Task week - day one

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

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

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..

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

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...

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...