MIDLAND
GLIDING CLUB
NEWSLETTER
Free
Weather Information.... 1
A
Grand Day - Sunday 14th May.............. 2
Tibenham.......
2
Marketing
Matters.......... 4
493
- Club Discus Syndicate and How it Works 5
Task
Week.... 5
Farewell,
Desmond!...... 6
Rockpolishers
@ Nympsfield 7
The
Epic Saga of Golf Alpha Oscar............ 8
A
Mynd Club Day - by a Novice Cross Country Pilot 10
Thoughts
on How Our Fleet Might be Developed.... 12
From
the Flying Field............ 12
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Please send Newsletter contributions to: John and Ann Parry Holly Cottage Wentnor Bishops Castle Shropshire SY9 5EE Telephone..01588 650379 Fax.………01588 650596 Email……..John.Parry@Virgin.net |
Club Details: The Midland Gliding Club The Long Mynd Church Stretton Shropshire SY6 6TA Office Telephone......01588 650206 Office Fax.................01588 650532 Members Telephone..01588 650405 Email……………….office@longmynd.com |
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Selected items from this Newsletter will appear on the Club Internet site which is: www.longmynd.com |
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Please could we have contributions for the September issue by 18th August. (Earlier if possible please!) |
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John Parry
UK aviation weather forecasts are being made available free of charge on the Internet. The Met Office web site http://www.met-office.gov.uk/aviation will include half-hourly weather observations (METARs) and terminal aerodrome forecasts (TAFs).
Chris Harris
Saturday had been pretty disappointing for this duty Tigger - the morning was a write off due to very poor visibility and although the afternoon was much better I only managed seven aerotows. Sunday I was Number One instructor with Alisdair Lewis standing in for Rod Hawley as Number Two and Iain Welsh Git as the launch marshal. My reason for writing this is that it was a cracking day; a little slow starting but with excellent weather for a change and good soaring it all turned into a great day.
We achieved 104 launches by the time we packed the hangar at almost 8pm - boy was that pint of beer welcome by then! The reason that all this flying was possible was that so many of the club members present worked extremely hard all day, under the direction of Iain. Many new members were at the launch point and I was impressed with the amount of effort going into keeping the flying going strong. If you were there this day - well done! It was one of the most enjoyable instructing days I’ve had for ages and many of our newer members made good progress. Funny stories of the day that ought to be told are Rose Johnson’s saga of the field without a way out assisted by Iain losing his car keys and Paul Stanley’s short cut to the field at Dorrington via Shobdon in the tug!
A couple of more serious events in the same day to ponder on were, first, the discovery that K21 JGJ had a time expired C of A sticker. It ran out on 9th May but had been signed off on DI’s ever since for 5 days. Did no one else check?
Secondly, during the afternoon while flying I heard a radio call go out to the Discus 493, “493 your wheel is not down”. The glider landed wheels up with no damage whatsoever except perhaps some dented dignity to the pilot. But the result may have been worse had the call been heard. The Discus undercarriage is raised and lowered with the right hand so a change of hand is required for a few seconds on the stick to lower the gear. Late into a landing is not the best time to do this if you are not used to left handed landings. It is very unusual for any glider to sustain serious damage in a wheel up landing on grass but many gliders and pilots have been badly damaged in loss of control situations whilst fiddling with the gear too late into an approach. If YOU see a wheel up approach do NOT cause pilot distraction by using the radio! Finally thank you to those kind souls who kept my water bottle full on such a hot day!
David Crowson
It must have been a difficult choice, either the plains of Norfolk in a K21, or the mountains of Austria in a Duo Discus - mmm! Eeny meeny miny mo...
So the Eastern Regionals was temporarily saved from the hillbillies. The trouble with such good ideas is that they always find a way.
One Saturday night overhearing Iain and Rose talk of still taking the K21 to the competition if enough interest was shown was all it took - a quick call to Colin and Sarah and we were in business.
Colin, Sarah and Richard took the first half of the week (the very wet half) and I took the second half (the sunny dry half). Although the weather for each half of the week was different they were equally unflyable.
My half of the week started Wednesday evening, eventually finding the airfield after negotiating many miles of local lanes most of which were closed due to roadworks, the remainder devoid of signposts. So after knocking on numerous doors I arrived at the site.
Amongst the small encampments of the various groups the ‘Mynd Camp’ was easy to find, distinctive with its tall mast and familiar algae green caravans.
These modern tents are marvellous - a few beers, a few tent pegs and hey presto! Instant home. This was all starting very well. Talk of tents floating, people sleeping in cars while ducks swam around the camp. But the weather was set to change to hot and sunny.
My excitement however was a bit premature, as the week’s flying was as follows:
· Thursday: No task set, day scrubbed.
· Friday: Task set. Grid squat. Day scrubbed. No flying.
· Saturday: Task set. Grid squat. Rebrief on grid. Smaller fall back task set. Grid squat. Day scrubbed. Flew for fun.
· Sunday: Task set. We flew! But 90% landed out near the first turning point.
Now all this may make it sound like a bit of a waste of time, but you’d be wrong. As an early cross country pilot I had a fantastic time. This either means I am a rather sad individual who gets excited by a trip to the supermarket, or that this introduction to competition flying by people as good as Rose Johnson and Paul Stanley is just good fun.
When I first became interested in cross country flying, I attended Simon’s cross country course at the Mynd. The main lesson I learned from this was that you need to get yourself into the position where you are geared up to go cross country, have a crew organised, and being in a group focussed on cross country. Without this you rig the glider, think about a Tim’s Triangle, then if the sky is booming, indicating a 99% chance of getting round, you local soar for two hours and decide to go nowhere. This means that to provide the impetus to go cross country you are likely to need a course, Task Week or a competition.
This is where a week as P2 in a two seater in a competition is invaluable. A competition would be a daunting prospect for any first-timer, so to have an experienced hand as P1 showing you the ropes and taking the pressure while you concentrate on the briefing, the task and getting prepared for the flight gives you a superb opportunity to experience the real thing with the safety net of an instructor to fall back on.
The morning on a flying day will be very busy:
· Before 10:00: Rise. Glider rigged, DI’d and on the grid ready to fly. Breakfast, shower, shave (ladies may omit the last one). Prepare food and drink for the flight.
· 10:00: Briefing. This will start with the prize giving and the ‘how I did it’ talk from the winner of the previous day (some of these should be collected for a book!). The weather forecast. In this case it was superb. Very informative and brilliantly presented. The met man could tell you that the weather was crap and there was no chance of flying, and still have everyone laughing and applauding at the end! Then a brief description of the task (already presented on a task briefing sheet) with any relevant airspace, danger areas, NOTAMs etc.
· 10:20: If possible do absolutely nothing and relax, setting up the GPS before flight.
· 11:00: All pilots on the grid with their gliders.
· 11:10: First launch.
This may sound like a fairly relaxed timetable but to me it was a mad rush. I learned far more that half week than I have room to describe here including start gate technique, thermalling and gaggle flying.
So if you thought this was a waste of time because of the minimal flying you could not be more wrong. It has been one of the most instructive few days I’ve had and an absolute must for anyone keen on cross country flying who wants an introduction to competition flying.
Pester your CFI and make sure it happens again next year. You will love it.
To finish: my one abiding memory of the competition was being P2 in the front seat while Paul flies to join a gaggle; gliders above, below and level with us, flying towards a circling mass at speed (I wasn’t looking at the ASI at the time!), asking Paul if he has seen the glider at our level in front of us, which he assured me he had. In an instant we are transformed from kamikaze collision course to being perfectly positioned opposite our target in a thermal turn. I can never do justice to this manoeuvre in words, so just trust me when I say it was impressive.
PS I understand that you can enter a single seater in a competition as a team so now I just need to have a word with the rest of the syndicate and it will be Northern Regionals next year!
PPS The result of all this - the Mynd K21 won the Two Seater Trophy, even beating a Duo Discus.
Jon Hall
As I write this at the end of June the web site www.longmynd.com has had over 15,000 visits overall and more than 50,000 page hits per month (that is the total number of elements downloaded to people’s computers including every image, button and banner). It is now pretty robust with very little downtime or reports of it not working. Should you ever experience any problems, however small, I would like to hear of them so that I can continue to improve the site. Just email me at jon@webz.co.uk
The site now has sections on Members’ information, Finding Out About the MGC, How to Find the Site, Flying at the MGC, Holiday Courses and Trial Lessons, How to Contact the Office, Links to other Useful Sites, A Newsletter Archive, Weather Information and Forecasts, Things to Do and Places to Stay in Shropshire, A Bulletin Board for Messages and Announcements, and Rockpolishers Inter-Club League.
The Members’ section includes an up to date weekend duty rota list so no excuse for forgetting, dates for the diary, and now a new page all about competition flying. It is borrowed from an American site but the basics are the same and it is full of useful information especially for those just thinking about doing it.
The Weather section includes almost 40 links to weather related sites around the world with an emphasis on the UK and especially to Jack Harrison’s excellent Gliding Weather site where he attempts to forecast and rate the days coming up over the next two weeks, updated twice each day as the picture becomes clearer. He doesn’t always get it right but it was down to Jack’s predictions that I got up early enough to do 285 km on 10th June.
The Bulletin Board could be a very useful way of communicating amongst ourselves for things such as duty day swaps, tips for forthcoming ‘good’ days, notices from the club officials, and much more. It should be our on-line notice board but so far only a handful of people are using it. Maybe that is because not enough people are aware of it or it just isn’t needed. Either way I would be glad to hear your views.
Things to look out for in the future include an interactive Flying Summary so that each day the office can easily enter the details of what happened the day before, a virtual tour of the club from Church Stretton to the bar and eventually online information about course availability and credit card booking.
I want to keep the site dynamic and changing so any suggestions for additions and improvements will be taken seriously. I particularly would welcome any ideas for enticing visitors to actually visit the club rather than just visit the ‘site’ and would like to do a section called “Novice’s Diary” following the progress of an ab initio from first flight to first solo. All I need is a new member willing to write a few words and maybe take some digital pictures each week or two.
I also want to start a collection of pictures of all the glider types that fly from the Mynd. Any format from 35mm slides, prints, digital, even negatives will do. A little history for each glider would be appreciated.
Some people have commented on the difficulty of finding the site on the search engines. It is true that some of the search engines such as Excite consistently refuse to list the MGC even though I regularly submit the URL to them. This is in part due to the obscure number of possible locations for the listing and also to the fact that the search engines each have their own way of indexing. The fact is that it is unlikely that we will ever get top listings on all of them at the same time. ‘Google’ and ‘Dogpile’, two of the best search engines, both put us at the top of their lists. Fact is that there are better ways of advertising the web URL and some of you will have noticed that the club trailers and some private owner trailers now have lettering on the sides that show it. I would ask any private owners who take their trailers off site regularly to comps or other clubs, (or even lands out a lot) to consider putting the vinyls on. These are available free from the office and if you don’t know how to do it Colin Knox or I will do it for you. There are also new car window stickers in the office. Please put one in your car now.
Some of you may have noticed that gliding is getting a lot of coverage in Flyer Magazine at the moment and this is in large part due to the fact that the club has encouraged their editorial staff with a free trial lesson and a couple of days on a course. This resulted in an excellent article on in the “Learn to Fly Guide” with lots of mentions of the MGC and contact details as well as a further 6 page article on gliding in this month’s magazine including almost a full page on holiday courses at the Mynd. This is exactly the kind of free advertising that pays dividends so if any of you subscribe to specialist professional or house magazines please let me have the editorial office address and phone number so I can try and spread the word wider. In particular I would be interested in anything to do with LPG, wildlife conservation, the medical professions and career women.
Exhibitions do well for us generally so we will be doing Telford Airshow again this year and also the Sleap Open Day Air Show in August (volunteers wanted). We are also going to try for the first time the Flyer International Flight Training Exhibition in Manchester in July. We probably will be the only gliding club present.
The best form of marketing always has been and always will be word of mouth so please don’t miss any opportunity to talk to the rest of the world about the delights and excitement of our sport and encourage them to come to the club to see what it is all about. Don’t forget that trial lessons for friends of members are half price.
Nick Heriz-Smith
This year, as well as being syndicated, the Discus is insured for all club members to fly.
It works like this:-
There are five syndicate members who have first call. They must either let the office know the day before they intend flying, or have it rigged by 10 am on the day. It is then available for club use up to a time the syndicate specifies. When the syndicate no longer require it, the club may use it once more.
Non-syndicate members cannot book ahead, but if it has not been rigged and no syndicate member has phoned the office, then it may be flown cross country with the specific permission of the Instructor in Charge.
If you are not a syndicate member and would like to fly 493, you must:-
· Check with the office that it is available.
· Have fifteen hours in glass.
· Have attained your Bronze.
· Have had a type briefing/conversion.
· Have the permission of the Instructor in Charge.
John Parry
Once again Task week will be the week leading up to the August Bank Holiday, that is August 19th-28th. As in past years we will aim to finish the competition on Sunday with non-competition tasks on the Monday.
We aim to provide the sort of organisation that you might expect at a Regionals or even a Nationals but being more relaxed - and a lot cheaper! If you are a novice cross country pilot don’t be put off by the thought of competing, it is a great opportunity to fly tasks that have been selected to make the most of the conditions (well that is what we try to achieve).
I hope that all pilots will be using GPS loggers this year; I know it can be difficult especially if using a club glider. If anyone has spare equipment, or needs to borrow some, please let me know.
Mark Wakem
The last time I flew the Jodel, everything seemed normal: DI, pre-start checks, “Clear Prop”, engine starts first time and continues to run (mixture/idle cut-off in Rich after all!), oil pressure rising, switch on the radio and wake up Desmond.
Desmond
yawned, stretched and woke up. “Here,
we go,” he thought, “another trip round Winter Hill followed by enough circuits
to send me dizzy.” “Here am I, brain
the size of a planet, able to navigate from here to Spain and what does he
ask me to do?” But today wasn’t the same. Desmond listened very, very carefully for the
voices of his friends in the Chain, calling to him in that funny echo-cho-ho-o
way they do, but he heard nothing. We tried the another chain, still nothing. Then Desmond realised what I had forgotten;
all good things must come to an end, and on the 31st of
March his friends had all signed off for the last time while he was asleep.
He was completely alone, like ET when they went off and left him, and
in this case they weren’t coming back. He
wept.
The Decca Navigator system was developed during WW II, for ship position finding. The basic principle uses a set of radio transmitters, one master and usually three slaves, sending a synchronised set of signals. If you receive the set of signals and calculate the time differences between them, when they were all transmitted at the same instant, and you know the locations of the transmitters, you can use some pretty heavy geometry to work out where you are.
In the early days, the ship’s receiver filled a room, the position finding was done by special charts and tables, but that didn’t matter because the ship hadn’t moved much by the time you worked out where you had been. It was very accurate. The chains were set up all down the coasts of this side of the Atlantic from Gibraltar to the Arctic Circle and covering all the twiddly bits inside Scandinavia: Skagerrak, Kattegat, Baltic, etc.
But the radio waves didn’t only work over sea, they also did over land and above it. Electronics got smaller and lighter, relatively speaking, to the point where an airliner could carry the Decca gear. The sets got clever enough to work out where they were in latitude and longitude and then to keep on doing it to say which direction you were going in and how fast. And the basic system still worked at aircraft speeds. With a bit of thought, you could create a system which could let you fly round an airfield without any beacon on the ground there. I saw a light aircraft a few years ago which was reputed to have been owned at one time by a Decca development engineer. It still had a receiver about the size of a tuck box (tell them, Julian) under the back seat, but the panel had a complete pen recorder rigged up with a hand-drawn map of the local area round his home base and a pointer where the pen should be. Bingo! Your own “precision” approaches with no ADF, ILS, VOR or whatever.
Fast forward to the ‘70s: all the electronics are now tiny, microprocessors are available with previously unheard-of thinking power. And Phillips and others bring out self-contained Decca Navigators for yachtsman and even dinghy sailors! The Phillips was the size of a paperback book, weighed half a kilo, with a big clear LCD display, could do routes with 10 turning points and used about 40 mA. Then a group of cunning glider pilots, for the purpose of the story I think it was Vic and his friends at Sleap, worked out that this was ideal for wave flying.
It worked a treat, could be strapped to your knee and accurate to less than a few hundred yards. The only slight problem was that the error checking decided that over 90 knots was unlikely in a boat, and produced an error message until it slowed down. Then when we got Desmond for our Jodel, a very nice man had got the chip out, hacked into it and removed the speed limit. Desmond was totally happy to navigate at any ground speed the 90 knot cruise would produce.
Of course Desmond was early and therefore cost an arm and a leg, but he served us well for over 10 years. He worked on long wave, and so was extremely tolerant to things like aerial length and position. Anything over a metre was OK: we ended up with a piece of wire dangling vertically inside the rear fuselage, but I first tried it with a crocodile clip onto one rudder cable! Phillips then brought out a real aeroplane version, costing even more money, and threatened legal violence to the nice man so he had to stop doing brain surgery.
In the meanwhile some rotter invented GPS and Desmond’s days were numbered, like the high-output piston aero engine when Frank Whittle finally made people listen to him. But we had a good few years out of him; long enough that I can now replace him with a modern GPS with far more bells and whistles at half the price.
So goodbye Desmond, and thanks to you, Decca, Philips, Vic and the Sleap Gang, and D.F. (the aforesaid Nice Man).
(Why
Desmond? Spend too much time hanging out with John Parry
and the reference comes naturally.)
Jon Hall
As usual at Nympsfield the weather was unkind and the conditions difficult on both days. Saturday started with promising sunshine and broken cloud with ridge tasks set between 100k and 200k but the thermal conditions never really got going and the wind was only just strong enough to maintain around 800 feet on the ridge.
Nympsfield no longer use a windsock now that they have the wind generator on the edge of the airfield. The locals reckon that if it rotates faster than one turn every three seconds the ridge will work - just! It maintained a 3 second average all day and none of the pundits or intermediates chose to go.
Three of the novices did but the control didn’t hear their start calls and one, who landed out short of the first TP, didn’t call start at all. Richard Langford, our novice in the Discus, properly decided not to go because no other starts were heard or recorded. In spite of an official protest by our team captain (overruled) the day provided only a handful of points for Nympsfield.
Sunday dawned bright blue and sunny and the forecast of a good day seemed about to materialise. However by midday the cloud had spread out and it looked much more difficult, with only a few patches of sunshine on the ground. Tasks were reduced to 45 km for the novices, 90 km for the intermediates and 145 km for the pundits. It looked like the conditions were cycling and that they might get better later. We chose to get at the end of the grid and take the last launches. This turned out to be a bad idea.
They were cycling, and it did get better but not until much later. In the meantime Chris Alldis in his LS4 finished first in the pundit class, I came third after landing out at Malvern Wells in the Hornet as intermediate and Richard came fifth, also landing out. I had spent a long time following very small patches of sunshine away from the direction of the TP and eventually became impatient and decided to run in and out at low level (let this be a lesson to you all - patience is definitely a virtue). As I ran into the TP at Malvern I realised that I was not going to make it with sufficient height to get to a suitable field so turned away less than 500 m from the edge of the cylinder and hopped onto the ridge in the hope that there might be something working. Of course there was no wind at all and I slid hopelessly along the Malvern Hills at just below ridge height, 100 feet out with picnickers waving down to me. To make matters worse as I was about to turn out into the fields for a landing a solitary K6 came the other way along the hill top and appeared to be climbing.
The highlight of the weekend was when we heard that Andy Davies, despite robust lobbying from his wife, had not been picked to represent Nympsfield as they had plenty of pilots and didn’t feel that they needed him. I took him aside and offered a very generous transfer fee if he would come and fly for us but so far I haven’t had a firm response.
The end result was three undamaged gliders, three undamaged pilots and Aston Down in the lead with 19 points, the Mynd second with 18 points and Nympsfield third with 17 points. Everything to play for at the last event at Aston Down on 22/23th July. I would like to invite the entire squad to come down to this last event and fly Hors Concour, crew for the pilots and join in the barbecue on Saturday night. It should be a good way to end the competition and I might even be persuaded to buy you all a pint!
Chris Ellis
Gather round all Pilots bold
There is a tale I must unfold
Of how, through toil and tribulation,
We finally reached, to some ovation,
An answer to a ticklish question
By a somewhat neat suggestion.
At the Mynd it had transpired
Further training was required
To prepare our pilots new
For distant ventures in the blue.
For them the method be revealed
On how to pick the safest field
To navigate ’cross wild terrain
And hopefully back home again.
A Motor
Floater would be needed.
The CFI,
I must explain,
Had said
we needed such a plane;
The Treasurer
recoiled in horror -
“It’s too
much cash, we cannot ‘borrer’.
We have
no funds. I’m not to blame.”
And other
reasons just as lame.
“This
is the case. It’s such a pity.
We’d love
to help,” said the Committee.
In a moment
wildly rash
I said
“I’m sure we’ll raise the cash.
Why not
form a syndicate
To purchase
one and operate.”
“Oh good!”
they cried - “a splendid wheeze -
Go ahead
and fix it please.”
Had
I guessed what was in store
I would
have fled to foreign shore
In the
hope of staying sane
Alleviating
strain on brain.
A
notice on the board was placed
With words
and lines all carefully spaced
Asking
anyone who’d care
To purchase
an exclusive share
And help
the Club achieve its aims
In space
below, append their names.
We
soon had an impressive list
Who’d clutch
a chance not to be missed
To invest
a sum quite small
In flying
pleasures soon for all.
Now
the only thing to do
Was find
a good machine that flew.
This proved
not a simple task
And much
advice we had to ask
Of people
who might help us find
The type
of plane we had in mind.
What we
sought just had to be
A Scheibe
S.F. Two Five ‘C’
A
trip to Lasham set the seal
On what
turned out a worthwhile deal.
Having
talked to Graham McA.
Contact
was made with Terry J.
Said he
“I have what you require -
Just send
the smackers down the wire.”
In
the merry month of May
At Mynd,
upon the second day
(The first
old hands will all report
Is saved
for sport of different sort)
Those who
still stayed within the frame
Met in
session to proclaim
“Go ahead
and take the offer.
Buy the
plane. We’ll raid the coffer.”
Phoned
T.J. who with much thanks
Emptied
all our piggy banks.
Off smartly
to the Continent
And, finding
aircraft in good nick,
Said “It’s
a good one - buy it quick.”
Then
to Lasham flew it back
Along the
right magnetic track
And without
hesitation
Set about
certification.
This
was when our little scheme
Somewhat
lost its head of steam.
Was there
a problem? you enquire.
Yes!
stuck in bureaucratic mire.
It took
three months of constant hassle
And a phone
bill quite colossal
During
which our little beauty
Posed at
Lasham - gate guard duty.
At
last one sunny August day
The CAA
rang up to say
“Certification
is now done -
Fly it
home, have lots of fun.”
After
months of too much grief
It turned
out, to my relief,
Our machine’s
a little cracker.
Well worth
every single smacker.
Flying
almost every day
Suddenly,
again, it’s May.
Time to
take stock of our first year
And plan
just where to go from here.
The
syndicate of ten folk fair
Plus the
Club which holds a share,
Met in
session once again
To review
our loss or gain.
Hours flown
were quite a few
They totalled
up one ninety-two.
Of these
one hundred and a bit
Were flown
by the Syndicate.
Sixty odd
were flown for pleasure
With other
members at their leisure.
And thirty
plus, a tense induction,
To advanced
Bronze ‘C’ instruction
For those
aspiring to proclaim
Cross-country
endorsements as their aim.
All
in all our course of action
Has met
with general satisfaction
Throughout
the Club and all concerned.
Though
many lessons have been learned.
I
now sign off with title grand
Given by
official hand
As Chairman
of our little troop
Trustee
of the Assets of Falke 2000 Group.
Annual statistics for the period 12 August 1999 to 30 April 2000:
Total hours: 192
Hours flown by syndicate members on checks, solo, jointly or with friends and relatives: 102
Hours flown with other club members: 59.5
Hours flown instructing for Cross Country Endorsement: 30.5
David d’Arcy
On Sunday morning (14th May) the visibility was much better than during the last couple of weeks. At briefing, Chris Harris (number one) talked of possible 5 knot thermals later in the day, while reviewing the met. I had already put my name down for a K23, and so added a X-C against it. Chris mentioned Rose Johnson was going to do Tim’s triangle and anyone was more than welcome to join her. This sounds good I thought, then realised there was no way on this earth that I was going to keep up! All the same I get my briefing from Rose, and talk of going north as last time I tried into wind it was a disaster, well Craven Arms and back, though the wind was much stronger than today’s 5-12 knot easterly. Marchington was picked out by Rose, although she said they had moved recently, Cross Hayes was the nearest and it was hypothesised this was probably their new setup, but I was to ring and confirm. Route, “easy” said Rose, “make for Wrekin hill, then Stafford, then large reservoir and start looking. However, watch out for the airway, its only 4,500 feet amsl above Stafford and beyond.” We then talked about Tim’s and remote starts and finishes which Rose thought was another possibility. I was to ring John Parry, our rules guru, and confirm.
In the meantime I ran into CFI Nick Heriz-Smith just finishing the C of A on his Ventus, and asked his opinion. Nick said he was more in favour of me landing elsewhere as it would be much better practice for me. Well decision made, you can’t argue with the CFI. Where was it again?
Back at the launch point, work was required. I pulled cables, drove the retrieve winch and was a general hero, NOT! It was getting close to lunch time and still the day wasn’t going yet, I mean there was no soaring. It was torturous as good clouds could be seen all around.
As lunch progressed, one or two clouds started forming over the Mynd around 13:20, the aerotow queue started to grow and gliders were soaring, hurrah! My turn. With what little preparation I had carried out, I figured the max height I could take for my destination was only 1100 feet. And no I didn’t get around to ringing Marchington or John Parry. Gliding is a busy affair. I conveyed my wishes to tuggie Stanley and off we go. Now one thing I haven’t done much of is thermal aerotow. This is strange, I mean really strange. Glider is lighter than tug, tug in thermal glider not, glider in thermal tug not. Humm, discretion being the better part of valour, I pulled off. Co-incidentally at around 1,000 feet. Not sure what happened next, but soon I was back into my circuit and made the best of it with a perfectly executed landing and then tried to run off and hide my face.
A little later I decide to give it one more go, winch this time. A cracking launch to 1,500 feet, find my own thermal and settled down, not for long though as hordes of others come to join in. Bastards! At cloud base, (aren’t those two words just beautiful?) about 3500 feet above Mynd, I set off in pursuit of Keith Laidler in his LS4, fun I know but I had to try. Caught him up too, but then he left for the next cloud to Shrewsbury. Alistair Self was also with me in 435, and we meet Charlie Carter in JEP on his way back. The cloud was working and the next looked just as good. “Long Mynd, Echo Victor Victor setting out on task.” Wind on 1013 on the altimeter and announce I’m switching to 130.1MHz over the radio, but forget that it should be 130 “decimal” 1 and not “point!” Well practice is what it’s all about.
At the next cloud decisions had to be made, Marchington is that way (blue, with clouds 10 nautical miles), and Tim’s is that way. Nice clouds. The Hornet with Paul Shuttleworth, now joined below me, make that beside me. This will never do! At 4500 amsl I head out into the blue towards the Wrekin, five minutes later I’m getting down to 3000 feet and still only about half way there. Where are those blue thermals? I press on but slow up over the river Severn, thinking I felt something, I scratched around and after a while make 4000 feet again. At the Wrekin, I wasn’t happy with my height so selected my field, but drive on to the other side of the hill where some clouds were and get a climb. At this point, I realise the enormity of Telford all around me. I’m never going to get over that I thought. But with a good second climb I did. I could now just about see Stafford, Birmingham and Cosford. Err, better go north then. Here, it was big decision time again. The clouds were not going in my general direction to goal, do I stick with them or swan off out into the blue again? I consoled myself that I had survived one blue hole, and headed off.
On reflection, this was a poor decision. The clouds were not taking me straight to Marchington/Cross Hayes, they were going generally north and I really needed to go north of Stafford to get around Cannock Chase. I also got nothing out in the blue this time around and so it was field selection again. But wait wasn’t that Seighford on the nose? Secretly I knew it was there as in 1995 I had gone solo and my preparation had identified it as a possible place to land, although not a Silver distance. Arriving at 1200 feet and 16:20 only one glider was soaring up near cloud base the rest were in circuit with launching in progress. The cumulus looked much closer now, in fact had I stuck with them I might have been at cloud base over Seighford too. But sadly now they were out of touch. Well it had been good I thought, and landed.
On the field I was kindly greeted by the CFI, Simon Watson, and offered a cup of tea and some useful tips for when next in the area. There was also Lara Croft at hand to help de-rig! Oh, the happy joys of gliding.
Nick Heriz-Smith
We have, over the past few years made a conscious effort to increase our flying membership, and it appears that we have been very successful. More successful perhaps than we imagined. Our efforts were aimed not just at new members, but a membership that wanted to learn, and then continue to practise the skill of gliding. This it seems is where we have been most successful, the club now has more good, keen and upcoming pilots than I can remember over the last ten years.
Having succeeded so well in this area, I can’t help but consider what effect these changes might have on us. There are many, but the one that concerns me the most is the question of our fleet.
Without being dramatic, I think most of us would agree that the answer must be no. It was years ago when we last modernised our fleet with the purchase of our first K21, and for quite some time after that we had one of the best fleets in the country. In those days the K21 was well able to match the glide angle of most of the club’s private single seaters, which is how it should be. This is no longer the case, there is hardly a glider left on the trailer line that the K21 can out-glide.
As for our basic trainer: well, if the Puchacz had been of stronger build, we wouldn’t still have the K13. The K13 is an excellent trainer and if we had the room I would want to keep it, but it does have two big drawbacks. The first is, that as a spin trainer, its characteristics in the spin entry and recovery bear no resemblance to the gliders most of us fly. The second is hangar space; the longer we hang on to it, the more we restrict ourselves in developing the fleet. Also, it is not getting any younger, and year by year its value drops, reducing our development fund.
So, change is inevitable. I would rather shape the change to suit us now, than just wait and see what happens next. My logic and proposal goes like this:-
For the moment the single seater fleet is fine, a good range of types to work through, it all pays for itself now, and it all gets used. (Yes even the K8 - yet another Silver in the bag - well done Liz!)
We have too many two seaters. We fly no more hours with four than we used to fly with three. So, get rid of two and buy one. The one we get should be a soaring improvement on the K21 and be more easily spinnable for training. Long term I would like to think this could be the DG1000. It isn’t in production yet but their design outline is pretty much our perfect two seater, time will tell. It won’t be cheap, so we need to start a fund now, for a target, say, of four years time. In the meantime I would like to start as we intend to go on, and as a temporary measure replace a K21 and K13 with a Grob 103 (the one with Discus wings), with canards as a spin training option.
Anybody got any other ideas to throw in the pot?
Ann Parry
After the membership weekend in May we welcome the following new members: Marcus Aberle, Daryl Bromley, Jeff Brown, David Cox, Rose Foreman, James Grainger, Duncan Hughes, Malcom Jones, Gerald Mullen, Sally Mullen, Neil Owczarkowski, Philip Parsons, Paul Salisbury, Simon Ramsay, Kent Vernon, Lynda Vernon, Wayne Vernon, Peter Waldron, Susan Walsh, Andrew Wells, Peter Whitehead and Paul Wood.
Congratulations to David Crowson and Steve Male on becoming Basic Instructors, to John Roberts on going solo, to Allan Reynolds on completing his Bronze C with the cross-country endorsement and doing his Silver duration, and to Liz Tusar, David d’Arcy and Trevor Duligall on completing their Silver distances. Members and their gliders have been off on their holidays at home and abroad, often involving competition flying. A K21 (797) was taken to the Eastern Regionals at Tibenham by a Mynd team, in the company of EZ and 759, and came away with a trophy for best two-seater (see David Crowson’s article).