A long weekend.....

Thursday 2nd April :

The Bank holiday weekend started early (!) with excellent weather. On Thursday Carole, Ellen and I had a working lunch to discuss the implications of social media to the club operations. I think that the actions have been written up and circulated. Afterwards I resumed my painting in the new Simulator room. Paul Barnes turned up and pinched Bruno's K13for an hour's soaring, and Bruno used his downtime to show Shaun how to cover his aircraft's rudder. Tim D and the Chairman flew DVX after it emerged from its workshop cocoon where it had been for five months and went soaring.

 

Strange things mark 1 - Shenington members are witty as always.......

Friday 3rd April:

It rained all day Friday - so much for the BH!

Saturday 4th April:

Weather not great, though not as wet as yesterday. We had 6 flights including 2 glamorous ladies whose presence generated a larger than normal ground crew staff to choose from! Russell enjoyed the experience. Liz produced an amazing turkey dinner with all the trimmings (not crackers!) for 17 people, plus sticky toffee pudding.

Sunday 5th April:

Lesley goes flying with the CFI!

Strange things seen at Shenners mark 2 - Car in duvet!

A mixed bag of weather - managed 19 launches. Glen Evans flew solo twice and Sam Tomline regained his currency in gliders. John Rogers flew 35 mins in the K21 for the longest flight of the day. Mary brought her lodger Lesley and both flew with Phil M. Clive, Phil H., Sam and Christine all had fun flying the tug.

After flying a crowd of us went off to the very welcoming Roebuck pub for a slap up meal.

Eric

Wed 25th March

Looks like the midweekers have been having fun again....Wednesday certainly looked nice from Birmingham airspace....Mary reports that Phil A & Russell took the Duo JYR off cross country, while Graham took the Nimbus off and flew 346km of a 380 km task (look for Shenington on the BGA ladder site : http://www.bgaladder.co.uk/Enquiry.asp). Don Puttock was flying this week, with Dave Gould flying the tug. Alistair Frier was doing some midweek aerotow flying, Mary went soaring in CCC, and everyone had a great day. Thanks to Dave Smith for trimming the greensward and giving us the perfect surface for gliding.

Thursday looked pretty good too, hope all you retired/shift working/self employed folk made the best of it!

Weekend 21-22 March 2015

Stuck in Birmingham last Sat/Sun as I was, due to work, I gather that I missed a lovely Spring weekend! 

Cold temperatures overnight then blue skies and some cloud meant that there was good soaring to be had. Dave Price, having done his LPC slot, had his just rewards with over an hour's soaring at what appeared to be cloud base. Paul Noonan went off flying in his glider,  Graham Paul went flying with Paul Mucha in 60, but couldn't manage a take off on the grass from the top field with the light winds (go karters being in residence). A second attempt on the North south run was apparently much more satisfactory! Robb Batty had his first 'real' awkward height cable break in CCC and made an excellent job of the recovery and landing. He flew the K8 later, together with other members. New junior member Alex Phillips was introduced to the joys of gliding and was a great help at the launchpoint all weekend. Meanwhile Christine and Clive were doing some training in the tug and we had some visitors to take flying as well.

Thanks to Alan & Trish for driving the winch most of the day, and Mary for cooking soup and cake. Let's hope we have more of the same next week. (NB. Last soup this coming w/e, then back to fending for ourselves, except for the 'juniors' weekend and the regionals week when there will be plenty of food and cakes! You have been warned..... ).

Saturday March 14th

Saturday was a bitterly cold day - and the few brave souls who ventured out wore lots of layers. Many members decided that it was instead a day for fettling!

With the karters in residence we were flying from the top field, and just had triple Charlie at the launch point. John W and Danny did some training flights, and then the cloud lowered and the drizzle started. We all sloped off to the clubhouse to thaw out and eat soup and cake, courtesy of Mary, then back to the launch point around 2pm as it began to clear up. Aimee, Cat and Penny - key members of the Oxford Belly Dancing Group who entertained us in summer - came to have a trial flight each, and Paul Fletcher took each of them flying in turn. Cat was quite apprehensive before going up but came back grinning widely.

Rather more jumpers in evidence on this visit!......

 

Norman got checked out again after a short break, and Lucy went solo on the winch! A few of us took solo flights - Paul Fletcher gained longest flight of the day with an epic 10 minutes!

At the end of the day it was suddenly beautifully clear, and Rowan, then Christine, had short flights in the tug just for the sheer hell of it. We also had some surprise visitors in the field by the winch...

Thanks to Eric, Alastair and Lucy for winching, and John & Paul for instructing. Kit away, we barely made it to the AGM in time. There was good news for Paul F - someone else had volunteered to be Treasurer! So we have a new Chairman in Andy Linfield, Christine Bell as Treasurer, and Dean Batty has joined the committee.  It was also good to catch up with founder member (and President) Phil Brennan who is too busy competing in seniors international athletics to have time to glide at the moment!  Liz fed us tea & cake to complete the day. Now all we need is some proper spring weather.....watch this space, and get your glider ready. It won't be long now......

Saturday 21st February

It's a cold February morning and Graham and Paul (F) are our duty instructors. There was a fairly strong north westerly so we decide to get three gliders out, the K21, CCC  and the sport England K8 to make the most of the ridge.  First up are Graham and Robin in the K21 to give Robin a refresher in glass of the type you fly in! Then Bruno takes HLH for a flight test and after spinning it a few times to see if he can shake anything off, which it appears he cannot, goes off for a few minutes on the ridge before returning and declaring the aircraft serviceable. 

 

 

There are plenty of takers for the K8 as Alistair, Lech, Brent, Richard Allen, Derrick and Paul all having a flight with Derrick setting the longest flight of the day at 38 minutes.  Meanwhile Paul was instructing Daniel Earl taking four flights in CCC while Graham flew six flights with Maciej (Magic) in the 21. Jon (L) then took the last flight in CCC and we put the toys to bed.

Alistair Frier 

Dinner Postscript

.....sad to report that the tailplane fell off the 'Richard Cranium' award on the way home!! Good thing that I have some superglue to hand.....

SGC Dinner Dance 2015-Saturday 14th February

This year we headed to the Whately Hall Hotel in Banbury once more for our Annual Dinner Dance. We sat down to a wonderful three course meal, followed by a talk by Gavin Preuss, going through memorable flights in his log book. Thank you, Gavin. This was followed by speeches, prize-giving, a raffle and then dancing. Congratulations to all the prize winners:

CFIs Award: Tim Treadaway
Highest Achiever: Alan Langlands
Best Flight: Graham Paul
Most Improved Pilot: Bob King
Clubman of the Year (Geoff Webster Trophy): Derrick Sandford
Services to the Club (Paul Gibbs Trophy): Mary Meagher
Richard Cranium Award: John and Tess Whiting

Smart tuggies...

A sensible bunch...

A silly bunch...

I'm not kidding you...the lens was THIS big!

The Young Ones...

Tess with one of the seven...

Oh dear...broke the Richard Cranium Award already!!!

Prize-giving...

Sunday 1st February

I didn’t get to the club until Sunday morning myself, but there must be some authors who can tell us about the flying on Saturday? I did hear that a launch of 1950 ft was achieved in the splendid ridge wind that day. It was not quite so kind on Sunday, but when we not repairing cables we had at least 3 flights of an hours duration in the K21 each.

Apparently it was less turbulent on Sunday, so we were doubly blessed even though our launch heights were only 1400, but then who needs launch height with a wind like that?

When we reminisced about ridge flying we concluded that there had been at least 4/5 superb ridge days in the past few weeks, a ridge season par excellence. Sunday’s was my 4^th significant ridge run since 20^th December.

No photos I’m afraid, unless Dave H can be persuaded to download his.

Eric  NTD

Saturday 24th Jan

Wow, another sunny Saturday and the third soaring weekend in a row at Shenington in January. Is this a record??

Saturday dawned very cold. Didn't appear very windy but when we arrived at the club there was a decent northwesterly at height and a K13 half way down the ridge - Paul F taking a visitor Jonny for a trip! JYR had already gone soaring with Phil A & George heading off to the West to find some weak wave. Closer to home Alistair F was on the ridge with HJD, Trish was preparing to launch HMB, and the club kit was launching from the clubhouse. Bruno & Paul F were in charge, with Dave G as tuggie, and lots of willing helpers.

It's very convenient flying from the clubhouse field (apart from the issue of where to park the cars!) so people popped indoors to eat Mary's soup or warm up, Derrick organised a mass move of the pool table from one building to another, and the Shenington Comps Committee had another meeting in preparation for June's (over-subscribed) competition. There was lots happening wherever you looked, and plenty of flying. The K8 was kept busy with a succession of pilots including Lech, Roger, Tess, Max and Derrick. Tim & Andy, Gary, Terry, Paul and others flew the two seaters. I'm sure it was trying to be thermic but for most of us it was a tussle with the ridge, some with more success than others!

Here's hoping that the good run of weekends continues.

Weekend 17-18th Jan 2015

Happy New Year All!!

We've had a good start to the year with the first soaring of 2015 on the ridge last weekend. This weekend it was the turn of some weak wave...photos courtesy of Rowan.

Saturday dawned sunny but very cold, with wisps of low cloud and misted canopies. We had a late start because of this, but got flying around lunchtime with triple Charlie and the tug at the north end of the field. John W was on duty, and flew with two visitors, plus Keith from Bidford. Rowan was tuggie and took this shot of the empty launch point as he taxied back into position to wait for a K13.

 

Martin Wells turned up and blew the cobwebs off his lovely LS8 321. Martyn got the longest flight off the day - 1 hr 20 off a 3000' aerotow, contacting some weak wave and gaining some height back from that - and came back thoroughly frozen! He treated us to the standard LS8 flypast....hopefully you can see it on this photo if you look over the K8:

Later we got the K8 out and Paul Barnes, Lucy & I had a flight each on the winch. Rob Batty flew his first aerotow session as P2 and did an excellent job, plus had some training on the winch too!  Eric was a star and drove the winch all day, while Kev worked hard on trying to fix the tractor - thanks very much to both of them for all of their efforts.

We flew till dusk and managed to get everyone in the air that wanted to fly, so not bad for a January day. Then back to the clubhouse for tea and beer.....

On Sunday the day started foggy, then cleared with a light northerly (and chilly!) wind. The conflict between the active kart track and the wind direction meant that the only flights were aerotows, so out came our trusty Chippie again (now back in the main hangar). 

George D was DI and took first Liz then Mary for a flight in triple Charlie. Lech flew CCC solo then Eric & Alistair went for a flight, followed by George and Shaun.

Rowan spotted this interesting new landmark (see above) to the South of the field - looks like a new solar 'farm' in a field to the south which might provide a useful pointer to the airfield in summer.....providing we have some sun that is!

Another good day. Thanks to all who helped out at the weekend. See you all next week!