Category: Flying Reports

A new month, a new solo.  Congratulations to Paul M who celebrated in the traditional way with a round of drinks in The Plough at the end of another busy Wednesday.

Start of flying was delayed as a battery needed to be fitted in the launch point wagon after thieves revisited us earlier in the week.  The rigging area at was somewhat busy and crowed with 6 private gliders getting ready in anticipation of a stonking day.  First 3 gliders launched soared away.  The next 3 found the sink resulting in short circuits.  After that, some were lucky some not.  The lucky ones reported climbs to 4,200′ and some strong lift.

First of the private gliders to launch was Steve B on his quest for a 300km.  He reappeared 4:30 hours later – having paid a visit to Kevil who obliged with an aerotow to get Steve home.  Turned out to be a challenging day, only managing around one third of the distance he was after.  Colin B set a more modest 100km for himself.  At 2:20 hours he stated that was probably the slowest 100km he had ever done reporting an ever changing sky with areas of good looking cloud turning blue at on a whim.

30 launches in total and over 20 hours of flying.  Both Bob B and myself were kept busy in the back seats.  A big thanks to Bob (without his help there would have been some disappointed folks) and honourable mentions to Ken H and Adrian N who did the lions share of winch/retrieve.  Tony P provided the home baking (blueberry muffins) and courgettes.

Another busy Wednesday

While it was cross countryable, and we did, the visibility was very poor, so here’s a pic from Norway.

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 What an absolutely stunning weekend!

Strong thermals and high cloudbases. It could be diffciult to get away from low down but once you were away it was great.
I was duty on sat, Chris did 420km again for the second saturday in a row, sorry i’m not sure how many minutes it was, Phil and Carol did their declared 200km and Michal continued to try and understand UK airspace in PL. Nigel was kept very busy with trial lessons and one day courses and we ended the day with a BBQ, well all of us except Woichek in PL who having taken the last launch landed as we were well into Tony’s pudding/cake.

Sunday promised to be even better and judging from around the country it was, unfortunately we were under an uninspiring blue hole and feeling uninspired we delayed launching until the cu arrived, fell back in our tasks and massively underset them… Anyway good fun racing around the task – well tasks due to a communication error. Again some very strong climbs 8-9kts average to at least the 5500feet airspace to the north.

Another busy Wednesday – some great lift but big areas of 4 to 6 down.  Those launching into those sink holes were back on the ground very promptly.  The Duo Discuss flew for 3 minutes longer than the ASW15 HZD (2:44 vs 2:41) but the Duo used 2 launches.  Steve B took a single launch.  Cloud base eventually got to 5,000′.  38 launches with just 12 of those getting more than 30 minutes.

More than the usual number of visitors with a couple of friends of Paul P, a local pair of brothers plus families (one from Shalbourne the other Fosbury) and rounding off the day with a mini-TLE with 3 folks from Kennet Radio.  Many thanks to all the members who pitched in and kept us flying and to Ken R who helped out with some back seat flying.  Special thanks to Steve B, Martin S, Bob s and Adrian S who ignored the lure of the footie and stayed on to help get the Kennet Radio folks flown.  Hero of the day being Ken H who worked on club projects in the morning and winched most of the afternoon and up to the end.

The Wednesday cake club was well served with banana loaf from Tony P, donuts from Peter M and rice-chrispy cake from Catriona O (surplus supplies from a children’s party)