Bicesters Gliding Blog

Condor and Oudie

2012-01-12T09:18:00.000Z

Thanks to John Delafield at LX Avionics I now have a shiny new Oudie and LX Nano ready for this years soaring season.

It has to be said that See You Mobile running on the Oudie is an awesome piece of software, it does however due to its nature have a large amount of configurable options. Enter Condor.

It is perfectly simple to connect the Oudie to Condor and in my case I am using the Bluetooth connection to do this. Once connected you simply create your task in the Oudie and when you launch in Condor the NEMA output goes live giving you the full GPS feed.

Here is my sample setup and a close up of the Oudie in action.

The great thing about using the Oudie with Condor is the ability to get familiar with the interface and tools before you take it into the glider, also for a guy like me without my own ship it is very easy to creat multiple profiles for the different club ships that I might fly, these profiles take in to affect the gliders polar and water loading etc..

Flying in Condor with the Oudie. Condors NEMA output means that you basically have the Oudie working as it would in the cockpit. Thankfully I have learned quite a few things that would of had be stuffed whilst while flying. One of them was that I inadvertently passed the start line whilst climbing before the start, See You started me and I could not figure out how to start again. Short pause read the manual, oh yes either hit go to and navigate back to the start or if you do not have the auto next after the start you have to press the start time indicator to agree with the start otherwise each time your cross the line it generates a new start time. The other big thing I have found is the airspace, whilst on a wave flight the other day for real I found myself constantly checking the map which detracts from ones lookout. with See You you simply tap the airspace ahead double check it against a current map to make sure its correct, or has been updated correctly and carry on. See You will then warn you when you are getting too close.

Finally is the Final glide, you can use the polar, bug, water settings etc.. which actually when you try to do the math can be quite often in correct. See You tells you what L/D you need to get back and what L/D you are currently doing. Both of these are pragmatic and are the actuals irrelevant of flies on the wings and the 20 gallons you have in each wing.

Highly recommended piece of software and method of learning to use it. I may start adding short how too's if anyone is interested.

Passenger to pilot Winter round up

2012-01-09T10:50:00.000Z

Been a little while since my last post so I thought I would add some more, especially after this weekend.

Not much flying in November and December, a total of six short circuit flights in K13's when weather and planning for Christmas allowed.

In what seems to be a tradition news years day saw the hanger doors opened and a K13 towed onto the field. about six of us turned up for some fun including our CFI, airfield manager and several other team members. Dave Watt was seen with his new cranium cam,

All though in the end he actually forgot to switch it to record so we didn't see them in action.

Leading up to the 7th of Jan I had been keeping an eye on the weather for that weekend to see which day would have the least cloud cover, expected 5/8 on sat and 6-7/8 on Sunday. Saturday looked OK but the wind was strong out of the North, until Fridays forecast when the wind swung westward meaning we could have wave on Saturday. I arrived at the club early, DI'd the Astir and headed out onto the field. Several coffees and an windy winch launch brought us to nearly lunch time and I decided to take a 4k tow into the blue to see what I could find. We headed west towards heyford and the old disused airbase and releasing at 4k over the eastern end of the runway I quickly realised that the eVario did not agree with the mechanical one. The eVario was showing a regular downward trend while the mechanical was showing 1-2kts up, the altimeter confirmed I was climbing so I turned off the eVario, which I suspect is having TE issues. Ahead I could see a wave bar but as I was climbing in the blue I decided to track across wind where I was. I no time at all I was passing 4500ft and as I turned 180 to head back along the bar I saw the lenticular forming to my east, a short tack to get me just above the leni was rewarded with 3kts. the next 25mins were spent exploring the western half of my 5nm from the airfield limit. After working my way to just short of 6500ft the lift was down to a knot and the cloud had started to fill in, mindful that I did not have the turn and slip working I picked my way down to 4000ft back below cloud base. I finished off the hour long flight with a final glide exercise, starting at 2k over heyford I ran the 5nm miles back to the airfield aiming to get there as quickly as possible with a 1000ft remaining didn't take long downwind with a ground speed of ~120knots.

Head over to U tube and search for lhitchins you can access my page and take a look at the 1 hour long flight in HD.

Spring will soon be here

2011-12-20T19:16:00.002Z

The soaring season seems like an eternity ago, the shortest day seems like it will never come, on some level I think SAD (seasonal affective disorder) must be more prevalent in glider pilots. Our sport is so seasonally dependant and in the UK the soaring season always seems so short.

The club is now getting ready for Christmas, the office is closed from the 20th of December until the 2nd of January.

Members are welcome to organise groups to fly over the holiday period. the Google calendar can be found at https://www.google.com/calendar/render?gsessionid=XNHcTjrLfB6LXz8TbPLwdAe

Login details found in the news letter.

I for one will try to get a flight or two during the holidays.

Passenger to pilot August through October 2011

2011-11-30T10:23:00.000Z

Work and family has me pretty tied up at the moment so I have been doing enough to maintain currency.

September I had some flying in DFR our Astir for a total time of around 40mins. Difficult day which was making it hard to get away for any lenth of time. I did a couple of winch flights in VE the twin acro aswell during September, finishing of the month with a flight short flight in a K13.

In October I managed to get converted into the Discus. After I had a check ride with one of the instructors I got a full brief and was told to take an aerotow to 4000ft to get a feel for it, after 3 attempts at getting airbourne behind the tug (small amount of PIO) the rest of the tow to 4k was fine. The Discus is a big step up in performance in comparison to the Astir and at times it almost seems as it does not want to come down, it is also a lot sharper on handling, hence the PIO on the initial ground run. After floating around for half an hour of so I carried out a good circuit and managed to get the thing landed reasonably smoothly, the picture looks a lot different when rounding out in a discus as compared to the astir and a K13. I decided I needed another go at the aerotow so took a 2k launch. The ground run was much better this time out, requiring only one attempt at getting airbourne. I managed to find some lift over the town and stayed airbourne for nearly 40mins before coming in. The landing was ok, got a tad slow on round out which meant it was a little bumpy, but hey its a learning curve.

I am now approaching 30hrs - with Bronze C done and my XC navigation exercise to do once we have a motor glider back I am looking forward to setting off into the blue (well with some nicely popped Cu's) next season.

Passenger to pilot windrushers style - August 2011

2011-08-31T13:04:00.000+01:00

I had one last attempt at the silver duration in a K8 at the end of July, I landed 2hrs 29minutes into the bid with a sore back and numb legs so it would have been silly to continue, its going to have to be done in a much roomier ship.

Due to the poor weather on my flying days the remainder of my august flying has been confined to circuit flying off the winch, with one flight of 20 odd minutes thanks to some sort of ridge lift off of the railway bank in a stern south westerly maintaining me at 1200ft.

I took the K21 for a 3000ft aerotow for currency and after being towed through a massive sink street to near RAF croughton I released near a promising cloud only to find the Cu's were not honest, broken lift with more decending than climbing involved. I ran across the sink showing 8kts down in places at 80+kts and arrived back at the airfield at near circuit height. I then climbed to 1500ft in half a knot and then headed into land.

More circuit practice at the end of the month, three flights in a K13 using these to practice stalls, wing drops steep turns etc...

I have now revised my goals from getting silver to having my Bronze with XC wrapped up by the end of the year, work and a new baby have meant my flyign frequency has reduced and hey, whats the rush.

The Rasp skew T explained

2011-08-04T12:54:00.000+01:00

I have seen on a few occasions puzzled faces surrounding a computer screen, with lots of head scratching and discussions going on and most occurrences these are down to people trying to interpret a sounding for the following day.

I will do my best to explain as simply as possible, so here is a sample sounding.

So first we look at the scales, the left and right vertical axes are height shown in pressure hPa and 1000's of feet, with most soundings showing the boundary layer up to the tropopause. The horizontal axis shows us temperature in degrees Celsius.

The red line shows us the ELR or Environmental Lapse Rate which is the rate at which the atmosphere cools without any added energy. Our blue line shows us the dew point which is the temp the air needs to be in order for it to be fully saturated. Now, the key thing to note is a skew T is not like a standard graph with the point axis (temp) (moisture) travelling straight up the chart, you will notice the orange lines from the temps are slanted up to the right, you will also notice another set of orange diagonal lines sloping from bottom right to top left, these are our air parcel DALR or Dry Adiabatic Lapse Rate which is the rate at which the parcel cools while it is not saturated. The reason they slant is because if the were vertical the chart would be very large and wouldn't make much sense which is why they are skewed, hence the skew T (tephigram)

There are also two green lines, one dotted, which is the water content at a given temp or how saturated it is.we then have the solid green lines which are more vertical, these show the SALR or Saturated Adiabatic Lapse Rate which shows the cooling of the Parcel one it has become saturated.

Also on the right is the wind direction and speed with altitude.

So lets take a closer look,

So on this skew T we can see that the Environmental surface temp for the given time is going to be around 25dc we can also see that the dew point is around 15dc at the surface, Tracing both lines up the graph shows us the general state of the atmosphere in terms of temp and moisture content. Now we can also see a handy dotted line, this shows us the forcasted max temp for the day and what happens to a parcel of air once it reaches this temp. so lets look at its journey.

So our parcel of air (thermal bubble) reaches critical temp of say 26dc (can be higher if it remains on the ground longer, warming up more before it is triggered) it is then triggered into the air. As it begins to rise it expands and cools (I wont get into the intricacies of pressure etc...) at the DLAR or ~3dc per 1000ft which roughly follows the dotted line. As you follow our parcel up draw a line from the dew point Parallel to the nearest moisture content dotted line up until it meets our parcel (something like this)

What happens here is that our parcel has cooled to the dew point, this means it can no longer hold onto its water vapour so it starts to condense, this gives us the LCL or Lifted condensation level or Cloud base for glider pilots and if you look at the scales and apply the dew point difference of 10dc x 400 = 4000ft its almost bang on. from there on the parcel follows the green (more vertical) SALR of around 1.5dc per 1000ft the SALR is less than the DALR because condensation releases latent heat stored during the evapouration process.

A little further up the ELR (red line) you can see a bump indicating a slight inversion (where the air warms slightly or doesn't cool as quick) Now our parcel has saturated before reaching this hump meaning we will have clouds, if as in the example below the parcel does not saturate before the inversion then we have a blue day.

If it looks like this then we will have Cu's

You can see the LCL and then cloud formation begins until it bumps into the inversion, in this example the dew point drops away quickly afterwards which should produce classic Cu's with little spread out or over development.

Our first example showed the parcel saturating and then following the SALR, it misses (more to the point punches through) the inversion because at that altitude the parcel is still warmer than the surrounding air so continues to rise, now we get into the classic over development situation that causes large CuNim's. The number of degrees between our parcel and the ELR at 500hPa or ~18kft gives us our lifted index in this case a -2, any minus number here indicates instability and the greater it is the more instability there is. The total area between the parcel dotted line and out ELR give us our CAPE or Convective Available Potential Energy which shows how much energy is potentially available, the larger the CAPE value the more powerful any resulting storm/rain shower would be.

The RASP skew T's are not bad, there are some inaccuracies, I usually compare 2 different tephigrams and also a couple of forecasts which give good boundary layer coverage. the only thing to bear in mind is that most models used to forecast diverge after around 48 hours becoming less accurate, they can show you a trend but I always say "oh this weekend looks OK" on Monday or Tuesday and then pick the day to fly on Friday as you have a much better idea.

Hope this helps all those that have been baffled by skew T's and if anyone has any other MET related questions please feel free to ask.

Bicester Regionals 2011 - Saturday 30th

2011-07-30T07:54:00.002+01:00

Welcome to saturday two race fans.

Weather for today looks good for today, Cu's forming and RASP has scored it a five, it seems to go down hill out to the far west and east but a band running north west to south east looks great.

Lets see what we get on what could be the best day so far...

Bicester Regionals 2011 - Friday 29th

2011-07-29T12:42:00.000+01:00

Grey orrible day!!

So we are Scrubbed!!

mind you who can really complain, A british summer and we have had more days of racing in a week than the guys at Nitra have done in three weeks.

I have heard that there is some Go-Karting to be done, or a Sports v Opens rounders match. My money would be on the sports and I will tell you why. Open class ships are generally rather expensive and are therefore flown by people who are at a certain stage in life!! know what I mean, there are some exceptions though. The sports class are generally the young whipper snappers who usually being of limited funds cant get an open ship. So it comes to pass that any sporting event between these two requiring some physical action is going to be won by the sports.

Thursdays results

2011-07-29T10:02:00.000+01:00

Top four for the open class,

Derren Francis Owain Walters /

Ventus 2

12:23:18

15:18:47

02:55:29

92.8km/h

271.4km

1000

Watt Dave

Ventus 2

12:22:45

15:18:40

02:55:55

92.6km/h

271.4km

996

490

Eyles Steve

LS 4

12:22:26

15:36:14

03:13:48

90.2km/h

291.5km

955

KPE

Holden Mark

Duo Discus

12:23:35

15:33:48

03:10:13

87.3km/h

276.9km

903

Top four for the sports class,

EAR

Smith Darren

PIK 20 D

12:04:18

15:05:29

03:01:11

84.1km/h

253.9km

1000

768

Ellis Will

LS 7

12:06:32

15:14:25

03:07:53

79.4km/h

248.6km

915

224

Craig Gordon

LS 4

12:03:33

15:20:41

03:17:08

77.3km/h

253.9km

877

846

Roberts Philippa

ASW 15

11:59:23

15:32:46

03:33:23

77.2km/h

274.5km

875

615

Tomlinson Mike

LS 4

11:56:22

15:19:10

03:22:48

74.3km/h

251.2km

824

Bicester Regionals 2011 - Thursday 28th July

2011-07-28T10:18:00.003+01:00

Good morning race fans,

Woke up this morning to some fog driffting around, which I am glad to say has burned off quite rapidly.

Weather for our area looks ok from now until around 1pm where there is then a risk of over development and spreadout.

Briefing is at 10am lets wait and see, I have also heard rumours that tasks are set already.

Bicester Regional - Wednesday 27th 2011

2011-07-28T08:17:00.000+01:00

Well from wear I was sat the weather look really rubbish for today, there was plenty of grid squatting until midafternoon when the open class boys and girls were sent on a 2hr AAT

Here are the top five finishers for the day

1. 290 Bromwich Bob ASG 29/18m 15:28:07 17:44:15 02:16:08 61.9km/h 140.4km 444
2. K5 Mark Smith Bob King / ASW 27 15:36:29 17:49:17 02:12:48 57.2km/h 126.6km 428
3. M2 Derren Francis Owain Walters / Ventus 2 15:26:50 18:16:08 02:49:18 53.7km/h 151.7km 416
4. DW Watt Dave Ventus 2 15:21:47 17:35:22 02:13:35 52.8km/h 117.5km 413
5. J15 Mitchell Terry Nimbus 3/25.5m 15:21:29 17:48:20 02:26:51 46.5km/h 113.8km 392

Bicester Regionals 2011 - Tuesday 26th July

2011-07-26T09:54:00.007+01:00

Good morning race fans,

Well we have woken up to a overcast day, with forecasted heavy cloud cover and some light rain it looks as though we are going to get a day off, but we will wait and see.

Briefing is at 10am and its suspected the day will be scrubbed.

Well 12:35 and no scrub just yet, the MET folks have been watching a potential clearing in the sat images so are holding out, I am not optimistic.

12:48 its reportedly brightening up and opens will go on task A in around 15mins.

Sports and Open launched on Task A and some have set off already, time is 14:08

Finishers started arriving by 16:27, In the open class Derren F and Owain W pipped Mr.Watt by .1 of a km/h at 85.5km/h over 251kms with Mark Holden coming in third at 79.2km/h

Sports class started to arrive back at 16:50 first place for the day was Will Ellis again with 82.8km/h over 154.7kms, he may have this sown up if he keeps going like this. Second was Gerald Bass with 79.9km/h over 159kms. Third was Darren Smith with 77.9km/h over 157kms

So unofficially, Mr. Watt heads the open class and Will Ellis heads the sports class, can they keep it up for the rest of the week.

Weather looks to be generally improving for the rest of the competition with the exception of Friday perhaps so there should be plenty more quality racing to be had.

Bicester regionals 2011 - Monday 25th july

2011-07-25T18:29:00.002+01:00

Modest tasks set today due to high cirrus and potentially ropey conditions on track.

Sports got a short 138km run out while the open class got a 191km run out.

Launching just after lunch time our first starters from the sports class headed out at 12:26 with the open class had there first starters some 15mins later.

The tasks were much better suited to the conditions today which resulted in most of the field making it around the course, including my mate Ollie Bosanko, unless he attached his logger to someone Else's glider.

Dave Watt took the day win again today with Steve Eyles and Bob Bromwich finishing 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Will Ellis took the sports class win in his LS7 with Pete Stratten in second and steve Codd in third

Not sure of the overall standings at the moment as they have not been published.
Check out http://www.windrushers.org.uk/competitions/regionals2011/index.htm#nogo for all the latest details on the competition.

Bicester Regionals 2011 - Sunday 24th

2011-07-25T10:49:00.001+01:00

A fine day for flying, Bicester was a bit of a blue hole and the B/S ratio being near or under 5 meant thermals were a little ragged, whispy clouds started out at 2200 and then pushed up slowly before locally going blue I can confirm this after spending two and a half hours buzzing around in a K8, not that K8's buzz around you understand. North and south on task looked ok with a nice scattering of cu's

The tasks were set, Opens went on 406kms and sports went on 311kms. There was a short delay to the start after a couple of the club gliders were seen failing to get away. The sniffer was then launched and after a positive report the grid was fired into the sky.

The sports class day win was Will Ellis with Mr. Stratten in second and Norman Parry in third. 50% of the grid either didn't start or didn't get round which showed it was a tough task for yesterdays conditions.

The Open class day win was Dave Watt with an average speed of 92.5km/h, Martin Durham was second and Mark Holden was third. we had 8 non finishers out of 22 and my mate Ollie Bonsanko landed out again, I am beginning to wonder whether I should disregard all of the advice he ever gave me while teaching me to fly :O)

On a side note, we had the new 18m Shark demo with its gas turbine sustainer onsite yesterday and what a beautiful machine it is. a lucky few got to fly it and with a price tag of an on the road price of 118K I am not sure I'll see to many more. the reviews of the demo model were quite positive, common feedback indicates the left side of the cockpit needs a bit of a rethink but apart from that people loved it.

Bicester Regionals 2011

2011-07-23T18:28:00.000+01:00

Today marked the first day of the regionals at Bicester and although I was not onsite today the large grid looked very impressive as I drove past the airfield this morning. Unfortunately my weather forecast held true with large spread out from the north east meaning that after the delayed, task reduced, and combined grid got away on a 166km course there were a large amount of landouts and some people even returning not long after the start. Ms Roberts landedout somewhere that enabled her to eat scones and cream tea...... The scores are yet to be on the doors so check out http://www.windrushers.org.uk/competitions/regionals2011/index.htm for the latest news and results.

The weather for tomorrow looks like a slight improvement on today with CB around 3500 - 4000ft but there is still some uncertainty on the extent of the moist layer being blown in from the north irish see. We could see some look cloud to start then looking fine until after lunch time where the risk of spread out is again a real possibility.

I will be around tomorrow doing some flying of my own so I am hoping it stays clear.

Lee

Weather for the 23rd and 24th of July

2011-07-22T08:46:00.002+01:00

Good morning everyone, lets take a look at the weather for this weekend.

Saturday - Sea level pressure will be around 1013mb - winds from 0 - 4000ft amsl will be from the north east ranging from 10 - 15kts, above 4000ft amsl winds will be 20kts + Surface temp will be around 19dc by peak heating. visibiity will be around 20km cloud base will start out around 2500ft amsl and push up to 3500ft during the day where spread out is expected due to high level moist air being blown in from the north Irish sea.

Sunday - Sea level pressure will be around 1010mb - winds from 0 - 4000ft amsl will be from the north east again at around 10 - 15kts increasing above 4000ft to 25kts Surface temp will be around 21dc by peak heating, visibility will be in excess of 20km, cloud base will be starting out around 2500ft pushing up to nearly 6000ft amsl by the end of the day, early high level overcast expected to burn off leading to rapidly improving conditions.

RASP has scored Saturday as a 2 out of 5 and Sunday is scored as a 4 out of 5
The one major uncertainty with this forecast is the amount of moisture being carried in from the north irish sea, different models are not really in agreement yet as to the extent of the cloud cover over the forecast period.

Passenger to pilot windrushers style - June - July 2011

2011-07-15T14:53:00.002+01:00

Well I have been pretty quiet recently, busy job schedule and a new baby arrival has seen my gliding activities take a hit. I have maintained currency flying when ever possible but as we are approaching mid July I would have liked to have been XC endorsed and on my way towards my silver by now, but as yet I still need to do the XC navigation exercise.

I had a flight on the 4th June in the Astir DFR, just a 2000ft Aetotow with the weather not being great I had 13mins of flight time, but I aced the landing. On the 20th I flew OUGC's astir FEF up the winch, I didn't manage to get away and landing back at the field I found that the wheel brake didn't work well and then seized up so it was declared U/S and I went home.

I was back at the airfield on the 14th of July after the misses, seeing me go stir crazy, gave me a hall pass. I got the to airfield nice and early knowing that a visiting pilot wanted the Astir for his 50k I had settled on flying the K8. I launched at 10am to 1400ft but was quickly down to circuit height, on the downwind leg and committed to landing I bumped into 2+kts up, I bypassed it and landed. 10mins later I took another launch and got 1600ft this time and immediately headed for the same spot the lift was at earlier. I ran into 1-2kts up and screwed away gradually gaining height, at 3000ft I was watching the club K13's trying to join me with out much success but it seemed the large aerotow grid was convinced and started to launch. At 4000ft I decided to make the 10k trip to upper heyford, arriving with plenty of height to spare I circled for a bit and headed back. I did a few stalls on the way back and arrived near the airfield at 2500ft, I was greeted with a stack of K13s and glass ships in a thermal and joined amongst them, very quickly however the K8 zipped up the middle of the thermal and I was soon on top of the pile as we all broke off and headed in different directions. After an hour and with a sore butt I popped the brakes and headed back. Later that afternoon with currency in mind I decided to aerotow the K8 to 2k for a quick flight, but continuing good conditions saw me at 5000ft flying alongside a k13 carrying our CEO and his student, they headed for silverstone but I bumped into the big red line on the map that exists for non XC pilots and headed back landing 43mins after launch.

Great day and I have to say despite the sore but my affection for the little K8 has grown a little more, ok it cant penetrate into wind but it climbs really well and is so easy to fly. Visiting Astir man had declared Lasham for his silver distance which would have been over 80K but he landed out somewhere short of that but hopefully still over 50K

Weather for June 4th and 5th

2011-06-02T12:53:00.005+01:00

Initial outlook for Saturday and Sunday look quite good, temps around 20dc on Saturday with scattered CU's at ~3500ft, winds out of the north east around 10kts. Sunday looks slightly cooler with the winds increased to 15kts, this may drag cool sea air across the region from the wash producing quite alot of cloud overnight into Sunday.

I will update tomorrow afternoon once the models are in a little better alignment.

**UPDATE**

Saturday - Pressure around 1024mb @ sea level - winds from the north east @ 10kts - temp ~20dc by peak heating with the dew point around 12dc putting scattered cumulus clouds around 3500ft by early afternoon. In general it should be an ok day, early low cloud caused by the cool sea air being blown in from the wash should lift quite quickly with the cloud base rising and slowly turning blue as we get well into the afternoon.

Sunday - Pressure around 1014mb @ sea level - winds from the north east @ 12-15kts - temp will be around 15dc with the dew point around 8dc this puts the cloud base around 2800ft at best and it looks as though the inversion will not lift during the day. Again with the forecasted cool air from the wash being blown in it will start out cloud and improve slightly during the day but it still looks to be around 4-6 /8s cloud cover.

Passenger to pilot windrushers style, May 2011 update

2011-05-27T09:17:00.003+01:00

Hello all,

After a very hectic April getting my Bronze done May has been a relatively quiet month. I have been consolidating my Aerotow work taking a couple of flights in the Acro. OUGC's K21 is also back on line and I had a short flight in that also. The CFI is now happy for me to convert to the Astir and I aim to be up and running in this ship over the next few weeks, its key to fly this ship as much as possible locally to get used to it so I am ready when the time comes to break the apron strings and head away from the airfield. Vicky our midweek winch driver managed her 5 hours for silver over the weekend, after a broken weak link and some delays at the launch point it looked as though it was ebbing away. She got away after scratching around for 10mins leaving the wheel down as she went as it looked as though she would be back any minute. 5hours and 16mins later she returned to the airfield with a very square bum but pleased none the less.

On the same day I was introduced to Pat who pilots the aerobatic MDM Fox, we took a tow to 4000ft and Pat set about teaching me some aerobatics, we concentrated on the roll and I can tell you its a real rush flying inverted, you hang from your straps and can see the ground zipping along below as most of the manoeuvres start from around a 100kts. Awesome flight and something I will definitely do again.

On Friday the 27th we were turfed out of work at lunch times "I love Friday Fatwa's" I decided to head to the airfield with ambitions of getting into the clubs Asitir for a few short circuit flights as it was quite overcast and not doing much at all. Got to the field at 1pm and dragged the Astir over to the launch point, after a good amount of time getting a briefing the weather had begun to improve with the cloud cover breaking up rapidly. It was suggested at that point that I should take it for a nice high aerotow to get a good feel for the glider. 20mins later I was pulling the bung at 4000ft a couple of hundred feet above cloud base, after making a couple of nice easy turns at various speeds and doing some stalling exercises I was now nearly a 1000ft below cloud base. looking up at a nice dark solid base I could see the CFI's lead and follow team approaching cloud base rapidly, I was able to hook into the same thermal and rode 6kts up to the base of the cloud as they headed off into the distance. One of my ambitions ever since going solo was to be able to fly at cloud base having got there myself and then stick my hand out of DV panel and catch a bit of cloud, having now achieved that I can honestly say that I am more hooked on this sport than ever before. Over the next hour I pottered around repeating climbs from 2k back to cloud base which ended up being around 4500ft, a sore bum set in so I headed back, upon landing I found that I had been up for over two and a quarter hours, what an amazing couple of hours that was.

Weather for 28th 29th and 30th May 2011

2011-05-26T20:28:00.002+01:00

Not to much to say about the weather this weekend really, in fact a really brief summary would be dull and damp.

Saturday, Sunday and Monday - Low pressure systems will be in charge for the weekend with frontal systems moving in from the west at regular intervals. the weekend will start out cloudy and damp and a bit blustery moving to more lively wet weather by the end of the weekend. temperatures will be around 14 -18 degress, winds out of the west ~15kts gusting to 30+kts at times.

Weather for the 21st and 22nd of May

2011-05-20T08:34:00.003+01:00

Well things are looking quite good for this weekend, so lets take a look in detail. Currently there is a weak cold front pushing in from the North West off a twin low pressure system, this will become increasingly weak but produce enough instability over the weekend for some good soaring conditions.

Saturday - Pressure will be around the 1020 mark decreasing slowly as the low moves in. winds will be out of the South East steady around 12kts gusting to 17 - 20kts at times. Sfc temp will be around 18dc at lunch time with the dew point a good ten degrees behind. Cloud base is forecast to start around 2500ft AMSL and push up to nearly 4000ft AMSL by peak heating. a nice inversion followed by a rapid dew point depression should limit any over development and spread out.

Sunday - Pressure around the same as saturday slowly increasing during the day, temp will be around the same also. Winds will be much stronger - 18-20kts out of the west and there is also the risk of some over development due to a shallower inversion and higher CAPE values.

Flight & Bite

2011-05-14T20:34:00.002+01:00

Windrushers Hosted its second successful flight and bite evening last night. Groups book in advance and then turn up at 5pm ready for the pre flight brief. after the briefing is completed in the class room the group heads out to the launch point where they are then introduced to the instructors and their flying machines. The group then spend a couple of hours experiencing the thrill of a winch launch and the spectacular evening views over rural Oxfordshire. After we are all flown out the group retires to the bar area where a beautiful BBQ spread is laid on and everyone gets to swap stories and photographs of their flights over what ever tipple takes your fancy.

Midweek forecast for weekend starting Fri 29th ""UPDATED**

2011-04-27T11:44:00.003+01:00

Ok, here we go, dont think this weekend could be much different from last.

Friday - With High pressure to the north and a low to the south, winds will be out of the east at around 10-12kts gusting to ~18kts. there is forecast to be a stationary front over the region which will bring low cloud and drizzle to start the day. As the day progress early cloud will dissipate but due to the instability, forecast high CAPE values and a lifted index of -4 it could quickly over develop into storms with potential hail and strong winds. temps around 16 - 18 degrees C at peak heating during the day

Saturday - The developing cold front should start to push its way south over night into Saturday, a generally cloudy start will improve slowly as the day goes on. Cloud base is forecast to be around 2000ft by lunch time with only small CU's around, with the winds out of the north east at ~15kts gusting to ~20kts. Temps will be around the 20degree mark but will feel slightly cooler in the increased wind.

Sunday- Will be sunny and windy, winds out of the east around 15kts, inversion will be around 3500ft and with such a depress dew point it is likely to remain blue. The blue combined with the wind will make soaring quite difficult.

Monday - Will be an improvement on Sunday, slightly warmer and brighter, still windy and with a depressed dew point a blue day for sure. As with sunday the Blue and wind will mean any meaningful soaring will be difficult at best.

Lee

Easter weekend review

2011-04-26T15:21:00.002+01:00

Recently the dominating high pressure has bought us calm blue days with low inversions and poor visibility. Good friday was a fine day a little cloudy to start but it turned blue quickly, with temps closing in on the early 20's and it being very hazy any serious flying was a little tough going.

Saturday was, in the words of a pundit, "bloody atomic" Started out blue but by 11am temps were well into the 20's. A high inversion and good dew point separation saw cu's forming by lunch time with the cloud base in excess of 6000ft AMSL, I unfortunately was not flying but I have heard of great reports of beautiful cross country flights in great visibilty and regular 7kt climbs to cloud base. I watched envious from my garden chores as glider after glider topped the winch found a near by thermal and then proceeded to climb very very quickly to cloud base and disappear into the distance. The only slight mis-hap of the day was a certain unnamed pilot in the Astir got a bit lost after mistaking Buckingham for Bicester. After realising the mistake and getting low heading back into the sun made a calmly executed field landing just outside Steeple Claydon to the east. A quick walk, interruption of a garden party and a few phone calls later the Astir was back in its trailer on its way back to the club.

Sunday although warm had very poor visibility and really was not a patch on Saturday. I was on Duty bank holiday Monday and it started out kinda slow, the pundits had they're ships on the grid early but it was not until well after noon that it started to get going, we watched John Potter take a launch in the K8 and climb his way downwind, to the point where we were thinking of starting a land out distance sweep stake, he then returned the airfield nicely at circuit height only to climb away again for a total of 1 and a 1/2hrs. By now the going was good varying tasks of 200K+ were called and the grid got away via a mixture of Aerotow and winch. Phil Gardner had an hour and a half plus flight in the twin acro locally and I finished off the day at 5pm by aerotowing it to 3000ft, a perfect evening flight with thermals still touching 4kts in places.

Well as I sit here writing this the weather has turned decidedly colder and the outlook for this weekend is not looking so good. I will produce a mid week forecast this week as I am in the country, stay tuned.
Lee

Condor soaring simulator

2011-03-23T10:19:00.004Z

As an early solo pilot with out any cross country training as of yet, I am working towards my bronze, I have been looking at ways to practice soaring and cross country flying and so far I have identified three ways.

1) Local soaring - if you can time it so that you have one of the club machines during a part of the day when its soarable, not such an issue in the summer but spring and autum it can be difficult as the window is small, you can practice in the 5nm radius of the airfield.

2) Grab a ride - if you are lucky you can hitch a lift in a two seater with someone who is off on a cross country. You are generally limited to the hieght of the season and spare seats are few and far between.

3) Condor - is a simulator designed to closely mimic real soaring and cross country conditions and is accurate to such a degree that the BGA use it in their simulator and I have found vast communities of real life pilots around the world that use condor to train and keep in practice when they are not soaring for real. The best thing I have seen by far is condor boot camps, clubs set up a server to host LAN connections, you get a bunch of condor pilots together in the same room and go racing. The sessions are usually run by experienced cross country pilots and all that is required is a half desent laptop, condor and a joystick. from what I have seen and read its a great way to keep sharp or get some wisdom off old hands from the comfort of a training room and with minimal expense.

I guess where I am going with this is I would like to find out if there is a reasonably sized condor user base locally, even within the club, and if there is enough interest starting up maybe a boot camp or Monday night league style events, As well as LAN the server can host across the internet so people could also join remotely. these events have been a huge success in other parts of the world and especially in the states at improving cross country pilots skills and preventing rustyness in the off season.

Please check out http://soaringcafe.com/category/condor/ to see more on Condor style events and also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaHCUJvbEsc&feature=related to see a video of Condor multiplayer in action.

please leave a comment if you are a condor user and/or just interested in running one of these cool events. or drop me a mail at lhitchins@aiscorp,com

Lee

UPDATED 20th Mid week forecast for weekend 19th - 20th March

2011-03-15T11:47:00.008Z

UPDATED - Forecast held for the weekend with Saturday being beautiful with plenty of soaring flights of over an hour. Sunday Started out with a high overcast as predicted which broke up towards the end of the day.

Saturday - Pressure - 1033 MSLP
Winds - South west 3-7kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 10dc dew point -2dc
Clouds - expect a blue day
Sun - Clear day cloud wise some haze expected below the inversion.
Rain - less than 10% chance
Soaring - Possible to ~2500ft amsl blue conditions will make it more difficult RASP
shows 3.5kt climbs

Sunday - Pressure - 1032
Winds - South easterly 5 - 10kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 10dc dew point -0.5dc
Clouds - Divergence of models indicates large dew point depression lower boundry level but high level cloud cover possible which could kill off thermal activity
Sun - Again clear skies with haze below the inversion at 3000ft amsl high level cloud possible at 10000ft amsl
Rain - less than 10% chance
Soaring - Possible to ~27ooft amsl RASP shows 3.5kt climbs

Weekend of the 12th and 13th

2011-03-14T09:02:00.003Z

Unfortunately I had to watch a lovely day go by on Saturday from the streets of Oxford, there was plenty of flying done with some good soaring flights. The glass ships are all starting to be extracted from they're trailers and have they're legs stretched ready for the soaring season.
Sunday started out really grey and without checking the forecast one would of assumed it would remain that way for the rest of the day, The forecast however showed the cloud base breaking up into scattered Cu's, lifting and eventually bluing up. The airfield was reasonably quiet due to the early weather, come the afternoon glass ships were being unpacked again and our CFI had is ship out as well. I managed to grab a hand full of flights in the little K8 but my soaring skills let me down and I only managed to stay up for 18 minutes with a net gain of 600ft, still the weather is definitely on the change and it wont be long until we are well into the soaring season.

We also have a new ab-initio Katie Harris, Katie moved down to bicester to teach rug rats and being a bit of the adventurous type wanted to see what windrushers was about. She came, had a flight and now I am pleased to say is hooked, she has even taken a trip to Welshpool this weekend with some other club members in the robin. Andrew Preece did some check flights on Sunday and then continued with his early solo flying, nice work Andrew and keep it up.

Lee

weekend forecast 12th - 13th

2011-03-11T00:12:00.004Z

Unfortunately I have been jetting around Europe this week so the forecasting has gone a little out the window.

Saturday looks flyable with some overcast and light to moderate wind conditions, clearing as the day goes on before rain moves in overnight.

Sunday looks as though it will be much the same but with an increased chance of rain in the morning brightening up after lunch.

Passenger to pilot windrushers style - March/April 2011

2011-03-05T14:41:00.007Z

Hi All, Pretty short pluck for March and April, I have been traveling round with work for the majority of the time so I have been limited with my flying and blogging. March was rather quiet, two attempts at my half hour early in the month failed with one only 7mins short, I did manage to eek out 35mins though right at the end of the month after finding some time one Friday afternoon which gave me my second leg. I took the week of April the 4th off between work commitments to concentrate of getting some of my bronze work done. Luckily for me a guy dropped out of the going for solo course that week allowing more time for me to fly, I managed to get the rest of my bronze done, about 7 winch launches and 1 areotow for GFT's with 2 trips in the motor glider for my field landings, one of which was interesting after developing an oil leak on the return trip. I completed the week by doing the oral test, getting the CFI's endorsement and then converting to the twin acro and getting my solo aerotow done at the same time. Job done. Next up will be the cross country endorsement, however I am going to try and get a few genuine cross country trips in with an experienced cross country pilot before doing the tests. My Goal now is to be as close to silver C as possible by the end of the soaring season.

Weekend forecast for 5th and 6th March 2011

2011-03-04T19:49:00.007Z

Forecast has stayed reasonably steady through the week with the only uncertainty being the amount of cloud during a given period. In a nutshell it looks as though Sunday will be the best day buy flyable throughout the weekend.

Saturday - Pressure - 1031
Winds - North eastly 8kts Gusting to 14kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 7dc dew point 3dc
Clouds - cloud base around 2000ft amsl extending up to the inversion at 2300ft amsl
Sun - Generally clear start with increading cloud from lunch time onwards.
Rain - less than 10% chance
Soaring - limited due to low inversion, limited visability and increasing overcast.

Sunday - Pressure - 1034
Winds - North eastly moving more eastly during the day 8kts Gusting to 15kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 6dc dew point 0.5dc
Clouds - cloud base around 2300t amsl extending up to the inversion at 2700ft amsl
Sun - 1/8 to 2/8 scattered cu all day Possible fog first thing
Rain - less than 5% chance
Soaring - possible 2kt climbs to 1800ft where rate drops below 200fpm before dropping below 150fpm at 2100ft.

**UPDATE**
The weekend played out pretty much as forecast, plenty of flying done and Sunday produced at least one hour long flight, well done Jon Verrill in the little K8, and plenty of 20 - 40 min flights. The Discus (T19) was rolled out with Pete Garrett and philippa Roberts stretching her legs.

Mid week weather forecast for the 5th - 6th March

2011-03-02T10:59:00.003Z

Spring is here, but what does this mean for us weatherwise as we head into march?

Well it looks as though it is going to be a really pleasant weekend, a little chilly but with plenty of sunshine. I will update on Friday.

Saturday - Pressure - 1031 inc to 1036
Winds - North eastly 10kts Gusting to 15kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 10dc dew point 5dc
Clouds - cloud base around 2200ft amsl extending up to the inversion at 2500ft amsl
Sun - fog clearing to 1/8 clould cover early am increasing gradually throughout the day to 6/8
Rain - less than 15% chance
Soaring - limited due to low inversion, limited visability and increasing overcast.

Sunday - Pressure - 1037
Winds - North eastly 7kts Gusting to 10kts
Temps - sfc temp 13:00 - 6dc dew point -2dc
Clouds - cloud base around 3500t amsl extending up to the inversion at 3700ft amsl
Sun - 1/8 to 2/8 scattered cu all day
Rain - less than 5% chance
Soaring - possible 3kt climbs to 2300ft where rate drops below 200fpm before dropping below 150fpm at 2800ft.

Weather forecast weekend 26th-27th Feb "updated"

2011-02-25T13:14:00.004Z

Well it looks as though the weekend could still go two ways now we have a developing low pressure system out to the east.

Most of the models are in agreement that Saturday will be the worst of the two days, but how much worse is still really not known, we will have to wait and see what the developing low pressure system does over the next 12 hours

generally Saturday will be cloudier and wetter as the low develops just off of east anglia and then slowly moves eastward Cloudbase will be between 1000 - 1500ft, temps around 7 degrees with dew point not far behind, winds will be out of the North averaging 14 - 20kts with gusts upto 35kts.

Sunday will more than likely end up being a lesser saturday, cloundbase between 1500 -2500ft temps around 8 degress with the dew point around 3 degrees, winds will be Northly around 15 - 20kts steady

Everyone face east and start blowing.

UPDATE - Saturday was basically a washout with very little activity around the airfield. Sunday morning saw a rather bright and chilly start and we managed to get about a dozen or so flights in before the rain stopped play. We did manage to get OUGC's K21 (GAM) derigged and into its trailer ready for inspections, not settled with that we quickly derigged and put the Astir (DFR) away aswell as it will be inspected after the glass two seaters.

Passenger to pilot, Windrushers style - FEB 2011

2011-02-24T09:38:00.004Z

As we near the end of a short February I'd like to note that it has been a relatively quiet month for flying at the club, due mostly to the weather.

I flew right at the end of Jan and then again on the weekend of the 12th of Feb where I had 3 flights in the K8. The day looked promising but with the cloud base stuck a few hundred feet above the launch altitude there was nowhere really to go. I spent the flights practicing thermalling turns and stalling off the turns as the soaring season is now approaching. none the less we had quite a busy day on the field and managed a respectable number of flights even if we were down to a single cable on the winch (mechanical failure of the other drums drive shaft)

On the 19th I took my bronze theory exam along with Andrew preece and John potter, 90 questions on airlaw, airmanship, navigation, radiotelephony and meteorology. I am pleased to say we all passed and owe thanks to Danny Lamb for the very informative lectures. I also want to mention Robin Matinus, well done on passing your pre-solo exam taken at the same time.

I flew on the 27th of Feb, the weekend had been a washout but there was a small window on Sunday morning in which we could fly. As both of the Glass two seaters had been taken offline for inspections I decided to start my bronze practical work with none other than Danny Lamb. We took JXM (K13) and Danny briefed me on stalling, with out CB SIFT CBE and HASSLL checks completed we hooked on and went for a launch. As suspected Danny gave me a simulated cable break half way up which was handled ok except for the bend in the ground run due to the wind weather cocking the tail. we then took another launch in which we abandoned 2/3's the way up as it was a little fast, Danny used this one to do some mush stalls and put me in an out of position on the downwind leg as we had some height. We completed the session with a gradual power failure on the winch. I nabbed a quick solo flight before the rain front arrived and had a very quick interesting circuit in mostly 4-6kts of sink, I usually start high key at 800 and arrive at low key around 600 but tightening up the circuit running through sink I arrived at low key around 450 and luckily flew the diagonal and base leg in steady to make it back for a normal approach, otherwise it would have been an early turn in and long walk back to the launch point.

Mid week forecast for 26th 27th Feb

2011-02-23T07:56:00.003Z

As we pass through mid week the forecast models are still in disagreement as to what will be happening this weekend, over the last few days however the trend has been moving toward one scenario.

Saturday is looking as though it will be the worst of the weekend, with 7/8 cloud cover and showers through out the day, there is even a small risk of storms in the afternoon. Winds will be from the west steady around 10kts gusting to 20kts

Sunday is forecast to be the better day with wide sunshine until late afternoon, winds will be coming out of the north west at 12kts gusting to 18kts. The afternoon calls for 2/8 cloud cover and the possibility of showers.

The uncertainty stems from how much the Azores high will affect our weather this weekend some models show it pushing quite far over the UK and others show a lesser influence, updating this on Friday I expect there could be some changes.

Passenger to pilot, Windrushers style - Dec 2010 Jan 2011

2011-02-21T19:45:00.002Z

I managed to get 20 solo flights into December and January interlaced with check fights to make sure I was not getting any bad habits.

Two notable items, I managed to convert to the K8 single seater and have made 11 flights in it. An old ship probably older than me it handles similar to a K13 but being lighter will climb on almost no lift. Being 6ft tall and over 200 pounds its not the most comfortable aircraft for me to fly and is better suited to a slightly smaller and lighter pilot.

With that in mind and also looking forward to getting in the Astir (single seater glass body) I got myself converted to the K21 (GAM) owned by Oxford Uni gliding club. I had three check flights with my Chum Oli B and he sent me solo the very same day. Now it was a nothing day, thin overcast at 2000ft near the end of January, I took a launch and pulled the bung (release) at 1300ft. I headed out into a small patch of sunlight over a little village, feeling some slight bumps I thought I would practice some thermalling turns. After two complete circles I noticed the Vario was reading a big fat zero and I had not lost any altitude, result I thought and for the next 10mins I circled at 1200ft. Then slowly but surely the Vario started to indicate 1 1/2 knots up, then nearly 2, I looked at the altimeter but it still read 1200ft. I reached forward slowly and tapped the panel and it jumped up 150ft, I could not believe it my first solo in GAM and I was soaring. 20mins later I was climing through 1800ft slowly but surely and not very well centered, by this time I had been joined by Gail stevens and student in the Acro and we climbed to just under cloud base at 2000ft all the time watching others trying to join us from the air field but not being successful. Then all of sudden I was into massive sink and it took me only a few minutes to drop down to circuit height. Landing a few minutes later I had achieved 41mins and was massively chuffed as Max the Duty instructor was kind enough to sign off my first bronze leg.

With Danny Lambs winter lectures well under way I am going to be aiming to take my Bronze theory exam at the end along with a couple of the other early solo pilots, I will report in once we are done at the end of Feb.

Passenger to pilot, Windrushers style - part 2

2011-02-18T19:59:00.010Z

September and October 2010 where the busiest of my short flying career so far, totaling 24 flights spread over five or six weekends. To this point I had only flown with Matt and Dave but on my first weekends flying in September I was to fly with an instructor called Robert King, Bob, as he is known around the airfield. Now I had been used to a softly softly approach from Matt and Dave, lots of demo's followed by you doing the exercises, Bob on the other hand works the other way round, you fly and he corrects when necessary. My first brief with Bob he asked me what I had been up to and I had explained that my general flying was coming along and I had been allowed to fly the second half of the launch, so after a thorough briefing on winch launching Bob had made it quite clear that I was going to be flying the entire launch where he would only take over if I made a complete stuff up of it. we carried out our preflight checks and hooked up to the cable in one of the clubs ASK13's. What followed were two launches that started out ok, nice ground run and a gentle rotation into the climb, it was at this point I messed up, after several clear and rather stern commands from the back seat to increase back pressure Bob took control and increased the angle of climb as we were no where steep enough. The second flight of the day resulted in the same scenario with Bob taking over about halfway up the climb, by the third attempt however I had it and after pulling the release at the top I heard "that was much much better" come from the rear, I was beaming. Bob then ran through an in flight brief and demo'd some stalling from mushing to steep stalling. The mush is nice and easy the glider just seems to float downwards rather quickly, the steep stall on the other hand requires a higher nose attitude and the stall is a lot more pronounced, the nose falls away and you are left swallowing your stomach during the recovery. Bob let me do a couple and then it was time to join the circuit for landing, I made a good effort of it and manage to land the glider not to far from the bus.

So that was it, my first three lessons with Bob, the instructor that would eventually send me solo. Windrushers has plenty of instructors and I enjoy flying with all of them and with a multitude of different teaching styles any pupil will be able to find the right instructor for them.

I then spent a day in reasonably poor weather (low cloud base) circuit bashing with Matt. he spent the time and gave me a really good run down on circuit planning and then let me fly my own circuits. the comments I had placed into my log book simply said "prefers to be a bit close" Dam right I was going to be a bit close, flying a contraption without an engine there was no way I was wandering to far from the landing area and it would take a little while for me to get used to the right distance to fly during the circuit, it depends on a lot of factors but when you get it right it makes life so much easier.

A weekend later the weather was great with broken cloud at around 2500ft. I was introduced to another instructor I would make good progress with Oli Bosanko. Oli suggested after looking at my log book and training card that we should take advantage of the good weather and go and do some stalling and spinning. These exercises require an aerotow to around 4000ft so we made arrangements with the tug pilot and got ready, as I had not done any aerotowing Oli took control for the launch and climb to 4000ft letting me take control every now and then to carry out some exercises in flying behind a tug. To be completely honest I was so blown away by the view as we climbed up between the clouds that I was finding it difficult to follow the tug. Reaching 4000ft we released and turned away watching the tug dive back towards the airfield, we were ready to begin. we ran through our HASSLL checks (which stand for Height, do we have enough? Airframe, can the glider cope with what we are about to do to it? Straps, are they tight? Security, is nothing going to float around in some of the manoeuvres? Location, are we in a safe place? Lookout, is there anyone else that could get in the way?) to make sure we were ready and then we started with some normal stalling and recoveries, these I flew myself and Oli seemed pleased with them. Oli then demo'd the spin, he explained that spinning in off a final turn was one of the biggest causes of accidents amongst glider pilots and the cause was a slow, low and over ruddered turn. With this in mind he set about showing me a slow over ruddered turn and the result was dramatic to say the least, at first you can see the nose is slightly high for your speed and that the bank angle is quite shallow, then with the premise of not making a turn we added more rudder, this caused the inside wing to stall first and drop away behind us, within a second I was staring at the ground which was now rotating quickly below us. Oli had time to explain that the rotation speed was high but the g loading and airspeed remained reasonably constant, he then took corrective actions and we recovered. So that was my first serious departure from normal flight, not to bad, next up was the spiral dive. This manoeuvre is a lot harsher on both pilot and aircraft, it starts out in a similar setup to a spin but can also result from a highly banked turn, with a wing down the nose drops away and speed and g loading build up very quickly as the glider enters a diving sprial. Oli demo'd and explained that the spiral dive must be corrected immediately otherwise it is easy to overstress the glider. I managed to get the glider into a few spins and a spiral dive before it was time to hit the circuit for landing. During the debrief Oli said I was flying well and only certain aspects of the departure recoveries needed to be "finessed" overall I was really happy with how my flying was coming along.

I flew again in mid October with Dave Morgan, but as the cloud base was low on that day we were confined to circuit practice. A worth while day however as it keeps you currency up and the practice coming along.

Towards the back end of October my flying had gotten to the point where the instructors were happy with my general flying skills and we had begun to concentrate more on launch failures and stalling/spinning exercises. I flew with Bob again and we did a full brief on launch failures and I flew a simulated cable break, which is quite obvious, you get a loud bang and the glider begins to slow down rapidly. Speed is of the essence when recovering from a launch failure of this type, you need to get the nose down to regain any lost flying speed and then decide whether you can land ahead or switch to one of the options discussed in you eventualities brief. The cable "broke" at around 200ft so with plenty of airfield left ahead after the recovery we landed ahead. I then flew a gradual power failure and I can see why it catches people out, you don't get any bang or really clear warning, simply that the airspeed begins to reduce slowly at first and then more quickly and any delay in spotting this and taking action brings the glider very close to the stall speed. The power was rolled off at about 600ft, after the recovery and deciding we could not land ahead and acting on what was discussed on the eventualities brief we turned downwind to get us into a position to have available the best options for landing, in this case we were high enough to land into wind further up the field from the launch point. Bob seemed happy and his comment in my log book simply said "well handled" we then took a 4000ft aerotow to do some more stalling and spinning exercises, these were actually more difficult to do with Bob as our all up weight was near the upper limits for the glider, what this meant for spinning was that we were in effect nose heavy and the glider would drop a wing and begin to rotate "incipient stage" but would get very nose down and recover itself before I could take any action. After the flight Bob and I discussed what had gone on and how ballasted limits for a glider give you a range of weights you can fly in but even when inside those weights you still have an affect on the handling.

I had six flights at the end of October, three with Alan Twigg, instructor and CEO of windrushers which were more launch failure practice with the added too fast signal and abandonment. I then had three flights with Richard Chapman who introduced me to the art of side slipping. This is where you present the glider to the airflow at an angle and is achieved by full rudder deflection to one side, dropping the wing that is foremost slightly and picking up the nose with gentle back pressure to maintain track over the ground The result is that the glider can be flown down an approach slipping with no breaks and the speed remains manageable due to the increased drag on the aircraft, that means a landing can be executed at the end of it without too much speed. With brakes a much steeper shorter approach can be flown which is useful for field landings later on in your gliding career. Richard had me do a couple of practices in the air and then let me fly one down the approach and by more luck than judgement managed to get it down where I wanted.

As November arrived I was into my last four weeks before my membership ran out, I had completed 30 flights for around 4 hours of flying. I managed to squeeze in three flights at the start of the month around a busy work schedule. I flew with Debbie Thomas, whose small frame meant it would be much eaiser to carry out spinning exercises. We flew two winch launches and Debbie had the altimeter covered so I was relying on my judgement in the circuit, Debbie comments in my log book "2 good winch launches without altimeter - nicely judged" We then took an aerotow to do some more spinning and stalling Debbie was happy with my attempts and also let me fly the entire aerotow, which was good for my confidence.

A week later on the 13th of November I had planned a whole day of flying to try and maximize time in the air and to brush up and complete the remaining exercises on my training card, I had also got my medical sorted and pre solo exam in time for the possibility I might just get to solo at the end of the month. I was teamed up with Graham Bambrook in the morning and we did some launch failure and out of position practice to get some of my training card exercises finished off. After lunch I was teamed up with Bob we did some stalling and Bob flying the aircraft into unusual attitudes and saying "right you sort it out" Bob also pulled the airbrakes and held them out round the circuit to simulate high levels of sink, the result was an early turn in and landing up the field. We then took a launch and flew a normal circuit, well what I thought was a normal circuit to end the day, after a nice flight around, chatting about lookout and the weather I turned onto final, after a short assessment of my position I pulled on the air brake lever, it did not move! I looked down and pulled again and Bob said from the back "they are stuck" I did the only thing I could think of and tried to side slip in, not as successful as previous attempts but I got it down about half way up the field. We jumped out and turned the glider round and while waiting for the car to tow us back to the launch point Bob began to look around the sky he then turned to me and said "so is your medical all in order" "ummmm yesssss" I replied slowly as I waited for what seemed like an eternity "ok then, I am going to send you solo, you will only have time for one due to the light fading now but your ready" This was it! my time had come! I had at least ten minutes to get used to the idea walking the glider back to the launch point I even text the wife to tell her what was going on and that I would fly over the house as we only live across the street from the club. Bob helped me get ready securing the back seat and giving me a brief on how the glider would handle without him in it. I ran through my checks and called for the cable all the time trying to convince myself that I could do it. I heard the all out and I was off, the glider was much more eager to climb and had to be checked a little but the launch was uneventful and I released at 1300ft, silence.... I was now acutetly aware that I was by myself and it was all up to me, I made a right turn and headed for my house, after a few circles over the house I headed for the circuit all the time talking myself through what I was doing, the approach and landing was one of the best ive done and Bob was waiting to congratulate me as I stepped out, I was on a massive hi.

That was it!!! I had gone solo on my 40th flight and just shy of 3 months. All thanks to a great team at windrushers and especially Bob King who saw fit to declare me safe to fly by myself.

Look out for updates as I report on my progress towards single seat conversion and my Bronze.

Forecast for 19th & 20th

2011-02-18T18:08:00.003Z

Not much has changed from the midweek forecast for Saturday, a band of rain will move through tonight bringing persistent rain throughout tomorrow morning and into early afternoon which will then be replaced by low cloud and fog. Sunday will be dryer than than predicted earlier but a low inversion will cause a low cloud base and reduced visibility.

*UPDATE*
The weather held to the forecast this weekend with a day full of rain on Saturday and low cloud and mist on Sunday meaning that there was very little activity out on the field.

Mid week weather forcast for weekend 19th/20th Feb

2011-02-16T21:21:00.002Z

Various sources are calling for a rather wet and windy weekend at the moment.

low pressure systems sitting in the Atlantic are causing us issues, the one to the south west of the country will move away to the south east and make way for a deeper depression moving in from the north west. This depression will begin to influence our weather late on Friday afternoon. Winds will then steadily increase from the south east moving to a more southerly direction later in the period bringing Low cloud and persistent rain with temps around 7-8 degrees for most of the weekend.

BOO!

I will update on Friday.

Passenger to pilot, Windrushers style - part 1

2011-02-14T10:01:00.010Z

Growing up I think that most small boys dream of becoming a fighter pilot or airline captain at some time or another, for me that dream slowly faded amid a youth mis spent day dreaming, drinking and chasing girls. The only brush I had with aviation was a very short aerotow glider flight at Bicester gliding center as part of a school run trip in the mid 90's, Fun? yes, definitely. Cost prohibitive? probably. A little more research would have revealed a very cost effective way to get your wings.

Anyway, fast forward 15 years, a wife, house and a small child I would once again have an opportunity to go gliding thanks to my newly acquired extended family. My wife's father and oldest brother are into their gliding with her Brother Richard being an active member at windrushers. Over a family dinner Richard asked me if I would like to come down and have a few flying lessons at the club which I duly accepted, the dream was reborn, a little tamer than before but reborn it was.

August 2010 - First flight - 3 lessons

Richard and I arrived at the club early and after a few pleasant introductions made our way into the office where Carol, who oversees all things admin, had me fill out a temporary membership form and also a medical form that allowed me to declare myself fit to fly. Richard then took me through to the hanger which was crammed full of different aircraft, he showed me to the clubs training ships (ASK 13) explained a little bit about it and then set about doing the daily inspection as I watched on. Once it was finished and all signed off we dropped the parachutes into the cockpit and then wheeled the glider outside to the edge of the field where a car was waiting to tow it out to the launch point, Richard explained a little bit about ground handling the aircraft as they can do strange things if caught by a gust of wind. With it hooked up to the car we walked it out to the launch point, which is an old single decker bus come cafe, come briefing room, I was introduced to the duty instructor (the guy/girl that runs the show that day) and my name was added to the flying list.

When my turn came up I was introduced to Matt Turnbull who is a member and instructor at the club and a guy I would fly a lot of my early lessons with. Matt showed me over to another one of the clubs ASK 13's (they have 4 in total) and gave me a brief on the aircraft covering what the controls do, what the instruments are and what we were going to be doing. Matt then had me jump in the front seat and showed me how to adjust the rudder pedals and strap myself in, while I was busy getting comfortable Matt jumped into the back seat and while strapping himself in asked me what I wanted to get out of the day. Now I'd not really thought about it up to that point and was not sure what I was supposed to say so I simply responded with "I want to learn to fly" "great" he said "CB SIFT CBE you will need to learn it and remember it" very quickly I learnt that this was a mnemonic for pre flight checks which allows the pilot to ready the glider and themselves for the flight. Once we had gone through the checks and discussed what we would do if we were not launched high enough for a normal flight, we were ready to go. Matt called for the cable and we were duly attached to 3000ft of wire cable and about to be towed into the sky in what I can only describe as one of the most unique and thrilling methods of getting a glider off the ground. Our wing runner lifted the wings level and I could hear the duty instructor calling the winch to "up slack" with that the cable began to creep forward until it was pulled tight, at that point the "all out" was called and what ensued I find quite difficult to put into words. Imagine sitting in a high end sports car that is capable of achieving 0-60 in under 3 seconds, Ferrari, Porsche I hear you say, try a 30 year old glider attached to a huge length of cable and the other end being wound in by a very large American V8. Within a few short seconds we had achieved flying speed and Matt rotated the glider steadily into a 40 degree climb, a mere 15 seconds later we were slowing at the top and Matt levelled off and pulled the release. I now had time to relax a bit and look around and to this day I maintain that the view from a glider cockpit is one of the best you will ever see. You have great vision all around and with a little tilt of the head one can see straight down to the ground which was now 1200ft below. Matt explained the controls again and demonstrated what they did, now I have flown a lot of simulators before so I had a rough idea and when Matt asked if I would like a go I jumped at the chance. Taking the stick in my hand I followed Matt through on several turns and attitude adjustments, he then let me have ago for myself. Soon he was showing me how to feed in rudder to help coordinate the turn better; however being a car driver he explained causes a common problem, I was being too soft with the right rudder pedal when in fact quite coarse movements are required in the training gliders. Soon it was time to enter the circuit for landing at 800ft and as I had got on quite well Matt let me fly the glider round the circuit and took over at the Final turn for approach and landing. We had a quick 5 minute debrief/brief before running through the checks again and hooking up to the cable, I was much more prepared this time around and managed to follow Matt on the controls up the launch to release. Matt then let me have control immediately and we did some more turning exercises, this time however my sim flying was catching me out as I was being a bit twitchy on the controls (something I would take time to get rid of) During this flight Matt began to stress the need always for a good effective look out as glider pilots rely on a “see and be seen” method of avoiding coming into conflict with another aircraft. I flew the circuit again and this time Matt let me fly it all the way down to the round out before taking over to land. The third lesson took pretty much the same path as the other two with even more emphasis of look out and before I knew it, it was time to land and my flying was done for the day, I was then told that there was plenty still to do and I should feel free to get stuck in helping launch other people and I was also shown how to drive the retrieve to pick up cables and other gliders that had landed out of position. After the day had finished and all the equipment and gliders were packed away time for a quick drink in the clubs bar and then off home knowing full well that I had been bitten.

Remainder of August 2010 - Learn to glide! and 3 more lessons

It would be two weeks before I could fly again but to be honest I'd thought of little else in the mean time. I had decided on the learn to glide package as it gave me three months membership to the club and a sum in my flying account to use as I saw fit. I really liked this package because it allowed me to get a real taste of club life and whether I'd be able to cut it or not with out the large outlay of a years membership. I had three more lessons during the latter part of August and these were flown with another instructor, Dave Morgan, Dave asked me to run through what I had covered already with Matt and the three lessons were spent consolidating what I had done before. Dave also let me fly the second half of the winch launch on my last lesson of the day, which was cool. One bad habit I had was a tendency to "stir the stick" as Dave called it, this was down to me playing to many flight sims where constant correction is required, a K13 however is like a trusty old bus, lots of little inputs do little more than waggle the control surfaces and create some extra drag. I found my flying was coming on quite well in spite of my little bad habits and my instructors were now introducing lookout exercises and circuit planning which aims to get you into a pattern for landing starting at a high key area followed with a down wind leg running parallel to the runway in use, then abeam the launch point you reach the low key area and begin a diagonal leg which allows you to keep an eye on the launch point and goings on, you then turn a base leg which brings you to a final turn for approach and landing. It sounds reasonably straight forward but when you throw in wind, lift/sink, other traffic it can get a little bit interesting.

So with my first six flights done I was well and truly hooked and I had made the decision to try and get solo before my membership lapsed at the end of November.

Look out for part two to see if I made it of not.

A new perspective

2011-02-13T23:32:00.002Z

Hello everyone.

Being a relatively new pilot, I solo'd in November 2010, and member of Windrushers I thought it would be a good idea to put up here for all to see my experiences as I navigate from ab-initio to fully fledged glider pilot. I have always liked reading stories and anecdotes about peoples experiences before trying out any activity and I hope my posts will make useful reading for anyone thinking about venturing into our sport.

Having kept a journal of my flying I will be back filling with the first post or two and then as I and some of the other "newbies" progress add material as we go.

As Mike and John have very busy schedules I will also help out posting general news and events info, so if you have any feel free to send em my way.

Enjoy,
Lee H

Showing Dad How It’s Done

2011-02-04T20:24:00.006Z

Windrushers junior member Charles Jessop recently got a visit in New Zealand (he's there on a gap year, lucky boy, not that I'm jealous...) from his father Paul, who was taking time off from a round-the-world business trip.

The weather wasn’t brilliant but they flew a couple of days with Charles as pilot in command, exercising the privileges of his NZ Qualified Glider Pilot status.

Inevitably, with dodgy advice coming from the back seat, they landed out on a back-country strip but an airborne radio relay scrambled a tow plane with Omarama’s chief tuggie at the controls. That arrived just as the duo (who claim they landed out because they weren’t flying a Duo but rather a Twin Astir) had pushed their mount to the (slightly) uphill end of the strip. The tuggie decided he preferred the other direction and used the Pawnee to tow them to the far end of the strip, where after much sucking of teeth and throwing of grass into the air, decided the earlier assessment was right and towed them back. An old tyre substituted for a wing runner and once airborne they had another few hours of cross country soaring (without landing out again).

They didn't have gap years when I was young. Honest, I'm not jealous about him flying in NZ. Not one bit... Honest, sob sob.

Standard Class Nationals 2011

2011-01-28T12:00:00.002Z

The club which originally intended to run this important National Championship in 2011 had to drop out due to unforeseen circumstances. The BGA Competition Committee decided to offer the competition to Bicester, as we are one of the few clubs which could take on the organisation of a Nationals at short notice. After some discussion among the committee, it was decided to help out and run the comp.

So, from 25th June to 3rd July, 2011, the country's finest pilots will be racing for glory across the skies of Oxfordshire (and places further afield as well, of course). Once we have a list of entrants, our hard working web master will put up a sub-section of our web site devoted to the National Championships.

Later in the year we will also be holding our popular Regionals competition. (23/07/2011 - 31/07/2011).

Winter Lectures

2011-01-28T11:46:00.003Z

Once again Danny Lamb will be presenting a series of lectures over the winter period to prepare new pilots for the coming great soaring season ahead. These lectures will be suitable for Pre-solo Pilots and solo pilots who have not yet achieved their Bronze qualifications. (They will also be helpful to those who reached Bronze level at the end of last year and need a revision session.) The dates are as follows :

8th January - Air Law-Airspace
15th January - Human factors - Radio
22nd January - Navigation
29th January - Principles of Flight - Instrumentation
5th February - Weather - Cross country flying
12th February - How to fail your bronze flying test
19th February - Take an exam if you want to

The lectures will start in the lecture room at about 5:30 when the hangar doors are shut and will be 1 to 1½ hours long.

At this point in time, of course, the first three have taken place. But it is worthwhile attending the remaining lectures, even if you have missed the first three. The one on weather would be of interest to almost everyone, as we do need weather to fly. Sometimes you can have too much weather of course, or even too little. It's variable.

More about young persons

2010-12-13T18:25:00.005Z

Windrushers' junior member Charlie Jessop hasn’t been seen around the airfield recently because he has snagged himself a gap-year post as ground crew at GlideOmarama – the gliding operation in New Zealand based at the site of the 1995 World Championships. His duties include getting aircraft ready for the customers and putting them away but when things are quiet he gets to fly himself. His initial “site familiarisation flight” ended up at 15,000’ over Mount Cook (New Zealand’s highest peak) and since then he has been flying the Astir and the (numerous) Duo Discuses with GlideOmarama’s pundits. He is pictured here with Mike Till (who spends our summers at Dunstable) at 21,000’ somewhere near Omarama.
Charles is the one in the front seat...

More news from Charles as we get it over the electric telegraph.

University Students

2010-12-13T18:12:00.003Z

We had a good intake of university students this year, from both Oxford and Cranfield. They all seem to be a keen lot, and are coming out regularly. They have been rewarded with some good weather (well apart from the snow the other week, of course). Lots of flying has been done. As we are an accredited Junior Gliding Centre, it's nice to see so many young faces around, as they are the future of the sport.

At this point in time, they are all at the end of term, and will not be around for a while, but we look forward to their return in January 2011.

It's been busy the last few months!

2010-09-20T10:48:00.007+01:00

We have had such a busy time at the Bicester Gliding Centre recently, that we have not had a spare minute to update the blog.

Recent events include The Fabulous Bicester Regionals, the InterUniversity Task Week, and the Junior Nationals. We have had a couple of Mini GP style racing weekends too, which the participants seem to enjoy greatly.

With a new privately owned turbo Duo on site, a small group set off for Systeron to test it out, alongside the Duo based there belonging to another member and his syndicate. They all came back with big smiles on their faces. There has already been an "interesting" week or two for some members at Systeron earlier in the year, of course. So interesting (And so similar to the Old Gits On Tour thread from last September.) that one member now plans never to take a vehicle overseas again! ;)

Over this weekend we had :- another Mini GP, the Fox doing Aerobatics team training, a BI course, plus 'normal' operations, and Tony Cleeworth, the day's tuggie, flew 24 tows to a total of 70'000 feet. The club also hosted a BGA event to show the Air Cadets the possibilities of advanced training....
Where else but Bicester!
Oh, and instructor refresher training as well.

Currently we are looking forward to the annual influx of "the students", when Oxford University and Cranfield University start enrolling new members.

Great weather, great flights and a soar nose

2010-07-08T10:02:00.006+01:00

Pilots from Bicester have been soaring cross-country with great success recently.

Debbie Thomas took the little Ka6e on a 303km task, Bic - Oundle - Gloucester South - Bic, in 5hr 34mins (similar to the time some pilots in glass do their first 300km). This was on 25 June.

Then Nigel Gough, her partner's partner (it's complicated being a gliding girl), took the 18m Lak 17 round a 515km task a week later. I don't have all the details, but he achieved a faster speed than Debs.

Fran Aitken also got round 509km, in her LS8 (15m, no need for all that extra wing, Nigel).

Inspired by all this, Alan Smith flew the Ka6cr round a 140km task, in 2 hrs 20mins, on the same day as Nigel's flight.
Meanwhile Andy Smith has been doing 500km flights at a great rate in his little ASW28, and Jed Edevean and Terry Mitchell have done 500km as well in their big Nimbus 3s.

Several others have done large flights - visit the BGA Ladder to see them all

Speaking of soaring (or is it snoring or just sore), Rob Hatschek's nose took second place in an argument with a bit of wire, and he looked sooooo pretty with his patch, that a fan club formed and immediately decided to follow this new fashion trend.
Can't see it catching on myself.

A nice few days

2010-06-21T13:04:00.004+01:00

The last few days have produced some happy smiling faces.

Pete Garrett, son of John, went solo of Friday, in an impressive 51 flights, almost exclusively from the winch. And these were spread over several months as he couldn't attend as regularly as he wanted to, and then was held back by strong winds on a couple of visits when he was ready to go solo.

Then Charles Jessop, son of Paul, completed his Silver by flying down to Lasham - in 58 minutes, in an Astir, for his first solo cross country. Impressive by anyone's standards.

So those of you who stayed at home watching football, whatever that is, have missed several nice days flying recently. Don't be shy, come out and fly!

Oh, and if you are thinking of entering the most popular Regionals in the UK, you'd better get your act together. We now have 40 entrants in the Open class and 27 in the Sport class. We can handle more, of course, but the comp starts on 24th July, so don't delay entering.
Bicester Regionals 2010 website.

Aero Batties Kick Ass Results!!!

2010-06-15T10:02:00.004+01:00

The Bicester Aerobatic Team - a.k.a. the Bats - turned up in force at the UK National Glider Aerobatic Contest at Saltby, over the 10th - 13th July, and turned in their most stunning performance yet.

Out of the five classes, they took FOUR of the First Place prizes, with two seconds and a third as well! All the winners were WAY ahead of the opposition, and in the only class they didn't win, they were a tiny fraction of a percent off of the winning score. Many club members hung around on the Sunday evening hoping to hear the results and were astonished and truly impressed at how well they had done.

Beginners - Rachael Brewin 1st, Gem Roberston 2nd,
Sports - Sally Cooper 1st, Richard Chapman 3rd,
Intermediate - Dave Morgan 1st.
Advanced - Maz Makari 2nd ( very close 2nd ).
Unlimited - Mike Newman 1st

For Sally, Dave and Maz, each had moved up a class from previous years, making the result even more impressive.

And for those who don't know, Maz and Mike are off to the World Championships soon.

Bicester Gliding Centre congratulates them on their stunning set of results.

Vintage Glider Rally

2010-05-26T21:30:00.003+01:00

The annual UK Vintage Glider Rally is with us this week and are having a great time. They've flown Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday so far. It's been good weather for these older aircraft - light winds so the winch driver has a chance of controlling the speed to suit them a lot better - and soarable everyday as well. A dozen or so aircraft are present, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves.

Edit:
They flew every day except the second Saturday! So many smiling faces.

Summer is just around the corner

2010-05-06T10:47:00.004+01:00

Well, summer is just around the corner now (although it might seem hard to believe given how cold it's been the last few days - must be the volcanic ash effect). There have been several good cross country flights in the last six weeks, although not everyone is entering them in the BGA Ladder.

We have had a couple of successful expeditions, one to Portmoak and more recently the older generation went to France and had an "interesting" time. ;)

And guess what, we have the Cranfield students going off to Portmoak, again, and an intrepid group of comp pilots heading for a German comp, starting on 8th May.

You can follow the comp pilots' progress at Hahnweide online. In case they don't put up a full English version of the site, Wertung is the results page and Aufgaben is the tasks page. We have Martin Durham in LS8, Al McNamara and Steve Archer-Jones sharing TC, and Owain Walters in LL, all in the Standard Class, while in the 18m Class there's Derren Francis in F2 and John Spencer in 601. There's 115 gliders in total, so it's a big comp with FIVE classes.

PS the web cam out there today looks very disappointing - rain, low cloud and poor vis, so nothing new there for a comp.

BOG's on Tour .... Again!

2010-04-25T16:08:00.010+01:00

BOGS ON TOUR
So here we go again, off to soar the Alpine mountains of southern France, after weeks of planning we set off on Friday morning, Dickie and Stu with the ASH and I travelled with Pete towing the Ventus. Although we crossed on separate ferries the plan was to meet up half way at.( somewhere north of Macon)........... for a leisurely night stop. The forcast was not so good for Saturday so we planned to take an easy drive down to arrive Saturday afternoon. During Fridays trip I was toying with not writing a daily blog because I didn't think there would be much to tell. How wrong was I?

Me and Pete set off from the hotel 07.30 Saturday morning with Dickie and Stu not far behind, all was going well bright sunshine and a forcast for the Alps that looked great for Sunday onwards, good conversations and chewing over prospects and goals for the coming expedition.
Everything going to plan with a meet up at Sisteron with the RAFGSA guys who were already there and looking forward to a really good 2 weeks .......RING RING goes the phone "
Hiya Tel", from the tone of Dickies voice I knew all was not well.
errrrr "wossup Dickie"?
"We have a slight problem, the engine on the galaxy has just thrown all its toys out from under the bonnet and it doesn't look good"
Great - we were 4 hours from Sisteron around Lyon, and Dickie n Stu were 30 miles behind us near Macon totally stranded. We pulled into a parking area and considered the options. This may sound bad but it made perfect sense to leave Dickie and Stu behind, after all we were all right weren't we!!!So we left them to organise a tow off the motorway and pressed on to Sisteron to await news on the fate of the Galaxy.

Some time later Pete and I were told the bus was terminal, "never a dull moment with Dickie is there" Pete was heard to say, "You can say that again" was my reply. So we pressed on to Sisteron arriving at around 3.30, checked into the Gite , unloaded and without even a cup of tea, left Pete to sort himself and the gite out while I set off back to retrieve Dickie and Stu.... and they hadn't even landed out.

So you might think the story from here gets a bit boring.... It doesn't. Never a dull moment did Pete say? Check in tomorrow for the next installment of the retrieve from hell.TM

THE RETRIEVE FROM HELL

So here I am driving as fast as the law permits back up the motorway to Macon, a quick call to Dickie I need to leave at junction 29, they had detailed instructions but told them would call for them later. Three and a half hours and 325 km later 3 mile from junction 29 give them a call......bling bling..... battery warning on my phone, I tell Dickie to send directions by text cos my battery is going, this is what I get
J29 N79 DIRECTION PARAY IMMEDITE AFTER XING
MOTORWAY FIRST RIGHT TO D17 U R THERE.
Simple I thought, followed instructions to the letter took me to an industrial estate, no sign of them, text.... where are you? SAME MESSAGE AGAIN. Sent another... bling bling battery!!!! Thats where I am but D17 is at least 5km west of motorway motorway.... bling bling bling!
Hell if this battery goes we are really in the guano! Reply ON D17 1KM FROM MOTORWAY I sent.... Dickie I am 1km west of motorway Reply N 46deg 18 658 E4deg 47 484Oh great now I have to work out how to use this sat nav, after a while punched it in. I sent...Dickie that location is 20 miles from here! bling bling flaming bling
1KM EAST J29 PLACE CHARNAY
So now we are east! and all signs lead to Charnay de this and Charnay de that. Dickie sent SORRY WEST J 29 1KM WEST J29 ON D17
I've been there!!!!!!!!! By now I am east of the motorway and virtually lost.
bling bling bling ( if it goes to four blings we have had it!)
D17 IS ROUTE DE CLUNY NO 710
No use to me at all, then I get
WE ARE D17 NOT N79 AT HOTEL MOULIN DE GASTRONOME
Pulled into another hotel asked for directions to the hotel Moulin. Nice receptionist then produced a map for me that filled an A4 sheet with about 6 roundabouts and junctions to negotiate....bling bling bling bling.. One and a half hours of driving in circles after arriving at J29 finally found them! After we had a good punch up on the side of the road we hooked up the ASH and retraced our way back to J29, Dickie and Stu went very quiet when they saw how far out their directions were, so then Stu blamed Dickie for abbreviating the detailed instructions they had been given, nearly another punch up in the car!!! Back to Sisteron arriving 2am, 10 hours after I had left the previous afternoon, absolutely knackered. Stand by for the next installment of SOG's on tour!15:46 28/04/2010TM

AND SO NOW WE FLY
Weather is looking great for the week the first couple of days were spent re-acquainting ourselves with the local terrain and on Tuesday Terry and Dickie set a racing 313km and were back by 3pm, so a further 180km was set which they completed at 120kph by Wednesday we were setting tasks into the northern Alps with Dickie and Stu paying a visit to Mont Blanc for a 506km flight at 99.8kph!, most days we flew 5 hours plus. and evenings spent relaxing in the usual French style, Vin, Pastis etc etc.

On Thursday Stu and Terry completed a close inspection of the lower rocks of the Ecrin for a 400km plus flight.

Friday, weather not looking great waving everywhere so went for some French pavement cafe culture, with Pete and Stu leaving in the morning a quiet dinner with Chris and Nigel from Lasham in a Sisteron town restaurant followed by an early night!
TTFNTM

BATs - Clean Sweep at Dan Smith Aerobatic Comp!

2010-03-30T01:24:00.005+01:00

The Bicester Aerobatic Team sent four members to Dunstable to compete in the Dan Smith Memorial Aerobatic Competition - and took First, Second and Third places!!!

Congratulations to Dave Morgan for taking first place, Maz Makari who took second place and Sal Cooper for taking third place. Richard Chapman came sixth.

As you can see Dave was pretty keen to get his hands on the trophy!

Mexican Night

2010-03-02T10:38:00.009Z

The Mexican meal night was a great success. A total of 42 hungry members turned up and enjoyed a great meal with a large selection of dishes to choose from. Some of us chose from so many dishes that we were so full that I had to turn down a free drink afterwards! Yes, I turned down a freeby.

Some of those turning up decided that airfield clothes were not appropriate and dressed to suit the theme. The gun fights resulted in few casualties, mainly because the pre-meal drinks of free Margaritas meant that they couldn't aim straight. The Mexican beer probably didn't improve their aim either.

Overall, a great night, a great meal, and thanks to Carol and her helpers for all the effort they put in.

On the 27th March we will be having a New Soaring Season Party - although with Miff soaring cross-country on 4th Feb, and cross-countries this week as well, the party is overdue.

Another nice video from TM

2010-02-26T00:27:00.001Z

Soaring and even some cross-countries

2010-02-21T00:23:00.003Z

We've had some soaring days midweek, and the Nimbus 2 owners have even stayed up long enough to get some cross-countries in. Short ones, admittedly, but it's February and they did use thermals, so well done guys. Friday had several gliders staying up, and Saturday was good too, although Derren may not have been as happy when a conversion flight to the new Discus by a relativley inexperienced pilot resulted in him taking off before Derren and landing some time after him. It was a pity that Derren said, shortly before launching in the Ka8, that he just join under the Discus and climb up the middle of the thermal past him... And then a dozen of us stood watching this not happen. ;) Still no sign of Derren's jet arriving either.

Congratulations to Rory Barker, the first new solo this year. Just last week he was saying how he didn't think he was making much progress and wondered if he'd ever go solo. Still, not as embarrassing as Derren's statement, eh. Now if only some more of the University students turned up, perhaps we'd have a few more new solos to report.

Mexican night

2010-02-13T23:04:00.001Z

27th Feb - Mexican Night - food, drink, party.
Tickets £10. Please let the office know in advance so we know how many to cater for on the night. See you there.

We've got a new toy!

2010-02-10T13:30:00.004Z

Last year we substantially improved the fleet with the addition of a motor glider, which has proved to be extremely popular and before that with the addition of a Robin tug to replace the one on loan to the club, kindly purchased by a group of memebrs for our use (some of whom didn't have a PPL and only had a ten minute flight in the three plus years it was available, while others never set foot in it. Thanks guys!) So this year it was the turn of the glider fleet. Just recently the Ka8, EED, which was here when I started gliding many years ago, returned to Bicester after its adventures in Cyprus and is now being used by our members. But something hot was also required.

So the committee has been on the look out for a new addition to the fleet, to enhance the choice of aircraft available, and after almost three months of searching and assessing those available (and rejecting several so-called "bargains") we have acquired a Discus for our members to fly.
Now there will be no excuse for not getting round a 300km or 500km task (unless someone else bags it first!).

Soaring already, and winter lectures

2010-01-25T22:03:00.002Z

Well, it's January and the snow has finally melted, so Lukas Brandt decided that a little bit of thermalling was required to make up for some of the lost days. Okay, it was only a bit of thermalling, and one or two others did so too, on Sunday 24th, but we do like to take every opportunity to soar. Even in winter.

Danny Lamb is giving this year's Winter lectures, and it's two down and three to go so far (although more may be added, perhaps).

Dave Watt's score your skills test has had several takers so far, and all seem to have enjoyed it. I haven't had a chance to find out if everyone would let us place there scores on the web, but it might happen.

Gliding in January

2010-01-11T15:38:00.014Z

Here are the images, as promised in the Happy New year post.

The first problem might have been getting in through the gate. (Although first Derren, then Alan Smith, needed rescuing to get OUT again. ;) )

Once in, the depth of the snow can clearly be seen by the ruts to the left of our young model.

And finally the brave heroes man-handled the T21 out to the launch point - all the posh sleek gliders were impossible to move as snow would fill up their wheel boxes.

Some people prefer gliding in warmer sunnier conditions - Pete Stratton and Terry Mitchell in the Alps, for example. Great video. Nice editing and music added by TM. And did you know young Philippa was once in a Pink Floyd tribute band and the last track in the video was her party piece?

Happy New Year

2010-01-09T17:07:00.004Z

We had our usual Xmas party, and then the New Year Party at the club, and everyone enjoyed themselves. Thanks to Tony for keeping the bar open on New Year's Eve instead of going out partying himself. Everyone present appreciated his efforts. I know from experience that serving a load of party-goers single handed is hard work.

Boxing Day was celebrated in the traditional Bicester way, with a couple of flights in the motor glider.

On New Years Day, as usual we dragged out the gliders again, and had 15 flights to start the year we intend to go on - flying whenever it is possible. And just for luck, did another 25 flights on the 2nd.

And although the airfield is now currently a whiter shade of pale, some brave souls have proved that if you want to fly, we can get you up in the air. They decided that one of the T21s needed an airing and took it out today, 9th Jan, for a float around, admiring the view. Very pretty it was too. Apparently it was much easier to admire the snow covered landscape when flying over it than when stuck in a traffic jam in it.

Unfortunately I couldn't make it out of the valley I live in, and the local police down here in Kent are impounding any cars abandoned near the top of the hill, so if I had managed to get out, and got stuck on the way back (it's snowing again as I write this), the car would probably not be there any more. Obviously they think abandoning a car on flat ground is a more reckless action than taking it down a 1 in 8 slope covered in ice and snow...

Bicester Regionals 2010

2009-11-24T15:17:00.005Z

The most popular Regionals in the UK (if the number of entrants is anything to go by!) is scheduled for 24th July to 1st August 2010. The entry form is now available online at Bicester Regionals 2010.

Now, you know you want to go there. So to be sure of a place, click the above link and make your entry. Do it, now!

Lots of Solos, Lots of Uni Students

2009-11-09T22:09:00.003Z

This year we seem to be getting a large number of students solo, many of them on our weekly courses. So far, the total is 21 solos and there is still several weeks of good flying left this year!

And now we have a large influx of new students from Oxford University and Cransfield University, around 45 new ab initios, so with a bit of luck we will have a similar number of new solo pilots in the next 6 - 8 months, weather permitting.

Still going cross-country in September and October!

2009-10-12T15:25:00.009+01:00

Late September and early October are not the normal time of the year to be out on cross-country flights.

But...

A couple of weeks ago we had Andy Smith doing 340km+, on the 10th September, for what we thought would be the last long flight of the year. Wrong!

Ken Hartley and Bob King went out and return to the Long Mynd on 20th September while Andrew Reid went to Ely and back on the 26th. More recently Matt Turnbull went to Broadway and back on 3rd October, then his syndicate partner did a shorter o/r immediately after Matt landed, while Gary McKirdy made a flying visit to his Mum for a cup of tea (she lives near Pocklington) then flew back again a few days later (8th Oct.). That same day we had another couple of 200km flights by Dave Watt and Bob King. And on 10th October Ken Hartley did 180km.

And these are only the flights I've been told about - I'm assured that there were others.

Who says global warming brings no benefits.

Meanwhile, Derek Staff is notching up gold and diamond heights every other day at Aboyne.

But that's not all the good news!

George Tvalashvili and Pete Cadle finished their Basic Instructor course yesterday under the tutelage of OJ and await their acceptance flights from the CFI.

What a great week!

2009-09-28T21:05:00.001+01:00

This last week Monday 21 to Friday 25 September gave us five days of perfect weather for our eleventh Going for Solo course. We had three pupils all of varying levels of experience and our staff instructors worked their socks off every day. There was a great atmosphere here all week and it was one of the busiest weeks ever with 198 launches over the five days. Two of our Going for Solo pupils achieved their first solos on Friday with the third making very good progress.

We also had two other new members flying with us – the dynamic Parr brothers! Dave Parr was a pupil on the Going for Solo course which ran from 7 to 11 September and he achieved his first solo on 11 September. Dave carried on flying whenever we could fit him in and on 18 September he flew a K13 for 51 minutes, easily qualifying for his first Bronze leg. His second qualifying Bronze flight came on 25 September when he flew the K8 for 47 minutes.

His brother Simon was inspired to learn to glide and joined us on 16 September as a Learn to Glide member and started flying that very day. He went solo on 24 September and then, just to show brother Dave that he could also fly, he was checked for his second solo on 25 September and stayed airborne for an astonishing 45 minutes to qualify for his first Bronze leg!

Our Going for Solo courses have seen a number of first solos this summer and together with our booked intensive days our newer (and a few of our more established) members are making rapid progress. We are extending the commercial side of our operation throughout the winter and we will be offering bookable day intensives on Wednesdays and Fridays at £30 per day booking fee – this guarantees two pupils to one instructor.

TOGS ON TOUR...FINAL POST

2009-09-21T11:52:00.004+01:00

Well Friday came and it rained, it eased off long enough to get the Duo packed away before we went over to La Motte to see Jacques for a beer. Saturday morning Pete and Phil set off for the airport leaving us SOGS behind to consider their options. Briefing was not encouraging with a very unsettled forcast, even Dickies bus had stopped entertaining us so we made the decision to de-rig the ASH and planned to leave first thing Sunday.
In true Brit style we kept a stiff upper lip and had a BBQ on Saturday night in the pouring rain followed by much pastis and discussion on potential plans for next year. Although the weather had basically been very poor we still flew and had a good break.
Lots of ideas thrown about including possibly bringing Jacques over to Bicester for a presentation on Alpine flying in the early spring.
The return trip was uneventful and Dickies bus finally came up with the goods.
We hope you have all been mildly entertaind with our postings and invite you all to try to crack the OGS code!!!
over and out

HOGS on tour day7 continued

2009-09-18T08:54:00.004+01:00

Well nothing is ever as good as it looks and that was true for the conditions that developed. The Duo made it to the first TP, the Tete de Clappe but options to cross the valley towards Briancon were much reduced because of a low cloud base on the mountains to the east. Meanwhile the ASH was delayed on the airfield as it could not launch with the tailwind that had now set up. The Dou backtracked to La Motte to try to find a way across to the Par Cours, in doing so nearly fell off every mountain around ended up scratching around on the Jouere for a while. By now the ASH was encountering the same problem at the Clappe so the DUO returned towords the Pic De Bure to try to team up for some photography. Both gliders met at the west face of the Pic for some very interesting rock polishing on its west face. followed by some formation flying and pikkies, back to Sisteron put the gliders to bed then beer and arguments over who had actually got further around the task, certainly the Dou had covered the most distance but had been 1 hour longer in the air. Close scrutiny of the loggers decided it was a draw. Pete spent the day sprawled out on his wing covers in the Duos trailer, some sod kept snoring and waking him up though! Good news he should be able to fly tomorrow. Weather permitting!
ttfn

HOGS on tour day7

2009-09-17T11:27:00.004+01:00

HOGs on tour day7 (Thursday)( except Pete)
Yesterday was a washout but today looks like being the best so far. Dickies bus was collected this morning having had both drive shafts replaced CHING CHING Dickie is now 750 euro poorer, lets hope that we have sorted the power problem too. Sadly Pete has managed to bring a heavy cold with him from the UK and is disappointed not to be able to fly today, but…… One mans disaster is anothers good fortune Phil offered his empty seat to Tel, he thought about it for a microsecond before accepting, silly not to!!!
With 300km set to the north and south gliders made ready, off to the Janus for Café au lait.
To be continued…/
ttfn

PS. IF YOU HAVN'T SEEN IT YET CHECK OUT THE EXTREME GLIDING LINK ON THE RIGHT!!!!

SOGS ON TOUR DAY 6

2009-09-15T17:27:00.001+01:00

SOGS ON TOUR DAY 6
Terry’s turn on jankers so primary task to sort out Dickies bus. The weather wasn’t looking too bright so set off to the garage with Pete for support and a lift back. Checked in the bus and managed to get a banger rental for 15 euro per day. Started to rain which would be in for the day and the outlook now not looking too good until Friday. Jumped in the banger and went on exped to La Motte to see Jacques Noel .
Much back slapping and hand shaking, we were made very welcome and went to inspect their new 440hp winch, very interesting, hydraulic drive, well engineered built by a commercial company in Germany.
They are using 5.5mm 7 core cable with a polyester centre core. They use a very complicated technique to join the cable without using cleats on which Terry was given a 40 minute lesson by Jacques. Not sure he managed to absorb it all but a similar method may work with our cable too.
As we left Dickie met another old chum, Gean Renaud Faliu. Made arrangements to go there on Friday for their club bbq.
ttfn

DOGS ON TOUR DAY 5

2009-09-15T12:19:00.001+01:00

DOGS ON TOUR DAY 5
Today Dickie is on jankers, Stu and Tel’s turn to fly.. Conditions looked good. Looks often decieve and in this case came true. Pete and Phil set off first with a high tow to Trainon where there appeared to be good thermic lift generating a cu, Stu and Tel took a tow 30 minutes later to the Gash and were soon joined by the Duo which had fallen off Trainon. For those who have yet to fly here Trainon is at around 5,000’ and is usually the second step towards getting to the higher ground, the Gash is around 4,000’. It wasn’t long before the mighty ASH fell off the Gash closely followed by the Duo. We both struggled for the next hour scratching around but finally climbed away from Blachere near La Motte GC. All plans were thrown out the window as our intended task area looked too soggy so we set off to the lower land in the south. With the weather cycling we spent the rest of the day sight seeing. I understand this sounds like the conditions were poor but we were climbing in 5kt averages to 7,500’.
This was a day of two halves, while we were flying Dickie decided to replace the fuel filter in the bus. Power had returned but we were sure it would be the same when we tried to tow, so as the filter was the cheapest and easiest option this would be our first step. Did I say “easiest option”, we really should stop tempting fate. Dickie replaced the filter while we were flying but having done so the bus went into complete limp home mode, couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding. After we had touched down we were approached by a very depressed looking Dickie and the bus which only just managed to pull the ASH of the piste, he was well pisted off. We put the glider to bed and after a beer took at look at the bus. VOILA!!!!!! Dickie had knocked off a plug to the mass air sensor this should fix it, spoke too soon.
The plug now re-connected Dickie drove off with Tel for a test drive, the bus pulled like a train, in his elation Dickie floored the throttle to give it a good thrashing, all too late Tel saw it coming but could not warn Dickie in time……. WALLOP full belt into a speed hump…… OOOOOERRRR whats the clunking noise? Dickie had now sheered one of the bus’s drive shafts, that’s gonna be a garage job!!
TIME FOR SOME MORE BEER!
TTFN

BICESTER FOGS ON TOUR

2009-09-14T08:50:00.005+01:00

So day 4 arrives with a similar forecast to yesterday, Stu's turn for jankers Tel and Dickie headed for the mountains. Not so easy conditions today just trying to stay in the better weather but still managed to clock up nearly 200km with a forray into the lower southern hills where the thermals were more frequent. Cloudbase was a little lower today with most thermals averaging 5kt plus to 8,500'.
A closer look at Dickie and Stu's flight the day previous showed several climbs that peaked at 14.6kt to 10,000'. Pete and Phil arrived mid afternoon after stepping off their flight to Marseilles and stepped straight into the Duo, ( we rigged it for them earlier) they managed 2.5 hours staying fairly local. 6pm gliders all tucked up off to the Janus for dinner and beer. the evening was rounded off with several pastis and g&t's. Tomorrows weather looks better.
ttfn.

BICESTER MOGS ON TOUR

2009-09-13T09:47:00.003+01:00

DAY 3 LETS FLY
Weather forcast is for more storms later and after a bright start the cu popped over the higher ground. After a quick FLARM installation the ASH set off for the mountains. Tel remained at Siseron on jankers. Dickie and Stu returned 3 hours later with reports of 10kt climbs having been up to Briancon dodging the odd Cb. With Cb's now developing all around the airfield we hastily bagged up and tied down Dickies other bus ( at least this one performs OK) then off to the Janus for beer and tiffins. The outlook is for an improving situation with the weather and looking forward to Strats and Phil arriving tomorrow.
TTFN

BICESTER KOGS ON TOUR

2009-09-13T09:30:00.002+01:00

So someone suggested we go off to Sisteron for a late season exped to the
Alps, sounds like a good idea, lets take the ASH.All packed we set off for Dover with Dickie Stu and Terry on board, the plan being to meet up with Strats and Phil who were travelling out by "squeezy jet" fly the Duo. Nothing could possibly go wrong! WRONG!!5 miles from Dover Dickies bus suffers a sudden loss of power oooer. Quick decision, abandon ASH in layby and find a Ford dealer, backtracked to Canterbury to a dealer who put the bus onto a diagnostics straight away ( thought this is going to be expensive) but oddly the engine power returned
during the trip to the dealer. Diagnostics couldn't find any problems mmmmm!
next bit was the bill.... NO CHarge things were starting to go our way.... Or
so we thought!!! Got to the port missed our ferry, small print says we need to pay £25 admin
and £??? rebook fee, they let us off RESULT! Stu did some number crunching and deduced that we had enough time to take a more scenic route driving through the night via Andorra and Madrid, on reflection and with 20/20 hindsight this may have been our first BIG mistake. 20 mile out of Calais the bus decided to teach us a lesson in forward planning and reduced its power to about 40bhp, this gave us enough to increase momentum to 50 mph on the flat and 20mph or less on the inclines, ( Stu's new route was going to be a bit hilly) and with 800 miles still to go
we were beginning to wonder if we would ever make it. We struggled for 3 hours when it was time for Tel to drive, after a stop for fuel we set off again, miracle, power now returned, much discussion as to what caused this but we were now happy to be cruising along at speed, 10 minutes later the bus throws its toys out again and we were back to slug bus mode. During the next 3 hours we discovered that cycling the ignition could restore the power but
after each cycle the cure only lasted a few minutes. We settled back for a long slow trip. After a second fuel stop power returned for just long enough to get us over the foothills to Grenble before we lost it again. We finally arrived at Sisteron 15 hours after leaving Calais with Dickies Cassandra continually telling us we were going the wrong way... Knackered!!

DAY 2 BICESTER SOGS ON TOUR

Well we were here, at least we would get to fly................That is as
long as at least one of us could pass through the French medical requirements. Off to the ECG Doctor Sammini to get fully wired up, ching ching 40 euro's later we were told we can continue with all the drugs, fags, booze, fatty foods and sex, no dicky tickers here. Next to Dr Neuveux for a full medical, ching bl.....dy ching another 80 euros, methinks a JAR medical before we leave is the best way to go, however all this does allow us to fly here until 2011.Back to the airfield a bit more paperwork, rig the ASH, fed and watered and all fit to fly tomorrow. Then it RAINED, followed by thunderstorm followed by power outage, maybe Dickies bus has jinxed the weather too!

More competition success and more happy visitors

2009-09-07T12:37:00.003+01:00

Congratulations to Dave Watt on coming second in the 15m Nationals, only 10 points behind the winner, while Fran Aitken was 8th in the Junior Nationals.

We had 18 power pilots in six aircraft from the North Weald Flying Group visit us for a day out to try gliding on Saturday 5th September. They had a lovely time organised by the club, including an excellent lunch. Several were rather successful on their first attempts at aerotowing, and all left with a smile on their face.

We hope to organise a few other events like this next year, so let the office know if your flying club is interested.

300s, 500s and other things

2009-08-24T15:10:00.004+01:00

Due to comps and work, we have been a bit busy, so here are several updates.

First, congratulations to member Pete Harvey who has now added the UK Open Class win to his recent European Open Class win.

We have have several weekends with good cross country weather, such as 25th July, 2nd August and 8th August, with multiple 300km flights each day (6 to 8 pilots each time). Andy Smith however, did 597km on the 25th July and 500km on the 8th August and also midweek, on the 13th August. Ordinary pilots also did many 200km+ flights these days.

We said goodbye to Tim Wheeler, one of our full-time staff, on Friday 21st August. After 5 months as staff instructor he has moved on to Boeing to help them with their many projects.

We have been well represented in many comps recently. Apart from Pete Harvey's triumphs, we have had Owain Walters in the Standard Class Nationals and Derren Francis (4th place overall!) and Dave Watt in the 18m Nationals, while at the time of writing, we have Fran Aitken, Felix Hofmann and Philippa Roberts in the Junior Nationals, Derren Francis and Dave Watt in the 15m Nationals, and Steve Bradford, Paul Copland and William Parker in the Grandsen Regionals.

So, overall, a very active year for cross countries and comps (and I've probably missed out several others as well).

The Regionals

2009-07-27T22:08:00.007+01:00

The Bicester Regionals 2009 were a great success. The weather was not as nice as we would have liked, due to the jet stream moving to the wrong place, but Dan the MetMan did a great job of forecasting, enabling Ken Hartley to set tasks to match the conditions. Overall we had five days in the Open Class and four days in the Sports Class (increasing wind strength on one day prevented them from flying).

There were at least 28 people working hard to make the Regionals a success, giving up at least a week's holiday to be there - and many were not even members of the club! For example, the girls in Control travelled from Liverpool and Portsmouth, just to help us out, and a group of Scouts also turned up to help with launching and lots of other jobs, including keeping the place tidy.

As for the winners, John Wilton won the Open Class, with local pilots John Roberts (131) second and Martin Durham in LS8 third. In the Sports Class it was definitely local hero time, with Sunay Shah in HGG in first place, beating Ian Smith and Micky Boik in AA into second place and Cris Emson (sharing 379 with Red Staley) in third place.

We had many regular visitors competing, but with overlapping Nationals at each weekend, the turnout reduced was to 54 pilots (27 in each class). However we still seem to be the most popular Regionals in the country as we had a bigger entry than any other Regionals.

June was nice

2009-07-04T20:56:00.004+01:00

We have had a stream of visitors from other clubs coming to sample gliding at its best over the last three or four weeks. Pilots from Portsmouth, the Vintage Gliding Club, Kent, Aboyne, Kent (again) and arriving soon, some from Vectis.

Our courses are a popular as ever, and soon we will be running the most popular Regionals in the country. Although the number of entries is rather low this year, a mere 59 at the last count, we still have room for another 20 or so entrants. So if you wish to join us, enter soon as the comp starts on 18th July.

Yes, a dozen or so pilots on a local task week can be fun, but a full-blown Regionals is even more fun! And our large all grass airfield, devoted to gliding not power flying, makes finishing so much easier and safer. So don't delay, enter today. Bicester 2009

Finally we can offer NPPL training for those who prefer an engine. Got a full PPL but not tried a motor glider yet? Compare what you pay elsewhere for a Cessna with flying a motor glider www.windrushers.org.uk/fees.htm

2009-06-16T16:43:00.011+01:00

So how did things go on Sunday 14th June?

Well, apparently Derren heard a strange knocking sound while on task, and couldn't extend his bug wipers... ;)

Bob King - 757.5 km - WELL DONE !!!
Andy Smith - 739.2 km - so verrrrrry close.
Mark Szymkowicz - 719.7 km so close.

Matt Turnbull and Philipp Schartau - 503.2km well done.

While all on the same task of 339.9 km we had:-
Owain Walters, Dan Pitman, Dave Watt, Derren Francis, Al Mac, Andy Henderson, Ken Hartley.
While Derek Staff did a different 375 km

Me? I sat on the ground helping with the Interclub League, which we won very convincingly. Not that I'm bitter, what with Matt getting to the glider ten minutes before me and using the old excuse that I had flown it yesterday, or with me having had a bad flight on the Saturday, and forgetting to put sun screen on my nose, and the logger failing. No, I wasn't bitter at all, not one little bit...

On the Saturday we had 11 pilots race round the same 206.3 km task, with many others doing smaller ones.

We had visitors from several clubs turn up over the weekend, many flying the same tasks as above, and all seemed to enjoy themselves. Last time I checked, 31 pilots did tasks on the Sunday from Bicester.

Task week - day one

2009-05-23T21:56:00.003+01:00

A great turn out of 15 or so turned up for a 10.00 am briefing under a promising sky. Two tasks were set, Task A (Experienced) was BI1, LRI, CAX, BIC for 234km, and the novice task BI1, LRI, NPT, BIC for 144km. There was a threat of the day getting cut off from high cover. Unfortunately, this happened before the day really got started so most scrubbed the day. Dave Watt went off locally in GAM with Chris Palmer. KBS also launched.

There was also plenty of club flying, congratulations to Christian Fernau for getting his second bronze leg. The day finished off with an excellent BBQ, where 40 or so attended. It's still all going on in the bar...

Tomorrow looks better, breifing for the task week will be at 10.00.

A busy Friday

2009-05-22T23:04:00.002+01:00

A few launched to give a short task a go, but the weather never went that way, so they all came back (apart from Seth)!

James Duncan went solo on the aerotow today, having soloed on the winch on Wednesday, well done! The instructors course were motorgliding and winching today, finishing off with cable breaks.

This evening we hosted our first flight and bite of the year (thanks to the weather), and flew 25 of Clive's colleagues from work in just over an hour. A huge thanks to all those who helped out!

Tomorrow will be a great day to start our task week. Is summer returning?

Going for solo first solo

2009-05-20T23:29:00.002+01:00

Congratulations to James who is attending this weeks going for solo course, for going solo this afternoon. Well done! The instructor course spent the day aerotowing, and we welcomed the Swift, which spent the afternoon practising for the aerobatic nationals. Richard Lever (ML) and Sef (EKV) launched and did some extended local soaring. JED went to the Southdowns and Wiltshire...

The new briefing room is now very near completion, and will be great for briefings during next weeks task week.

Finally some flying weather..

2009-05-19T23:33:00.003+01:00

After a very disappointing couple of weeks it was good to get flying again. The instructors course made full use of the reasonable height cloudbase, and the going for solo course progressed onto the winch.

G-OTIB has had it's undercarriage legs taken off and sent to France.

Tomorrow is looking quite good, and our task week kicks off on Saturday morning, briefing will be in our newly refurbished briefing room at 10.00am. All are welcome!

Yet another good X/c day

2009-05-17T16:17:00.008+01:00

Sunday 10th May 2009.
The season has well and truly started. Sunday produced another good x/c day with the big boys doing 270km. Al Mac, Andy Smith, Derren, Dan Pitman did Bicester-Market Harborough-Ely-Kettering-Bicester.

Us lesser mortals still did 207km. Sunay Shah, Marko Bacic, Andy Henderson and Derek Staff did Bicester-Didcot-Grafam Water-Bicester.
Derek Staff turned back just 13km short of Grafam water (tut tut!) having landed out the week before 5 fields away from Sackville with no mobile phone and no money.

Even Wee John was shovelled into his glider for a late start 150km.
We all made the same mistake in not launching as soon as the weather was soarable and consequently not making best use of the day.
Roll on the regionals!

Last week...

2009-05-05T13:50:00.002+01:00

On Tuesday, Dave Watt took George off in the Acro for some soaring training. G-OTIB is now back from it's annual. Congratulations to Corbin, who has bought into an ASW19, JJL and flew it for the first time today. Unfortunately, we had to Can evening flying as a thunderstorm moved in and wiped us out.

Wednesday was a very promising day with DW launching just after 10.00 on a 750k. Howver, the day did not pan out aswell as we all hoped, with a couple of landouts from our Weston on the Green visitors, and everyone else cutting their tasks back. The evening got better, with Tuesday evenings group turning up and enjoying some great evening soaring. A couple of 50k guy's from Lasham also made it up here.

At 19:40 a Lasham based Duo Discus X landed here, having been up to Sutton Bank (N.Yorkshire). They were aerotowed home during a very pleasant sunset.

Thursday and Friday were ok too, with some club members training.

Saturday and Sunday were also very good, with the grid going off on various tasks, up to 300k in length.

Bank holiday Monday, we got everything out, did 3 aerotows, then put everything away in the rain...

Going for Solo course and a brilliant Sunday

2009-04-29T07:39:00.003+01:00

The Going for Solo course was one of the best we have ever run, with 5 excellent flying day's. Both guys on the course made rapid progress from zero flying experience, both are now ready for launch failures and, pending doing ok at those, solo.

Saturday shaped up much better than forecast with Ken going out to Newbury and back along the streets. Derren and Owain also did something, not sure exactly where they went.

Sunday was the day. DW, Bob King and others ventured out on a 500k, congratulations to Marco who did his first 300k, and to Roger Westerhuis who went to Hus Bos in the K6 for his 50k, but then took a local aerotow to 3000ft, and flew home into wind! Many others did the club 300k task.

I was homebound, which was right underneath the general dropzone for the aerotow. How painful it was!

Another very good soaring day...

2009-04-23T00:12:00.004+01:00

Corbin Davies and James Best have done their 50ks! Both took an Astir each to Lasham, James landing their just 1 hour 30 after launching off the winch at Bicester. Well done guys.

DW, Derren, Mark Simplyrich, Sunay and Bob King did Lasham - Avebury for a very fast 220k.

The guys on the Going for solo course filled their boots today on the winch, and are now doing the entire flight by themselves. Dave also did another long soaring flight and looked at Spinning.

Monday 20th April and Tuesday 21st

2009-04-21T23:46:00.004+01:00

Monday

The summer is here, temperatures into the 20s and soaring conditions that make things happen.

DW, Derren and Matt Cook headed out yesterday into the yonders on Bidford and Bedford. Meanwhile. back at Bicester we have Tarmin and Dave on a weeks intensive going for solo course, both who have started afresh to gliding today. Both had a great day, both doing 3 hours in the air each.

Tuesday

Again, a cross country grid of 15 launched into a working but blue sky. Not sure where they all went today, but one things for sure, life is too short for work when there's good gliding to be done.

The course guys had another cracking day and have now progressed through stalling onto circuits. We also welcome two new members who have joined us today, one who came on a half day course, and another who just popped in to have a look around, and then was persuaded to go flying, not that he needed any persuasion! It was also nice to see a busy bar this evening.

Tomorrow looks like another reasonable day!

Last week...

2009-04-21T23:38:00.003+01:00

Internet problems at home stopped me from updating last week. Last week was our first official week of full time operations, and what a successful week it was, until it rained and rained.

Both Charles Jessop and Alan Linfield were on a Going for Bronze course. Charles got solo at Bicester, then went on to do several long soaring flights, a couple of nearly silver heights (logger needed to be switched on), converted into a single seater, completed his bronze written exam and field landings, as well as clocking up enough hours and launches for the bronze. The only thing left is his GFT, shame the weather wasn't quite good enough on enough day's!

Alan got solo again after a long layoff, and though already Bronze, did enjoy the couple of good days in the sunshine.

On Monday, DW, Derren, Owain Walters and others headed out x/c. Derren and Owain did two tasks, with Derren relighting for the second task, whilst Owain scraped away from his finish, nice one.

daniel at the controls for first aero's

2009-04-16T10:54:00.004+01:00

Todays videos

2009-04-08T22:17:00.002+01:00

Wave to FL130 - but you needed a turbo!

2009-04-08T10:13:00.004+01:00

The rain cleared at lunch time to give another great ridge day, with a good 20kts straight onto the Bishop.

Many tried to get into the wave but few succeeded. Lukas, T19 got to 7500ft by pure luck, and Terry got to 13000ft at Pitlocherie (but needed his turbo to get into it)!

I didn't get established in the wave until it was getting dark; I'm not bitter....

Annette flew the K6 on the ridge. A fine time was had by all.

GAM Bishop Bashing with Terry & Rob

2009-04-08T10:13:00.000+01:00

bishop basing or Bishop Bashing whatever!!!

2009-04-07T21:17:00.004+01:00

More Portmoak chaos..DG505 spin side view.

2009-04-07T21:08:00.003+01:00

Portmoak Video's and Photo's, so far..

2009-04-06T13:09:00.016+01:00

Seth has a collision between his elevator and his nose...

For videos please see below our youtube links:- YouTube Link

Another great ridge day and Micky Boiks birthday

2009-04-06T13:09:00.015+01:00

Another nice ridge day with thermals and weak wave. Easy to stay airborne, and many did long flights. Much bashing of the bishop was done...

Micky Boik enjoyed a couple of nice flights in the mighty AA, and some walked up to the top of the ridge to take photo's. These will be on tomorrow. Micky also enjoyed a proper coming of age, and is currently munching on birthday cake in the bar.

Not sure what happened at Bicester today, forecast looked good.

Tomorrow looks really promising in the afternoon,with small ridge of high pressure and a NW'ly flow. Will it wave properly???

Good day at Portmoak, cracking at home...

2009-04-06T12:30:00.002+01:00

A moderate SW'ly gave good ridge on the Bishop all day, so much bashing of the Bishop was done.. It was also very thermic with some 6kt climbs to 4500ft. Unfortunately, this screwed up the wave with only acouple of us climbing up to FL50 in 1/2 kt.

Rob Hatcheck did his 2 hour cross country endorsement leg in the morning, and his hour leg after lunch. 46 different gliders launched from Portmoak on Sunday and 105 winch launches were done.

Although it was nowhere near as good for x/c as down south, it was an excellent fun day.

Back home the club task was 300k, going out to Cambridge and Grantham. Conditions were reported to be cracking, with a 5000ft cloudbase and climbs to match. Many thanks to Andy Henderson, Maz, Nick Kelly and everyone else who helped out on the field yesterday.

Just a quick note on tomorrow (Tuesday). It's looking good at home.

I hope to upload photo's and video's from Portmoak later today.

Ridge and Wave at Portmoak, Thermals back home..

2009-04-04T23:39:00.002+01:00

Today started wet both up here and at home, with a clearance arriving about 14:00. Conditions at Portmoak were ok, with a good wind on the Bishop ridge, and weak wave up to FL55.

Back home looked good too, with at least one silver height under a 5000ft Cu base.

Tomorrow is looking good!

Portmoak trip starts

2009-04-02T23:45:00.002+01:00

OJ and Debbie and Mike P and Felix left Bicester today and are now at Portmoak. The others will join us in drips and drabs over tomorrow and Saturday. Luckily the forecast is promising for the next few days...

Back at home, John Wright is covering for me tomorrow and on next Wednesday, and winching will be available on both days.

We will begin full time operations from Monday 13th April running through until the end of October.

In the mean time, we hope to report great things from the North over the next week / 10 days.

Another nice day and Dave Watt lands out..

2009-04-02T23:37:00.002+01:00

A good turn out for a reasonable day, with some 18 aerotows. Dave and Derren declared BIC- Cambridge - Great Malvern - BIC for just over 300k, but turned back at Broadway. Derren scraped in, Dave did not landing a few fields away.

Mark Lavender and Dereck set off on BIC- Oakington - Hus Bos - BIC for 220k. Mark went round, Dereck did GRL Out and return.

We welcome Paul Murphy as a new member, who flew with Dave Perkins in the T21. Must have been cold...

Corbin tried for his 50k to Gransden in the clubs Astir but landed at Silverstone. Conveniently, DFR is now in it's box ready to head north to Portmoak on Friday.

Thanks to John Marriott for instructing, Dave Hook and Alan Twigg fot towing.