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

Ka8 instrument panel

Here's what ours looks like:

and here's the view out of the window:
and here's a barogram

maybe it was to do with these:
Pity I was all by myself


The Early Bird?

Arriving fashionably late on the airfield on Wednesday I was pleasantly surprised to see that the midweek crew almost had the field set up and HAX trailer was parked at in the rigging area. 'Just as well you got started early' says I 'cos it'll all be over by one o' clock'. HAX was hastily rigged and by 11 o'clock the entire club fleet was on the line, by which time the sky looked like this:






By midday Selvam and I were looking down at a deserted launch point.

By half past twelve the sky was beginning to look like this:


at which point the five gliders that had been soaring for an hour or so all landed for lunch. By this time the afternoon shift had arrived, so Stephen and I spent the rest of the day inflicting some serious 'bung pulling'.

There may be a moral here somewhere....





Non flying.

This year hasn't exactly been great for gliding, especially when one is busy at work and only get the weekends at best to utilise for gliding.

Usually my glider repairs are undertaken on the winter months when it's cold and nasty. Recently it's been cold and nasty so over the last few weeks I decided to undertake some remedial repairs and improvements to the belly and wingtips of my LS7.
This is what happened:


First you take one of these:
In this particular case I was lucky to have an Andy Brind brain which I picked.
He told me what I should do with this:
The problem was the wing tips were a little tatty and the belly of the fuselage was cracked through the gel coat and had a few score marks where it had landed in the odd flinty field or 17 times....

Next thanks to Andy 'The Brain' I ended up with a lot of advice and one of these:
Next you take a pair of these:
With a lot of this:
As well as this:
Eventually you end up with this:

Which I found upsetting and rather worrying.

At this point you need a little luck and the help of the Spray Fairy, they're quite shy creatures, can you see the little fellow?
I managed to coax him in with a little help from:
Low and behold:
I trapping him with one of these:
And he weaved his magic:
And I ended up with:


Now all I have to do is polish it back and go fly!

Thanks Andy and Phil!

Monday night is gliding night (24th june 13)

Its not often that there's a blog entry about our summertime weeknight activities... Most of the time a slick crew of members turns out to support the club by flying organised groups of visitors until the sunsets.

Monday was very similar to this pattern with a group of Walsh Common scouts turning up to have some airborne fun, however the slick crew turned out to be not only slick but also unusually large in number so we wheeled the k8 down to the launch point, Alan P taking off and spending 17 mins flying around in something before landing and letting other 3 members have some daylight. Even the CFI couldn't match that after we had dragged him kicking and screaming to the glider (not).

Wednesday 19th

So this is summer?  That would explain why the weather prevented us from flying the previous Wednesday and weekend.  This Wednesday didn't promise much but at least we were able to break the bounds of Mother Earth - if only for a few minutes.  That was until the sun broke through and Paul P proved it was possible to break the double digit barrier with his 21 minute flight.  Over the following 2 hours about half the launches got some soaring with an empty launch point for a while.  Justin B demonstrated his scratching skills as he clawed his way up from 1,000' to 2,700' - the first 300' taking lots of patience and tenacity.  The exercise to see how much ground we could cover for a given height was blown when we arrived at Hungerford having lost very little height passing through large areas of weak lift.  Bill C took longest flight honours with 1:15 in the Vega. "Normal" service was then resumed and it was back to circuit bashing.
We were pleased to welcome two members of the Southampton Uni gliding group and the son of a former member who last flew at the club in the days that Ralph Jones was a member (many moons ago).  They helped keep Bob B and myself fully occupied in the back seat.

Sunday (9th June) confusion

The weather guru wasnt sure and had us all confused over what advection was - its simple really  \frac{1}{2} \mathbf{u} \cdot \nabla \mathbf{u} + \frac{1}{2} \nabla (\mathbf{u} \mathbf{u}) = \nabla \left( \frac{\|\mathbf{u}\|^2}{2} \right)  + \left( \nabla \times \mathbf{u} \right) \times \mathbf{u} + \frac{1}{2} \mathbf{u} (\nabla \cdot \mathbf{u})
durr!

Anyway despite that we went flying using the standard technique of throwing gliders skyward until they stuck. Variously different pilots added velco , pritstick(TM) , treacle  and drying weetabix to the upper surfaces of their wings until Phil and Carol tried a Cumulus cloud  - this seemed to do the trick! After that most people got a soaring flight, though those practicing circuits also got a few of those...

In addition a guy came to watch for a while:  the chap used to be a member of the club and was in the Pirat syndicate but then he moved to Canada in 1986. You may remember him – his name is Colin Aldridge.

Wednesday 5th

What the forecasters promised the weather failed to deliver but it was good to see the sun (even if the wind was surprisingly cold).  The forecast was responsible for persuading 5 gliders to be rigged.  Once rigged they waited and waited for the promised thermals and in the end just flew anyway.  When Trevor G and Bob B only get short flights it tells you it isn't easily.  Only 6 of the 33 flights managed 40 or more minutes.  Modesty prevents me from mentioning who was the only person to manage more than an hour (with 1:24) but then I had an incentive - being airborne is a great way to escape hay fever.
Quite a number of Lasham gliders scrapping around near us.  Two dropped in and reported that there were lots of landouts. 

The beginning of June.

What a glorious weekend; the gliders were out in force and so were the dandelions and with a high cloud base there was plenty of flying to be had.
Sunday saw John Parker, Tony Chapman, Jon Scott and Justin Butler, all new members as well as the trial lesson Vanessa have some great flying. This with the regular members who turned up, rigged and flew meant there was an alarming lack of gliders on the ground.

Tim kindly test flew the Ka8 and he carefully checked everything on the glider, then checked the parachute. All was fine and we watched the glider being put through its paces. We still have a Ka8 everyone can fly.


Phil and Carol took off to Burdlip then over the Bicester. Sunday and I nursed sun stroke from Saturday.


I hadn't noticed the sun was quite so strong and even though I drank plenty I just didn't have a strong enough sunscreen on.
It was lovely to see the Swales make it's appearance and like the swallows who also appear from nowhere it took to the sky and disappeared for hours.

























Quite a nice weekend as it happened.