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

Saturday 31st August - and summer keeps rolling on

The launch point at 15:00 under a clear blue sky:


Airborne and out of sight - in alphabetical order:

ASW15 (albeit on the ground somewhere near Didcot), Cirrus, Janus, Ka8, 2 X Ka13s, LS3, Nimbus and Puchacz.

Returned from a late flight in EEF to find airfield closed and SMS saying crew in pub!

Bank Holiday again!

Claire treated her Libelle to an outing on Monday which prompted Richard to ask if it blinked when it was pulled from its trailer still sleeping, what did he mean by that???


Well if it was sleeping it soon woken up as shortly after this photo was taken Carol and I saw it brushing against the clouds at over 4,000ft!


And now for something completely different.........


The face of the man who converted to the Ka8 and couldn't come down.

 The one hour ten minute smile.

Well done Justin Butler - even if we did have to wait until 6.15 for you to land.

Bank Holiday

What's this?  A posting for bank holiday?  The weather is never any good on bank holidays.

Well, never say never.  The weather forecast was excellent - or rather the forecast was for excellent weather, the weather itself was a bit slow to do do as forecast. 

Anyway, there were several gliders rigged and parked up by the launch point by about 1100, ready for the forecast thermals to pop off.  We kept throwing two-seaters at the sky, but they all fell off straight away, so Trevor went for a snifter in the K8 and hung on for half-an-hour in weak wave - aha! there's the problem, the wave was spoiling the thermals.  We kept throwing gliders at the sky and some of them took a while to fall down again, until eventually at 1415, three hours later than expected, Jim went off in the Nimbus and did not return. After that, the next ten all soared away (with the ignoble exception of one) and mostly went off on XCs to Devizes and Wantage, or Didcot.  Trevor finally got round to rigging and took the last launch of the day at 1745 to show us it was all still working, landing at 1900 so we could go home.

Saturday 24th August 2013

And the forecast for the day....Not brilliant.

I turned up, Bob turned up, Trevor turned up and Alan Petite turned out collect his glider and take it to Sutton Bank.
We set up, cancelled a trial lesson booked for the afternoon and waited for the trial lesson to turn up at 11am.
By 11:15am the cloud base looked lower and the clag looked thicker but the couple who'd booked the TL arrived and we pushed the young lady into the Puchacz,
2 cables, one screamer, which I assure you I heard all the way to 1600 feet, more surprising as Bob was flying!
Bob landed with pin point precision, stopping for me to take one step forward, grab the wing tip and hook them back on to take the remaining cable. The young lady screamed but I couldn't hear her after about 700 feet.
The flew around, landed and she exclaimed it was 'brilliant!!'
They left and so did we after packing everything away.
Thanks to Alan for staying to help get the TL off the ground.

Crop Circle

Taken last Sunday this is a photo of the crop circle that Steve mentioned in his post.



Sunday 11th

Arrived at the airfield to a very unpromising sky but the Janus and the LS7 rigging.  The sky changed and the LS3 and Jantar also rigged and all were rewarded with flights of over an hour.  With Trevor's flight in the Jantar of over 4 hours.  Cross-wind launches, lively landings, lots of drift and some big sink holes - but on the other hand some stonking lift (reports of 8 up) and working cloud streets.  About half the flights got to soar.

This summer crop circles are reportedly few and far between (one of the main folks doing it has developed hay fever) but we have one just a couple of miles due west of the south end of the airfield.  I wasn't able get a photo but if anyone does please add it to the blog.

Saturday 3rd

Well, the sky was looking good but nobody was staying up for much more than a circuit.  In the first dozen launches only Ken H managed to defy gravity for more just over an hour.   Chris B arrived at the field after closing his shop for the afternoon and rigged pronto.  Chris didn't stop to ask why there was a club glider on the ground and a spare cable and nobody thought to tell him nobody was staying up.  Just as well otherwise he might not have flown for three quarters of an hour.  As it turned out the gliders launched shortly before him also went soaring and the ones launching in the following half an hour.
I went for a flight with Rob S in the Puchacz - once up near cloud no need to turn - just rattle along the front.  Cloudbase proved interesting and variable.  Around the airfield the cloudbase varied between 3,200 and 3,700 with "lumps" hanging down here and there..

Saturday 27th

Fortunately there were enough members who hadn't seen the forecast (or had decided to ignore it).  OK, not exactly inspiring flying - mainly circuits with the odd flight creeping into double digits.  With one exception.  Graham T was looking for instructor ballast as he hadn't flown the Puchacz for some time.  I delayed having a cuppa as it would just be a 10 minute delay.  Unfortunately, no one had told Graham that is wasn't soarable and I had to wait 40 minutes .