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

Tuesday 14th January

What do you call the man who flew the Ka8 for the first time, practiced stalls and use of air brakes and still stayed airborne 30% longer than anyone else?

I know what I called him, but you know him as Darren McKillop.

Awards Dinner

32 members and guests attended the Annual Dinner, admirably cooked and served by Marion and her team at The Plough, Shalbourne.

Awards of club drinking vessels were made in appreciation of services to the club or recognition of flying achievements:
Supergrafter Awards to Alan B and Bill  for enormous time spent on recovering JPC,and James H for days under the Trooper.
Stropmeister Award to Paul B for keeping the launching kit up together.
Salesman of the Year Award to Jon G for getting us a double page news spread in the localrag
Big Spender Award to Paul P, for doing most chargeable flying in 2013 (I hope he can live this down with his wife)
Three-in-a-row Award to Chris K for unluckiest day(3x launch fail + 1x Airprox in three consecutive launches)
Up & Down Award to Steve B for highest and lowest(-but-got-back-up-for-a-proper-circuit) flights - 7800' in wave in the K8, and below the Gibbett on a rare ridge day
Ab-Initio of the Year Award to Justin for getting to solo/off-checks in one season.

Saturday 11th Jan

Few squeeze more out of a day than our Stephen.


Wednesday 8th January

After a whole 12 hours without rain the field had drained sufficiently to operate. Only able to pull one cable up the hill we retrieved it where it fell; so before the weather clamped some slick driving permitted a couple of handfuls of launches. The ridge to the south intermittently shed orographic clag so launch heights ranged from 700 to 2000 feet depending upon which side of a cloud you happen to be. The lucky ones had spectacular runs through feather walled canyons.

Running out of willing pilots before running out of weather meant everything was put away dry, so all in all a moderately successful day. Somehow the quality of flights seemed to be secondary to the fact that we were able to fly at all.

2nd January 2014

The first dry day of New Year and soarable to boot!

Having made safe a storm damaged panel on the hangar roof, we received some bad news. Doughnut man had left one pack at the checkout! But tears were choked back, upper lips remained braced and flying commenced late morning.

Best flight was Paul Bryant's who thermalled off towards Newbury in a fresh SW wind, only to lose it all scrambling back to the airfield. Richard and Daren almost matched this longest flight, but the additional weight meant they were pipped into second place by one minute. Honours even I'd say.

Back in the club house the technicians were bidding for a record number of people repairing a Ka13 simultaneously. Quite novel really, five people working and one watching rather than the normal vice-versa.