Posted on

Recent Exped to Portmoak

As you may (or not) know some of us spent a week at Portmoak back in early October and it’s fair to say we all had a great time flying in ridge, thermal and weak wave. I personally logged over 10 hours of flying during our stay.

Portmoak (SGU) kindly offered us the use their Perkoz for one afternoon and during this time I had flights with Andrew, Bob and John. We were all surprised how nice it is to fly and especially how quite it is. The Perkoz is a great improvement over the Puchacz, 78kts on the winch and a VNE of about 145kts!

Hopefully the attached photos will encourage others to join us on these expeditions in future………….. btw the next one is probably at Camphill around Easter 2023 and another to Milfield is already booked for next October but more on this later 🙂 If you fancy coming along just let me know and we will see if we can arrange to take a Puchacz with us.

Bob flying the Perkoz
What can I say……….
Bob in his LS4
Nice sundog!
Andrew in the Perkoz
John flying the Perkoz
The obligatory sunset pic.

Posted on

Saturday 27th

During the morning we had a very large group of detectorists in the adjacent field down at the southern end of the airfield.

One of them , Tony Parsons from Brighton, approached me and mentioned that we was also a landscape painter and would take a few photos of us gliding with the aim of producing an oil painting from one of them, here is the result!

Those of you not on Facebook are really missing out on some really interesting posts about Shalbourne and gliding in general.

This is an example of what you will not normally see!

 

https://www.facebook.com/shalbournegliding/

Posted on

First April weekend

20170402_113130

A very busy weekend with 37 launches on Saturday and a massive 51 on Sunday.

Saturday’s launches were fitted in around some heavy afternoon showers and it never really got soarable, with just a few extended flights.

 

Sunday was much brighter and that enticed out lots of gliders, with 9 private gliders in action. The weather was pretty much to plan with little scratchy thermals from the off. Cloud base crept up and by afternoon the thermals had organised themselves properly with good climbs to 4000′.

A fun but busy day! Thanks to those that helped out.

Posted on

Golden October!

With patches of mid morning blue sky peeking through the mist and the forecasters promise of blue thermals to 3000 ft later in the day, a few of us put away the coffee flasks and rigged, but without too much conviction. Although Jim G had cried off instructing on account of an attack of shingles he put in a brave appearance, supervising the airfield and doing anything that didn’t involve sitting down. Having shingles is a real pain in the a**e, but even more so if they happen to be on your a**e. Get well soon Jim!

Any kind of soaring is welcome in early October, so after Paul P had defied gravity for more than half an hour in the Ka8, there was a rush to get airborne. Those who did discovering widespread lift beneath dark patches in the murk. The promised blueness never yielded anything but sink and mid afternoon cloud base was somewhere above 2500 ft, but the upper visibility was too poor to discover exactly where it was. Nonetheless visibility at lower levels remained quite good, so safe aviating was possible. Star of the day was Peter Ellison who held the flying instruction together, delivering a half day course and several trial lessons, before disappearing in the ASW15 only to reappear after 5 pm as the airfield was being shut down.

Motorway junction, Hungerford North
Motorway Junction at Hungerford North

Hungerford from Hungerford North – it’s out there somewhere.
Hungerford from Hungerford North – it’s out there somewhere.