Chair’s Thursday blog

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Jul 262018
 

Hi everyone,  this is the regular Thursday posting to let you know what is coming up in the near future.

This week

Simulator

Dave has already blogged the launch of the simulator.  The amount of effort that has gone into this has been enormous.  Dave, Roger, Geoff Dailey and Rob French have created a fabulous addition to our training offering.

New Members

Welcome to new members John Ball, Arthur Hughes.  If you see them at the club please introduce yourself and give them our usual welcome.

Web Site

We’ve just changed the web site to a secure site, using https rather than http. This makes it more secure, and also should improve our rankings in Google searches about gliding. The change seems to have gone smoothly, but if you notice any issues, such as broken links, please email webmaster@midlandgliding.club

Your team this weekend is:

Saturday:  Nigel Lassetter, Peter Orchard, William Brewis

Sunday:  Mike Greenwood, Guy Hartland, Matthew Cook, Stephen Alexander, Mark Wakem

Forthcoming events

Simons xc soaring course week (6th to 10 Aug)

BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW! (Limited places) This popular course includes daily weather & cross country briefings, and is run in a Lead and Follow style. Suitable for all levels even those who have not flown cross country before.

If it’s suitable for cross country, Simon will set a task for a lead and follow, designed to stretch you in a comfortable environment.

If it’s not suitable for cross country, then appropriate ground / air trainings will be offered to match the attendee’s skills and experience.

Book your place now via the office!

Task week – 18th – 27th August 

Book your place NOW – please call or email the office asap.

Task Week is designed to encourage ALL pilots to fly Cross Country Tasks. As such, it is an inclusive activity, a bit of friendly competition – not an occasion for the club pundits to whizz round and take all the points!   It is the culmination of the year’s Cross Country Development Programme and introduces an element of competition prior to pilots flying either Rockpolishers or Regional competitions. It is open to any pilot holding a Bronze “C” with a Cross Country Endorsement.
We will also have 2 seat gliders participating, to give ALL pilots the opportunity to experience cross country flying, even if you are not yet solo, or don’t yet have your Cross Country Endorsement. This is an excellent training opportunity to fly with some top class cross country pilots in top class gliders. Please book your place ASAP by calling or emailing the office.

The event is split in to 3 classes so that pilots compete against other pilots of similar skill and experience level. This year we are introducing a new scoring system to try to even things out between the classes and to avoid the skewed results from a single fast flight on a long task.

Please book the week off, ensure this is in your diary, and lets look forward to some wonderful weather. It will help you develop our skills no matter what standard you are at. More info here.

A friendly reminder & request:

 Whether you want to do some pre-solo training, your annual check, or something else specific, it always pays to pre-book via the office or online via the email shown here https://www.midlandgliding.club/club-duty-rota/

 

We strongly encourage pre-booking so that:

  1. A) you get what you need on the day
  2. B) we can plan to have sufficient instructors to cater for the day’s demand
  3. C) it avoids those who have taken time time to pre-book getting over-run and missing out to people who turning up on the day expecting a flight
  4. D) it avoids the possibility of you turning up on the day expecting to fly and perhaps leaving in the evening disappointed.
  5. E) you can see availability on the website and plan your visits accordingly – here’s the link https://www.midlandgliding.club/club-duty-rota/

Happy soaring!

 

chairman@midlandgliding.club

 

Great end to a “carlsberg” course week

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Jul 212018
 

Quite an extraordinary course week, we managed to get all but one solo including three first solos. Then we converted all but two of the solo’s into the discus. Plenty of soaring including a five hour thermal flight and 222 launches loosing Friday afternoon to rain!!! (almost forgotten what that was like).

Then I took the last fight solo, I took an aerotow from Denbigh then thermalled away up to Snowden then set of for the Mynd. When thermalling away from Bala town to cross the Berwyns Helen said it was time for bed so I landed in a field and switched the simulator off.

I was quite impressed with it though the head tracking takes a little getting used to, it makes flying a circuit much easier. So the simulator is working, it just needs a bit of tidying up and I have yet to get the trimmer working.

I will produce a list of instructions for starting it, a process I hope to streamline soon. So many thanks to Geoff  for the instrument panels, Roger for his welding and fabric work and to Rob French for his tech support and computer rebuild  skills.

Dave

Chair’s Thursday blog

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Jul 192018
 

Hi everyone,  this is the regular Thursday posting to let you know what is coming up in the near future.

This week

Wood Week

Kind weather, enthusiasm and superb catering all meant that the wooden guys had a wonderful time with some doing cross country flights on an almost daily basis.  Chris Raine was also incredibly generous in giving flights in the Capstan

New members

We welcome back an “old” friend Roger Reeves.  Roger used to be tug master for us in the days of the Pawnee and has now returned to the purer side of flying.  We also welcome Iain Thomson, Martin Howitt and Jo Turnbull.

Your team this weekend is:

Saturday:  Mike Witton, Charles Carter, Stephen Alexander

Sunday:  Simon Adlard, Stephen Alexander, Liz Adlard

Forthcoming events

Simons xc soaring course week (6th to 10 Aug)

BOOK YOUR PLACE NOW! (Limited places) This popular course includes daily weather & cross country briefings, and is run in a Lead and Follow style. Suitable for all levels even those who have not flown cross country before.

If it’s suitable for cross country, Simon will set a task for a lead and follow, designed to stretch you in a comfortable environment.

If it’s not suitable for cross country, then appropriate ground / air trainings will be offered to match the attendee’s skills and experience.

Book your place now via the office!

Task week – 18th – 27th August 

Book your place NOW – please call or email the office asap.

Task Week is designed to encourage ALL pilots to fly Cross Country Tasks. As such, it is an inclusive activity, a bit of friendly competition – not an occasion for the club pundits to whizz round and take all the points!   It is the culmination of the year’s Cross Country Development Programme and introduces an element of competition prior to pilots flying either Rockpolishers or Regional competitions. It is open to any pilot holding a Bronze “C” with a Cross Country Endorsement.
We will also have 2 seat gliders participating, to give ALL pilots the opportunity to experience cross country flying, even if you are not yet solo, or don’t yet have your Cross Country Endorsement. This is an excellent training opportunity to fly with some top class cross country pilots in top class gliders. Please book your place ASAP by calling or emailing the office.

The event is split in to 3 classes so that pilots compete against other pilots of similar skill and experience level. This year we are introducing a new scoring system to try to even things out between the classes and to avoid the skewed results from a single fast flight on a long task.

Please book the week off, ensure this is in your diary, and lets look forward to some wonderful weather. It will help you develop our skills no matter what standard you are at. More info here.

A friendly reminder & request:

 Whether you want to do some pre-solo training, your annual check, or something else specific, it always pays to pre-book via the office or online via the email shown here http://www.midlandgliding.club/club-duty-rota/

 

We strongly encourage pre-booking so that:

  1. A) you get what you need on the day
  2. B) we can plan to have sufficient instructors to cater for the day’s demand
  3. C) it avoids those who have taken time time to pre-book getting over-run and missing out to people who turning up on the day expecting a flight
  4. D) it avoids the possibility of you turning up on the day expecting to fly and perhaps leaving in the evening disappointed.
  5. E) you can see availability on the website and plan your visits accordingly – here’s the link http://www.midlandgliding.club/club-duty-rota/

Happy soaring!

 

chairman@midlandgliding.club

 

Chair’s Thursday blog

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Jul 122018
 

Hi everyone,  this is the regular Thursday posting to let you know what is coming up in the near future.

This week

Power cuts

The valley and ourselves have experienced many power failures over the last few weeks.  This does have consequences for us, our Internet, our admin systems and the web camera computer can all fail to restart gracefully.  We are working on how to mitigate each of these.

Shrewsbury School Summer Camp

The RAF section of Shrewsbury School’s Combined Cadet Force held their camp at the Club last week with 8 cadets and Paul Fowler instructing,  plus Tom Brennan who had just finished A levels and wanted to do some more solo flying aiming for Stage 3.  The week began with the dreaded east wind, but there was enough of a northerly component on Monday to allow launching. Tuesday was altogether different with an east wind strong enough for bungey launching if it had been from the opposite direction, and so a day out was planned.  First, a climb up to the well-preserved Montgomery Castle where there was a light breeze, and so a briefing was called for on the wind gradient and isobars. Next, on to Lake Vyrnwy to hire bicycles for a ride around the Lake.  There was plenty of flying opportunities in the rest of the week as the east wind was much calmer and good thermals gave long flights.  Many thanks to Mike G and Roger for flying the cadets in the T21.  There was guesswork on some of Roger’s flights about who was doing the landing!  Thanks also to Nigel and Matthew for their help.  The cadets made good progress in their flying training and worked hard on the airfield driving the retrieve winch, fetching cables for themselves and other Club members, keeping the Log and retrieving gliders.  The camp ended on Friday with an excellent achievement when Jack Li flew solo for the first time.  Many thanks also to Fay and Helen on the food and domestic side, and last, but not least, thanks to Rob for being in charge.

Wood week

As you have seen from the blogs they are having a wonderful time.   Many launches and lots of soaring.

New members

We have had a spate of new members recently, some on the 40 flight package.  We welcome John Darby, Iain Thomson, Ewa Lakeman and Martin Howett

Your team this weekend is:

Saturday: Neal Clements, Guy Hartland, Peter Orchard, Glyn Macarthur

Sunday: Mark Sanders, Guy Hartland, Peter Orchard, Charles Page

Forthcoming events

Good news and bad news

The Fairford airshow looks as if it will have a minimal impact on our flying over the weekend.

Farnborough

The CAA decision has been announced, largely in favour of TAG Farnborough.

Please see the link below for the full updates.

 https://members.gliding.co.uk/news-notices/

Task week – 18th – 27th August 

Book your place NOW – please call or email the office asap.

Task Week is designed to encourage ALL pilots to fly Cross Country Tasks. As such, it is an inclusive activity, a bit of friendly competition – not an occasion for the club pundits to whizz round and take all the points!   It is the culmination of the year’s Cross Country Development Programme and introduces an element of competition prior to pilots flying either Rockpolishers or Regional competitions. It is open to any pilot holding a Bronze “C” with a Cross Country Endorsement.
We will also have 2 seat gliders participating, to give ALL pilots the opportunity to experience cross country flying, even if you are not yet solo, or don’t yet have your Cross Country Endorsement. This is an excellent training opportunity to fly with some top class cross country pilots in top class gliders. Please book your place ASAP by calling or emailing the office.

The event is split in to 3 classes so that pilots compete against other pilots of similar skill and experience level. This year we are introducing a new scoring system to try to even things out between the classes and to avoid the skewed results from a single fast flight on a long task.

Please book the week off, ensure this is in your diary, and lets look forward to some wonderful weather. It will help you develop our skills no matter what standard you are at. More info here.

TaskWeek poster 2018

Reviews please!

If you’ve visited us or flown with us then it would be really great if you could take a moment to pop over to Tripadvisor and give the club a quick review. Here is the link. NB: It is important for the integrity of our entry on the website, that people who have responsibility for running the club (committee members) or for delivering the service (staff members) do NOT do a review, as this is against the rules and Tripadvisor could remove our entry entirely!

chairman@midlandgliding.club

 

Another great day at the Mynd

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Jul 122018
 

VideoCapture_20180712-092150

A nice air to air photograph of a visiting Skylark.

 

Well, that was fun, 61 launches much of it colourful vintage gliders taking advantage of 6kt+ average climbs to a 5500ft cloud base, no great distances covered but congratulations Martin Howitt and John McLaughlin who both re-solo’d and Steve Rudge who progressed to Stage 3.

Thanks to Dave Crowson for tirelessly instructing, Charles Carter for looking after the trial lessons, Roger for flying anyone and everyone in the Capstan, Helen for providing some excellent food and last but not least thank you to those working very efficiently on the airfield who didn’t fly to ensure others could.

This evening is steak and quiz night.

 

 

More Great XC Weather – don’t miss out!

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Jul 092018
 

The weekend just gone was a belter – although I couldn’t make it, gosh-darn-it! From the ladder I can see that KA and FVP had good flights, from word of mouth I know that 445 and K6 also made the most of it. Can I ask that you all please post your flights on the ladder, so the wider gliding public can see that the Mynd is a thriving XC club.

Today was good too, with 300’s for KA and 445.

Every day this week has merit, (and as much as you can say at this range, the weekend too), and decent XC flights should be possible on any of the days. Use the Club tasks, or else ask one of the XC pilots where they are going, and either fly that task, or else if seems a bit much (or too little!) for you, set a “Russian Doll” task based on the general task area. Do Check NOTAMS before you go – it’s a busy week, particularly on Friday.

So stay safe, have fun and I look forward to viewing the traces on the club ladder!

Mark

 Posted by at 10:28 pm

Saturday evening kitchen BBQ (7th july)

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Jul 062018
 

First day of wood week and a reasonable xc day. Top it off with a bbq from the kitchen, loads of Helen salads and side dishes plus a pud (strawberries and ice cream) all for £12.

Please phone and confirm as Helen has to pick up the order from the butcher and he closes early to go to a wedding.  Confirm asap, latest 12 am Sat.

Great XC Weekend in Prospect – 7/8 July

 1 Response »
Jul 062018
 

Bye-bye blue – The CUMULUS is back!

Yesterday was a cracker! Cloudbase to 7000ft with climbs nudging a reported 10 knots. I flew 275km in 445, Jon Hall and Richard Bennett 375km in KA – both traces on the ladder. Dave Rance (370km), Julian (210km), Dave & Rod, Mark Williams, Mike Dodwell and Steve Ward all went XC, please, please put your flights on the ladder, so the wider gliding community can see what a great XC site the Mynd is!

Looks like a proper good XC weekend in prospect – cumulus, 5000ft bases and light winds too, so the perfect start to Wood Week (but equally good for plastic of course!!)

Best weather once again likely to be to our south and east, so any of the club tasks should be on, if you are stuck for ideas of where to go … http://www.bgaladder.co.uk/ClubTasks.asp

If you have a spare place in your two-seater, or you are interested in flying XC as P2, please let me (or the office) know and I’ll put you in contact with each other.

So get up to the Mynd and have some fun!

Mark

 Posted by at 10:39 am

Chair’s Thursday Blog

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Jul 052018
 
TaskWeek poster 2018

Hi everyone,  this is the regular Thursday posting to let you know what is coming up in the near future.

This week – The weather hasn’t been stellar for the school summer camp, however today is looking amazing. If you managed to get time off to fly today, remember to put your flight on the BGA ladder.

New road

Our new road is still holding up well despite the heat.  This is a most precious asset so please can you drive over it slowly to preserve it.

Your team this weekend is:

Saturday:   Guy Hartland, Dave D’Arcy

Sunday:  Roger Andrews, Matthew Cook, Guy Hartland, Mike Dodwell

 

Forthcoming events

Wood week – 7th – 14th July

Wood Week 2018 starts this Saturday. Do come up and join in the fun and flying.

TaskWeek poster 2018

Task week – 18th – 27th August Book your place NOW – please call or email the office asap.

Task Week is designed to encourage ALL pilots to fly Cross Country Tasks. As such, it is an inclusive activity, a bit of friendly competition – not an occasion for the club pundits to whizz round and take all the points!   It is the culmination of the year’s Cross Country Development Programme and introduces an element of competition prior to pilots flying either Rockpolishers or Regional competitions. It is open to any pilot holding a Bronze “C” with a Cross Country Endorsement.
We will also have 2 seat gliders participating, to give ALL pilots the opportunity to experience cross country flying, even if you are not yet solo, or don’t yet have your Cross Country Endorsement. This is an excellent training opportunity to fly with some top class cross country pilots in top class gliders. Please book your place ASAP by calling or emailing the office.

The event is split in to 3 classes so that pilots compete against other pilots of similar skill and experience level. This year we are introducing a new scoring system to try to even things out between the classes and to avoid the skewed results from a single fast flight on a long task.

Please book the week off, ensure this is in your diary, and lets look forward to some wonderful weather. It will help you develop our skills no matter what standard you are at. More info here.

 

Reviews please!

If you’ve visited us or flown with us then it would be really great if you could take a moment to pop over to Tripadvisor and give the club a quick review. Here is the link. NB: It is important for the integrity of our entry on the website, that people who have responsibility for running the club (committee members) or for delivering the service (staff members) do NOT do a review, as this is against the rules and Tripadvisor could remove our entry entirely!

chairman@midlandgliding.club

Task Suggestions for Thu 5 July

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Jul 042018
 

All tasks start and finish at MYN

Task A: BCW-BAD-SOA (300km)

Task B: BCW-SOA (209km)

Task C: GRM-DRO (138km)

Task D: SH3-CLE (70km)

All tasks are variations of the same generally SE theme. Choose one that fits with your experience and expectation, but be prepared to fall-back if the day doesn’t develop as predicted.

Best leave site before noon – it will be much harder work to get away in the afternoon. Your return with a 5000+ft base predicted, will enable you to be on final glide from a long way out – that’s the theory anyway!!

Only significant NOTAM appears to be a Royal flight out of Kemble, but that’s all wrapped up by 11:10 local. However please double check my analysis and check again in the morning.

If you fly Task A, you’ll likely be crossing the Gloucestershire (Staverton) feathers to the east of the airfield. Their radar tells them our position, but not our height, which clearly makes them a little nervous. Good practice to give them a call (128.550) and let them know your position, height and intentions. They are very friendly, and it’s all good for safety and the power world’s perception of us.

See you tomorrow.

Mark

 Posted by at 7:27 pm

Don’t Miss these XC Opportunities

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Jul 032018
 

The models are very upbeat about this Thursday 5 July, all the way through the weekend and including Monday 9 July. Light winds, high bases, and yes… cumulus!!!

The detail may change, but now is the time to start re-arranging your calendar to make room for some XC flying.

If you are stuck for ideas on where to go, the club tasks (at this stage) all look on. Go to http://www.bgaladder.co.uk/ClubTasks.asp and scroll down to find the MGC Club Tasks. Discuss your task on the day with the No 1.

Lots of cut silage fields at the moment in our part of the world. There won’t be endless opportunities this season, so you should really be aiming to capitalise on at least one of these days.

If you have a spare place in your two-seater, or you are interested in flying XC as P2, please let me know and I’ll put you in contact with each other.

We’ll aim to publish some task suggestions the night before. So check the NOTAMS, make your plans, and maybe see you there?

Mark

 Posted by at 3:30 pm