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.
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!