The occurrences and happenings at Shalbourne Soaring Society. A gliding club near Andover, Newbury and Hungerford.

Sunday 30th Jan



Another good January day with in excess of 35 flights. Some thermal activity ensured that a few had extended soaring flights of around 16 minutes or so. The ridge was not working but did help to pop off the occasional thermal.





After a final check ride Richard Barber converted to the Vega and seemed to enjoy himeslf!

Nigel gained his P1 mutual rating and we even managed to fly a trial lesson. All in all a very enjoyable day's flying. Good conditions for this time of year.


Saturday 29th

A day for brass monkeys to stay indoors but our members are more hardy (especially those snugly wrapped up in their Ozee suits). Disappointingly the bitter NE wind did not deliver any lift on the ridge but something was stiring. James Hunneman managed to delay the effects of gravity playing around behind the ridge. Launch heights were limited by cloud base - well not so much a "base" more a layer of increasing murkyness. We did get one blue hole which Steve Barber managed to take advantage of and somehow managed to stay aloft for 16 minutes.

Sunday 23rd Ridge day!

Well what can I say? For me there has only been a handful of occasions over the years that our ridge has worked so consistantly so low down :-)

The problem we had was that cloudbase was gradually getting lower as the day went by. Initially launches to 1000ft were achieveable (wow!) but as the day passed by this gradually reduced until on the last flight, with Nigel and I in the Janus, we had to give up and turn back because cloudbase was getting just a bit too low!

After releasing at 800 ft half way up the airfield (just at the base of cloud) we pushed straight ahead reaching the ridge at 700ft and found that just as on the previous flights the ridge was still giving a steady 2-4 knots of lift. Working along towards the Gibbet it was clear that the lift was constant but we were also aware of the fact that the cloudbase was becoming lower. As we reached the Gibbet cloudbase had reduced to 700ft so we increased our speed to 80kts and reduced our height to 600ft to keep out of the gloom and raced back following the contours of the ridge, the vario still showing zero. Arriving back at the winch we still had plenty of height to fly a normal circuit and landing.

The K13, lacking the penetration and glide angle of the Janus, just could not get to the lift before having to turn back. If cloudbase had been a few hundred feet more then maybe it too would have been enjoying the conditions as well.

Must admit it is good to get back in the Janus after its little visit to Southern Sailplanes ;-)



Phil

Wednesday 19th January

At last a flyable Wednesday and the sunny day ensured a good turnout. Getting started proved a bit of a trial with the launch lights difficult for the winch driver to see but we finally got going launching into a northerly - however, not enough of a northerly to get the ridge working. The 4 club gliders out clocked up 26 launches with Paul Prentice taking longest flight honours with an impressive (for the day!) 17 minutes. Half a dozen other flights manged more than 10 minutes.

Sunday 9th January

After a non-flying Saturday we were able to play. An up and down day with only one flight over 10 minutes. That was a massive (?) 12 minutes flown by the duty instructor (Ken Porter) and Graham Tanner. With 27 launches a pretty good performance for a January day.

Sunday 3rd January

Dodging the snow showers we managed to get some decent flying in today.

Ok the flight times were not as impressive as yesterday but all those present certainly enjoyed the flights they had.




Jim was suffering in the cold so thought Carol would not notice if he joined him and Paul P as P3 in JMX but eagle eyed Carol soon rumbled his little plan and oiked him out before take off!





And Rod was so pleased with the new oven gloves he was given for christmas that he just had to bring them to the club to show them off to the rest of us............should have known better :-)

I've said it before...

..and those who know me will know that I will say it again...

...you should have been there.

I wasn't clever enough to take pictures, but if I had they'd have been of blue skies and an empty airfield - but this time because all the serviceable gliders were in the air soaring. Flights of the best part of an hour were the highlights of the middle of the day, and we were all fairly sure that Rod was off cross-country at one point!

We also had a visitor from another club to check out on the winch, I refused to fly with him but then he is my husband and many of you know what happens when we fly together... He, like me, thinks the Vega is very nice (as D Piggott would say).

And, for the instructors among you, not one but TWO ab-initios were there for us to hone our teaching/bastardry skills (delete where applicable) upon. And Andrew is in a wheelchair (No - he was before arriving!) so we have another member to take advantage of the hand rudder, although he's obviously got longer legs than Derek so we will need to devise some foot restraints for safe flight.

Enough - after a hard day's flying I've got a hard evening's prep for the Worlds - Ayala is on her way over for dinner. See you all next time, meanwhile happy New Year and I wish you all lots of safe fun soaring in 2011

Liz