliders rigged.  Not at all easy, everyone I spoke to found it difficult to find the centre of the thermals and get strong lift.  Some really good looking clouds and streets that simply did not deliver when you got to them.  When Trevor G takes 3 launches in a day you know it wasn’t easy to get away.  When Rowland told me he had only had 15 minutes flying I commented that was pretty good compared to quite a few launches.  However, Rowland clarified that was the total time from 3 launches.  Fortunately, he did get some soaring on his 4th launch.

Where the Duo Discus got to in the 2 hours it was away I don’t know.  Colin B took to the sky with Melksham and Lasham in mind but returned an hour and a half later reporting returning from Newbury in sink all the way.  On his return he kindly took over as DI to enable me to get some “quality time”.  After a while I was at Andover and topped up with a climb to 4,000′ at Andover.  From there no more thermalling and it took just 500′ to get back to the club, another 500′ got me to the M4.  I turned back south and got back to the high key area at 1,000.

The two trial lessons were totally delighted with their flights and we welcomed a new junior member James K.  James is an experienced solo pilot with competition experience.  Welcome to Shalbourne James.  Some thought that another new member had arrived.  It turned out that when Paul P’s wife started taking bookings from local farmers to hire Paul to stand in a field with his arms outstretched Paul decided it was time for a haircut.  See if you recognise this chap with the new (brutal) haircut.

A big thankyou to Carol P without whose help it would have been a struggle to get through the flying list.  Also, a massive thanks to James H and Colin B who had put in a huge effort over the past week to get the project winch ready for the next stage in the project.  Towards the end of the day the winch we watched the winch being towed away to the SkyLaunch workshop.

Turned out Wednesday 24th July wasn’t as hot as yesterday and not as hot as tomorrow, which is forecast to possibly top the August 2003 record of highest recorded temperature.  It was still hot and the limited shade available was very popular (as were the chocolate brownies and banana loaf baked by Tony P’s fair hand).  Maybe the heat put folks off as their was a rather modest turn out of members with 14 folks taking to the air (including a couple of visitors).  With 5 instructors (of various levels) on-site and a very short instruction list I got a chance to fly Denzel for an hour, being bounced around narrow thermals to just over 3,000′.  Denzel’s very effective air-conditioning was a boon (maybe have a different opinion in the winter).  A blue day making getting away a bit hit and miss – about a 1 in 4 chance.

24 launches with almost 6.5 hours of flying time

A pleasant summers day with mixed results on the soaring front.  Out of the three dozen launches just a dozen managed more then 30 minutes.  Unsurprisingly the “new” K8 proved popular.

Peter E was kept busy with a BGA mini-course.  Colin B and Bob B and myself share the backseat duties.  The LS3-17 was rigged (thanks chaps, I didn’t deliberately sneak off to sit in the back seat while it was rigged) and both Bob and I got a decent flight in it.  There were reports of cloud base at 4,000′ and 6 knot thermals but I didn’t find more than 2,500′ and rarely did the average exceed 1 knot.  Tony P declared he had got his mojo back having got his timing right for a soaring flight.  He also reported that he had run out of self-raising flour, as had the supermarket, so no Wednesday treats this time (but the previous week there were double offerings).

The daytime crew handed over to the TLE volunteers who finished off the day flying members of a scout group.  Jonty H and Andrew P got there first opportunity to exercise

As there have been no other blog entries for the days since last Wednesday a brief summary of the flying since then

Thursday – Trial Lesson evening clocking up 20 launches

Saturday – 37 launches clocking up over 8 hours of flying but only 4 flights of more than 30 minutes

Sunday – 33 launches, less than 7 hours and only 3 of more than 30 minutes