MIDLAND GLIDING CLUB

Hi everyone, its time for my weeekly blog again.

I’m afraid I can’t give you much encouragement about the weather for the weekend as it is going to be rain and drizzle for most of the time and strong south weaterly winds.  However it’s a good opportunity to try out the simulator or make a start on clearing out the old workshop.  My apologies for the content being much the same as last week but not a lot happens this time of the year.  However we have enjoyed some stunningly good weather this week enabling folk to fly.  Sadly the next couple of weeks don’t look great but keep an eye on the forecasts as things can change very quickly.

Weekend Duty Team
Saturday
Mike Greenwood (No 1), Steve Male (No2), Clive Crocker (No 3), Walter Baumann (TLs), Peter Orchard (winch), Laurent Couval (LD)
Sunday
William Brewis (No 1), Steve Male (No2), Clive Crocker (No 3), Peter Orchard (winch), Liz Adlard (LD)

Annual General Meeting
The club AGM will be held on 23rd March in the clubhouse starting at 1700 hours.  The committee has been short of members for a while and John O’Reilly and Guy Hartland are standing down this year so we really do need some volunteers to take up the slack.  I shall be standing for election as Chairman but I would really welcome some competition.  Nomination forms are available for download from the club website in the ‘Policies, Rules and Documents’ section of the ‘Members Area’, or by clicking here.

BGA Conference
The British Gliding Association Sporting Conference takes place on Saturday at the Nottingham Belfry Hotel.  Anyone can attend for free and there are always a lot of suppliers and manufacturers with stands showing off their shiny new gliders and equipment and lots of people to talk to from Insurance Companies to Avionics suppliers as well as all the top people from the BGA eager to answer questions and give advice.  I shall be there representing the MGC and voting on its behalf.

Catering
Fay is giving up the catering franchise at the end of March and handing over to Helen who I know will maintain the very high standards to which we have become used.  I One of the knock on effects of this is that Helen will no longer be able to do the club house cleaning.  So we are looking for someone to fill that gap – urgently!  Of course it is a paid job.  If you know of anyone interested or you are yourself please contact me at chairman@midlandgliding.club.

MGC Wood Week Rally 13th to 20 July
Think ahead for the Wood Week Rally and get your Skylark, K6 or Olly 2B ready for a fun and challenging week at the Mynd.  Even if you aren’t lucky enough to own a wooden glider you can still turn up and take part with something a little newer.  There is a chance that our Wood Week will be dedicated as a bona fide Vintage Glider Club Rally.  Watch this space.

Motorglider
The Falke has now been fully integrated into the fleet and is available for many areas of training including doing nav exercises and getting a cross country endorsement.  We are adding qualified instructors to the list so take advantage of its availability.  It may seem expensive at £72 an hour but think how much twelve winch launches and 5 minute circuits would cost you.

Membership Renewals for 2019-20
The membership year ends at the end of next month.  It helps the club enormously if we can renew our individual and various memberships promptly.  This year we are offering everyone the opportunity to pay the subscription and flying fee by 12 equal monthly installments.  For most people on average this will be less than the cost of a tank of fuel for the car.  If you wish to take advantage of this arrangement it needs to be set up before the start of the year.  Please talk to Martin in the office as soon as possible.  Don’t forget that we are now legally obliged to record that you hold a qualifying medical so bring documentary proof.

Courses
The courses are filling really fast this year, happily, but this means if you want to get on one you need to act soon and get a place booked.  If you book and pay before the end of February you get a 10% discount.  There are still a few hours left!  Or if you book and pay before the end of March you might find another but different offer available.  See the ‘Courses‘ section on the website for all details of dates and costs.

Winter Lecture Series
The next lecture in the series is on Saturday 9th March at 1800 hours from Hugh Browning, the BGA Safety Officer.

Llanbedr Expedition
Mike Greenwood has arranged another expedition to Llanbedr in North Wales 23rd to 30 March this year.  It’s a huge airfield in an amazing Snowdonia landscape with great wave, thermal and ridge opportunities.  If you are interested in joining for a day during the expedition and flying in a club or private two seater as P2 get in touch with Mike.

Rockpolishers
Rockpolishers is the name of our InterClub League competition arranged over several weekends during the summer and sending a winning team to a Nation final.  It is a great introduction to competition flyng if you have never previously been involved, a great way to practice if you are planning doing something a bit more serious later and a really good fun weekend at someone elses airfield.  The dates have been announced so all we need now is a team and of course some crew.  Interested? Contact Mark Sanders our team captain or have a look on the club website section by clicking here.

Happy landings
Jon Hall
Acting Chairman

Hi everyone, its time for my weeekly blog again.

First off lets have a look at the likely weather for the weekend.  Saturday looks like quite a lot of high cloud cover with the wind SW at 30 knots overnight but slackening slightly to 20 knots by mid afternoon then continuing to slacken overnight and into Sunday.  The good news is that it is unlikely to rain but it could be foggy all day.  Sunday will start foggy but clear in the afternoon but probably won’t have much high cover.  So not a brilliant flying weekend but a great opportunity to do some early training or pitch in and do some of those jobs on the ‘lets get stuff done’ list.  All of this is derived from TopMeteo as I can’t be sure that RASP is giving accurate information.  Just now when I logged in to have a look, the date at the top of today’s page was for Tuesday 5th February and subsequent pages are wrongly dated.  Unfortunately, the rasp-uk.uk forecasts are failing at present as there is an update needed to the scripts that Paul Scorer used to maintain it. This started from the 6th of Feb when the site at NCEP switched to HTTPS only. You can get a two day more accurate forecast at rasp.stratus.org.uk while the fault is being fixed.

Weekend Duty Team
Saturday
Steve Male (No 1), Alan Swan (TLs), Geoff Dailey (winch), Dave Cole (LD)
Sunday
Nigel Lassiter (No 1), Geoff Dailey (winch), Mark Wakeham (LD)

Fleet
I’m sure you will all be glad to hear that new 8.33 kHz radios are being fitted into the club’s aircraft.  The K23 now has one fitted and it is fully functional.  Others will follow soon.  The Junior is in Roger’s workshop and will be available to fly before very long.  By the time the weather improves we will have a K23, a Junior and a K8 for solo pilots to fly.  The K23 also has a new trailer.  If you want to fly cross country in the K23 you need to understand the trailer pack and unpack.  Don’t forget that if the weather doesn’t play ball we have a fully functional simulator available for practice, trying new types and having a go at cross country tasks.

AGM
the club AGM will be held on 23rd March in the clubhouse starting at 1700 hours.  Nomination forms are available for download from the club website in the ‘Policies, Rules and Documents’ section of the ‘Members Area’, or by clicking here.

Membership Renewals for 2019-20
The membership year ends at the end of next month.  It helps the club enormously if we can renew our individual and various memberships promptly.  This year we are offering everyone the opportunity to pay the subscription and flying fee by 12 equal monthly installments.  For most people on average this will be less than the cost of a tank of fuel for the car.  If you wish to take advantage of this arrangement it needs to be set up before the start of the year.  Please talk to Martin in the office as soon as possible.  Don’t forget that we are now legally obliged to record that you hold a qualifying medical so bring documentary proof.

Motorglider
The Falke has now been fully integrated into the fleet and is available for many areas of training including getting a cross country endorsement.  We are adding qualified instructors to the list so take advantage of its availability.

Courses
The courses are filling really fast this year, happily, but this means if you want to get on one you need to act soon and get a place booked.  If you book and pay before the end of February you get a 10% discount.  See the ‘Courses‘ section on the website for all details of dates and costs.

MGC Wood Week Rally 13th to 20 July
Think ahead for the Wood Week Rally and get your Skylark, K6 or Olly 2B ready for a fun and challenging week at the Mynd.  Even if you aren’t lucky enough to own a wooden glider you can still turn up and take part with something a little newer.

Winter Lecture Series
The next lecture in the series is on Saturday 9th March at 1800 hours from Hugh Browning, the BGA Safety Officer.

Llanbedr Expedition
Mike Greenwood has arranged another expedition to Llanbedr in North Wales 23rd to 30 March this year.  It’s a huge airfield in an amazing Snowdonia landscape with great wave, thermal and ridge opportunities.  If you are interested in joing for a day during the expedition and flying in a club or private two seater as P2 get in touch with Mike.

Rockpolishers
Rockpolishers is the name of our InterClub League competition arranged over several weekends during the summer and senmding a winning team to a Nation final.  It is a great introduction to competition flyng if you have never previously been involved, a great way to practice if you are planning doing something a bit more serious later and a really good fun weekend at someone elses airfield.  The dates have been announced so all we need now is a team.  Interested? Contact Mark Sanders our team captain or have a look on the club website section by clicking here.

Happy landings
Jon Hall
Acting Chairman

Hi everyone, here is my blog for the coming weekend and reminders of what’s going on at the club over the next few weeks.

Here we are on Valentine’s Day and the weather may be showing signs of loving us after all.  Certainly it is very mild for this time of the year and ot looks set to continue for the next two weeks at least.  If you look at the club webcams you will see that the snow is gone from the airfield and the access by road is much improved.  The forecast for the weekend looks like a fair bit of sun on the ground most of the day and though there may not be a lot of thermal activity the wind is westerly at around 25 knots so should be a good ridge day.  Perfect training weather if you need some stick time.  Sunday sees a bit more mid and high level cloud in the morning but the promise of thermals in the afternoon with 3 to 4 octas of cumulus.  The wind however will go more south west and stengthen.

Duty Team
Saturday
Guy Hartland (No 1), Charles Carter (TLs), Stephen Alexander (winch), Glyn Macarthur (LD)
Sunday
Nigel Lassiter (No 1), Matthew Cook (TLs), Stephen Alexander (winch), Charles Page (LD)

Courses
A reminder that the Bronze Development Weekend is on the 2 and 3 March and the first residential course starts on 8th April.  If you book a course before the end of this month there is a 10% discount applied.

Caravan Applications
Caravan Applications must be deposited in the office by the last day of February.  A copy of the application form can be downloaded from here

AGM
Advance notice that the 2019 AGM will take place at the club on 23rd March.  There are places vacant on the committee at the moment which is putting more demands on all of the officers and members at present.  If you can give a little bit of time to help the club develop by being on the committee and looking after one of our key operational centres please pick up a form from the office.  We will be short of a Secretary this coming year as John O’Reilly is standing down due to other committments.  John has done a sterling job in supporting the club since his appointment and has made a huge difference to the efficient running of the club.  I really need a volunteer to take his place.  Get in touch with me if you think you might be interested by emailing chairman@midlandgliding.club

Instructor Meeting
There will be an Instructor Meeting at the club on 16th February starting at 1700 hours.  An agenda has been circulated but if you haven’t received it please contact the CFI by emailing cfi@midlandgliding.club

Latest addition to the Fleet
The purchase of the SZD Junior to add to our fleet is now complete and I trust it is safely with us on site by this time.  Once checked over by Roger and fully insured it will be available to members once they have done the type conversion.

A word on driving abroad after the end of March
Should we leave the EU after 28th March without a deal you will need an International Driving Permit to drive in most countries outside the UK.  There are three different types of IDP depending which country you want to drive in.  If you are passing through France to get to Spain for instance you may need two different ones.  They are avasilable from the Post Office at a cost of £5.50 each.  You can get them on demand and should only take 5 minutes but you will need a standard passport type photo (45mm x 35mm), your driving license and your passport if you only have a paper version.  IDPs last for only 12 months and must be renewed each year.  In the event of no deal you will need a Green Card to prove that you are insured when you drive abroad.  Ask your insurance company.  The good news is that you will not have to register your trailer with the DVLC as it is not a commercial trailer and weighs less than 3500kgs.  If it is commercial then you need to register it and get a unique registration plate for the trailer if it weighs more than 750kgs.  See gov.uk advice here
Don’t blame me – I didn’t vote for it.

Overnight snow (!) melted very quickly, early low cloud cleared and by noon the kit was out and we had 20kt square onto the ridge. Not many customers, but those that were there had lots of fun. Notably our visitors from Essex with their PW6; Riccardo made more progress with his training; Holly kept herself current; Darce edged closer to that BI rating; Liz got checked out. Showers threatened on occasion during the day, but in the event, they all missed us.

Six instructors on the field, so we could have accommodated quite a bit more flying.

Perhaps it marks the start of some better weather – let’s hope so!

Mark