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

Sunday 29th

First launch, straight into a thermal and off to Hungerford.  Tony C mentions that this is the furthest he's flown from the club, I comment that it's all too easy.  Off to Conholt House for a bit of sight seeing to discover it wasn't completely easy peasey - we didn't quite get there.  Some great lift on offer but it cycled a couple of times so some folks ended up with not much more than circuits.  Alan P being one in his Olly.  He then offered Rod H the opportunity to fly his hot ship and Rod soared away.  Our 2 visitors who landed out will testify that it wasn't all plain sailing.  The ASH25 did land close to the toilet block and there were reports of the P2 dashing from the glider - so maybe lack of lift wasn't the reason for their landout.
Rod trying to figure out how to stop the Olly from soaring
Carol and Phil took the Janus visiting homes - their own (Thatcham and Andover), Paul P's (Ramsbury) and a few others.  They managed to fly around the dead patches to stay airborne for 2:41 - and we thought they had called in for tea (or pea) as the Janus boys have been known to.

Plenty of folks needing the services of an instructor.  The way I found to get a break was to send Andrew P solo.  Not a first solo but the last one was 32 years ago.  He was even considerate enough to give me a decent break - 51 minutes.
Andrew seems to have left something behind (an instructor)
Surprisingly few solo pilots appeared so we were very grateful to Rod H and Graham T who did long stints on the winch and Trevor G who took over for the last part of the day and didn't fly.  Without Colin B pitching in to help out in the backseat some folks would have left disappointed.  Thanks also to the folks that hung in to the end to make sure everyone got to fly.  

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