Saturday 22nd February

I know it seems unlikely given our recent weather, but yes, we did manage two flying days in a week! Saturday was predicted to be the best day of the weekend and many of the usual suspects arrived, keen to get back in the air. Paul Noonan was Duty Instructor and supervised the setup on the short hard runway with CCC and HLH. Then disaster fell....the winch had problems and these turned out to be due to a leaking oil pressure sensor. Luckily we had Lech to come to the rescue - having diagnosed the issue he stood down flying for an hour and went to buy a replacement part. Paul N went for a flight in the Falke, and everyone else went to have Mary's soup & chocolate cake.

In the meantime Graham had decided the forecast was promising and took the big nimbus up to the launch point to go flying with Paul Fletcher. Tim & John Donovan turned up in the Grob and headed off to the west, soon followed by Graham & Paul.

With the winch fixed, we went back to the 'short hard' and started launching the club gliders and CPJ. By this time the wind had swung round almost directly down the runway, and was picking up. Probably less than an hour later - after Bob K, Lech and Alistair had flown - the K8 was sent back to the hangar as the wind became more gusty and the ground handling more difficult. Nigel was flying the Falke, and said the take-off was quite hard work with the wind near Paul's hill.

Flying continued with just the K13. Paul flew with Witold, Phil A and then a last flight with me before we put the kit to bed mid afternoon. If I tell you that we had a 1300 feet launch two up in the K13 without me upsetting Paul by pole bending, you will be able to judge the wind! Just as we retrieved the K13, Graham & Paul F returned in the nimbus. They had been in thermals up to almost 3000ft, and had seen good lift in places. They went out to the Cotswold Edge then back to Daventry via a cloud street and then routed South and home, for the longest glider flight of the day. The record in the K13 was 11 minutes - and there was lift low down but we couldn't stay in it in the wind!

 

Thanks to Lech, Clive & Eric for fixing/driving the winch, and Paul N for instructing - a nice afternoon was had by all, and there was time for tea & a chat afterwards before everyone headed home.

Sunday 16th February

A delightful day for weather, not properly capitalised upon by us I feel, only 30 launches of which 6 were aerotow.

Visitors from Bidford and Bicester swelled the assembly, and Gavin oversaw the day.

Trish with HMB. Alan had gone off with Graham in 60 to play on the Cotswold Edge.

It was good to see some old members too - Red Staley and Martyn Wells both popped in to say hello.

 

HLH saw sterling service and did 9 of these launches. Lucy flew after she’d K13’d with Paul G.  Phil Lacey reappeared and re-soloed with Gavin, and also flew the K8. Stephanie Lown was given a flight by Grandad.

Eric (ntd)

Saturday 15th Feb - Annual Dinner

Flying was scrubbed early on Saturday owing to the wild winds and heavy showers. Mary had soup on tap in the clubhouse, and members turned up gradually through the day to have a late lunch and do 'fettle' type tasks before wandering off to Banbury for the evening. 

The Annual Dinner was held at Whately Hall Hotel in Banbury and once again they did us proud. We had an excellent meal, with plenty of jollity, followed by a short speech by Mary - our mystery speaker - who wanted to encourage us all to fly and try new things, and told us briefly about the time she represented GB in the Womens Europeans Comp (see next NL for more detail!).

The Chairman deep in concentration

We dispensed with speeches this year - probably to the relief of the CFI, Chairman and partners of all glider pilots - so straight on to prizegiving. 

Anne & Paul enjoying electricity having been cut off in the storms

Who knows what John was making..?....

The farpoint prize went to Eric (ntd) again,  for another epic flight out east, and Eric was also awarded the Highest achiever prize for his two 300km flights this summer in his K6, which has been quite an inspiration to other club members. Trish Langlands was awarded the best flight prize for her 300km this summer while CFI's prize went to Michael Bell for keeping the bar well stocked!

Our token junior Lucy (who is apparently 'getting on a bit') adds some glamour to the line up of Eric & Mick and has a welcome break from studying.

Trish and Eric are pictured with their prizes below. Colin Hales won Clubman of the Year, and most improved pilot was awarded to two pilots this year - Lech Zakrzewski and Alistair Frier.












After the formalities were over there was dancing to an excellent disco....at times it would have been very difficult to detect the male membership of the club, but the women were unbowed!

Danger on the dance floor as Paul Duffy shows a couple of legs! Paul is having a hip replacement in two weeks time so we hope to get him back in the air this spring.

Bob glitters on the dance floor...

Many thanks to Liz and helper Jane for organising the evening - a great time was had by all!

Saturday 25th January: Burns Night

A few photos from our Burns Night Celebrations. A big thank you goes to Liz and the team for preparing a wonderful meal and to Alan, for reciting some wonderful Burns' poems.

Sun, Smiles and Soaring - Saturday 11th Jan

We had a great day at the airfield on Saturday. The day was forecast to be sunny and pleasant (if cold) and sure enough a large number of members made it to the airfield in anticipation of a decent flying day. We had a few hiccoughs first thing - just about every vehicle wouldn't start in the cold so there was lots of too-ing and fro-ing with WD40 and jump leads! Those of us without mechanical minds decided to start the year well and take the opportunity to wash some of our fleet - we cleaned CCC, DVX and HLH until they positively gleamed.

The duty instructors were Ray and Russell - it was good to see Ray back in a glider after an enforced absence due to a nasty car accident. The wind was almost on the short hard runway, but in the end we elected to operate one wire off the North south run, accepting the crosswind but landing on the hard to avoid obstructing the take off run. This worked pretty well (thanks Ray & Russell!), and after a slow start we had a good launch rate given the length of the day, managing 26 launches and quite a bit of soaring.

 

Some of you may remember Sandi (Kidd that was, now Rothwell) who used to fly at Shenington back in the 1990s. Sandi went back to New Zealand in 2002, but is visiting us with her daughter Isabelle (our Goddaughter), and she joined us at the airfield briefly on Saturday. We were thrilled to be able to get Isabelle in the air to see what Mum used to do, and Sandi was able to catch up with Mary, Gary, and some of the other 'old guard' who all happened to be around on Sat.  She says hello to those who remember her.

 

Many of us had our first chance to fly the Sports England K8, and in fact her first flight on Saturday with Paul Fletcher was over an hour. I hadn't taken Paul all that seriously when he asked if he could have it for a couple of hours, so it was very kind of him to abandon the thermals/ridge and bring it back for the rest of us after only an hour! I had a brief flight later in the day and thought HLH was lovely. The gliders were kept busy right until they started misting up, and only got one of them stuck briefly in the wet muddy grass - see evidence below!!

The late afternoon sun provided an excellent way to see the ridge and furrows at the bottom of the hill....take note all ridge fliers! The area around Tysoe looks particularly stripey...

But as you can see the airfield is pretty dry given the amount of rain we've had recently, though we still need to keep off the grass where possible. 

Just about everyone flew except for afternoon LPC Bob P, who was busy directing operations. A fair number of people had extended flights on the ridge, though the longest flight of the day went to Paul Fletcher with 69 minutes. Not bad for January! 

Thanks to all who helped out with retrieves, logging, winching and launching - we all had a very jolly day. As dusk drew on we rinsed out the glider wheel boxes in case of mud and put the toys to bed.

and now to 2014....

Happy New Year everyone!
May all your clouds be fluffy and your thermals 10 knots up.

Christmas Weekend at Shenington

Saturday 21st December was Christmas party time!  Liz organised a wonderful array of splendid food and lovely decorations, including balloons with LED lights and a surfeit of mistletoe (put to good use by a number of members).  Lucy came up with another challenging but fun quiz, which included Christmas related questions, general knowledge and aviation.  Many thanks both.
 
Sunday 22nd December was a blustery day with some rain.  While some were off to Leamington doing the serious selling stuff,  CCC was dragged from the hangar and pretty soon got very wet.  However after the rain cleared and the problem with starting the red tractor without 'easy start' was solved, Lech, Brian and Bruno got flying - with Robin on the winch and Jane helping at the launchpoint.
 
We had a couple of visitors to fly - both thoroughly enjoyed their flights.  Then a lapsed temporary junior member turned up to fly and joined as a full member.  Welcome to SGC Robert Batty - hope to see you again soon.
 
We packed the hangar soon after 3 o'clock, just before another downpour.  Great planning Bruno!

Jane

Weekend 23-24th Nov

We flew about 16 launches on Saturday. The cloud was higher than it looked, though it was rather chilly! Indoors (and slightly warmer!) Phil Marks and Paul Armstrong were running an Instructors Ground School refresher course with lapsed Bidford and Shenington instructors. Mary provided soup and cake for the members, and Michael Bell did soup and baguettes for the course members so we all had an excellent lunch.

Tess

Nicola, the daughter of Nick Saul, the owner of The Roebuck at Drayton invited Club members to her 21st at the pub on Saturday night, and a gang of us went. We believe 270 friends and family were invited and the building is not large and so we were very snug. The pork roast was ready by 8.20 pm and was awesomely delicioso. Friends of the Roebuck may be interested to learn that Nikki is leaving Dad on Thursday to go off and take up a job as a ski chalet maid.

 

On Sunday, we were discombobulated by the wind.  Andy and I took the first launch of the day in CC and then went off for a 10:30am breakfast in Kineton.  When we got back there was a struggle with launching and after having to recover a chute from the N crop field [which fell comfortably short of the Kart track itself], we decamped to the short hard and it was all downhill until canopy misting stopped play

Eric (ntd)

 

Saturday 16th November

Having missed a lovely day the previous Sunday, I arrived at lunchtime on Saturday to find a grey sky and lowish cloud on the field. The team had been flying anyway, and after a break for lunch we made our way back to the launch point to have another go. It was chiller than expected given the light winds, but we took it in turns to fly CCC around the circuit and stay current. Alistair Frier went off in the Falke to complete his field landing checks with Ian Atherton, and is pleased to report that he has now been finished his Cross Country Endorsement.

 

Our visitor David came all the way from Kent to have a trial lesson, stopping only at Didcot to pick up his son and family. We were all very impressed by his enthusiasm, and he had a  number of winch launches with Russell instead of the planned aerotow, due to the low cloud base. Grandchild Ellie (almost four!) took a great liking to the buggy and went to assist on the glider retrieves - maybe a future glider pilot there. We packed up as dusk fell, then went off to a preliminary meeting in the clubhouse about the new EASA piloting rules. Many thanks to CFI Phil and Christine for trying to guide us through the labyrinth process - there was a certain amount of brain fade by the time we had reviewed the forms. Thankfully Michael Bell & helper cooked dinner (sweet and sour chicken, egg fried rice with apple crumble to follow) which cheered us all up!