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