Sunday 26th

Typical Bank Holiday weather resulted in flying only on Sunday of the long weekend.  The sunny Sunday did bring out the visitors looking for the opportunity to experience our sport - 7 of them plus the father and son who had flown with us the previous Sunday and were back for more.  Richard D (duty instructor) and myself were kept fully occupied in the backseat from 11:00 to 18:00.  4 gliders rigged and disappeared off (EEF and 737 clocking up 7 hours between them) and 1 Lasham glider dropped in.  Special mentioned should be made (and thanks given) to the small number of members that kept the ground operation running smoothly.

Sunday 19th

OK so got a bit out of order with the blog entries.  One of those days where the duty instructor will just have to accept ends will be changed.  Started the day with easterly which was forecast to go to SW and then NW - and it did.  It was good to see the Swales making an appearance which set the longest flight time to beat.  The record looked quite safe lift got scarce until James W launched the K8 into an unpromising sky and somehow managed to stay airborne longest than anyone else.
Couple of visitors from Lasham dropped in and took a relight one of whom made it back whilst the other needed more help from another field.

The Champions of task week are...

...all those that turned up and flew, and more importantly those that turned up and hooked-on, log kept, instructed and manned the winch, we thank you all.

To the flying, which may not yet be over as there are still 4 days left (hmmm he says seeing the forecast):

So far we have flown and soared on 6 consecutive days, admittedly not many of those have been good for x/c but we tried some very short tasks on the bad days and some short tasks on the better days. Chris landed out one day, on the next he tried to land out with Phil in the Janus and today Phil and Carol succeeded in landing out - Carol needed a piece of cake I'm told ;-)

Yesterday we had two visitors land, both took relights only for one to land out again at Popham and get an aerotow retrieve, or so I'm led to believe; some days just aren't yours.

All in all it is fair to say it was like gliding, only lower!

Tuesday 21st August.

Need I say more.....

Rivar- Welford- Riv....Well nealry.
I left Rivar at 2000, got to Welford at 1500 feet QFE with little hope of getting back. The glide computer said I would arrive with 272 feet left, I knew I probably wouldn't, not into a headwind.
Getting to Hungerford, well to the east of it, the glide computer said -84 feet and didn't change. I opted for a grazed field at the bottom of the ridge.
Still I did manage a heady Riv-Hun-Riv earlier in the day...

Thanks Pete for such a quick and cheerful retrieve.

Wednesday Evening Group 15th August

With the evenings starting to draw in this was to be the last of this year's Wednesday Evening flying sessions.
As predicted the heavy rain cleared around 4pm and left us with good but challenging flying conditions. The 20 knot + southerly breeze certainly gave high launches (I had 2000ft solo in the Puchacz!) but it also made the approach much more interesting. 70knots and full airbrake gave an almost vertical  approach which was quite different to what we had been teaching up to then!

All 4 of the group coped with the conditions well and I feel all of them have made excellent progress over the last few months, so much so that two of them are not far from going solo...well done!

Thanks go out to Steve Ottner, Steve Barber, Rod Harris, Chris Bessent and Richard Dann and anyone else I have forgotten for their invaluable help with these evenings, i'm sure all the abinitios are very grateful for the time you have given to these evenings.

Thanks again



Phil

Thursday 11th

Good call by Colin to slip Wednesday 1 day as we were treated to that rare thing this summer - a decent day. Over half the flights (excluding the evening progress group) were in excess of half an hour.  Just a pity about the Olympic ceiling as the best sky was within the restricted area.  I managed to escape west into the unrestricted area near Pewsey and found this Olympic torch to the west of Marlborough.

The lift from it was fairly pathetic but I stuck with it as it was very milky to the west and there was now no sign of lift on the route back to the club.  Straight glide back (and below 2,500 by the time I crossed the CTA7 boundary) not finding any lift until near the airfield.  After that it was simply running from cloud to cloud (each one worked!) and increasing speed in straight line to keep below the Olympic ceiling.
The mid-week Progress Group took over for the evening getting lots of practice in circuits and launch failures (Phil must have been suffering from vertigo).  Thanks to James H turning up and Paul P staying on we manged to keep 2 gliders on the go.

Sunday 5th August

The early light showers cleared by 10am allowing the six of us who turned up plenty of decent flying.
With the wind straight down the strip launches over 1600ft were the norm.
Three trial  lessons were flown one even getting treated to a climb to 2500ft QFE.

As the day went by the conditions went from good to stonking. Climbs of >4 knots were reported and flight times of more than 30 minutes were achieved. Plenty of showers were seen around us but none came near the club allowing uninterrupted flying all day. Strangely just north of the airfield conditions were very different to those to the south for most of the day as the photo of Chris and Jim landing clearly shows

late in the afternoon Chris B turned up and took Jim McCormick for a short XC in the Puchacz taking in Burbage and Andover and enjoying the longest flight of the day with 53 minutes.