Two busy days

Saturday looked promising but sadly showers ultimately cut the day short. Sunday however looked much better and we welcomed Jeffs works colleagues in fairly large numbers along with a number of trial lessons from other sources. Both K13’s worked hard all day in a difficult sky, thermic at times but at others, massive sinking air. anyway we flew everyone I believe and many thanks to the young members of the club who really did make sure that the day was succesful with their hard work.

Good progress on the purchase of anew single seat glider too I believe.

 

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SUMMER WEATHER ARRIVES

Finally summer weather arrives ! Both K13’s up and running and numerous trial lessons booked in. A good day. Maurice won best flight of the day, and he tells us he could have stayed in the air much longer but was restricted by the need for him to bring the glider back for trial lessons etc. Never heard this story before !

As always, thank to Simon on the winch and to Mr Chapman for his BI duties today, a tough day in the heat.

At the end of the day our beautiful K13, EDU was aero towed out of WDP to be used by Challock as they have found them selves slightly low on glider stocks for various reasons. Don’t worry though, our friends at Challock will have it back for the start of play next Saturday.

So I think overall a really good day at WDP

Tomorrow a light day with Bob in charge.

Atmosphere of a day at Waldshare is captured in the picture below :-

 

THIS IS JUNE ?

So we struggle on with one K13….. but EDU (our other K13) should be back next weekend and then we will really get some flying in.

Despite the weather, it is truly atrocious, we have continued flying and our members have achieved targets and ambitions.

Members have put some effort in and we are going to make significant progress in terms of the club house, work parties are being arranged by our new head of premises maintenance (Maurice) and some outdoor works are also imminent. The new winch engine is working fabulously and all we really need is some decent weather !

Stick with it everyone, trial lesson sales are buoyant and we will reap the rewards.

 

 

LIGHT AT END OF TUNNEL

So we have endured a few difficult weeks with only one two seater available but the end of this appears near. Today was a hot and sultry day but we managed to fly all the trial lessons and I think all club members got some useful air time. The new winch engine is performing superbly and will be checked over on Monday I believe to ensure all is well. Good to see the glass single seaters flying too. Looking forward to a great June and July.

14/15TH MAY

SO the big news this week is…….the winch has a new engine ! O yes. It was a bit tight but Saturday morning, a few adjustments and a K13 was launched to try it all out. Then we got on with flying as usual. Lots achieved, Sunday we flew too, Toby’s Bronze test pretty much done, big steps forward for Peter, Adrian did well and Ian made some good progress during a long flight with Bob. Rumour has it that Bob even ran his motor glider engine! Long standing former member Ken visited us on Saturday morning, he is rather missing us apparently. So things are going rather well, once EDU returns we will build on this. Thanks to Paul and Steve for BI duties. As usual thanks to Simon the winch.

MAY 2016

Bit of a day ? The forecast was for a hot and probably sticky day but no question a predominately southerly breeze. However, from the start of the day it was clearly going to be one of those days, no matter which end of the field we chose it was going to be wrong. And so it proved. Having said this, we did actually only change ends once, only to change back without a single launch being conducted, BUT I will stress in the interest of safety which this club will not knowingly compromise, we did the right thing. Thank you to all the club members for their help and assistance in this respect, as a result we were able to complete all our flights with trial lessons and club members, de rig the K13 needing to go to CLK for it’s annual inspection and get all the private owners who wished to fly launched. So, on a hot blue and sweaty day I think we pretty much did all we could reasonably be expected to do and don’t forget the fantastic achievements of the last few weeks. It is only the beginning of May !

I should also mention that the winch is going to fitted out with a new engine during the course of next week. The final mention/pleasure of the very last launch on the old engine going to Mr Chapman in his ASW 24 super duper glider.I hope future launches will be even better than we achieved on the old kit.

Good to see Darren  back too.

See you next weekend.

FIRST SILVER OF THE YEAR

What a day ? Bit unexpected if I am honest. The forecasts looked pretty good but I wasn’t really convinced when I arrived at the field at 9.30. However, we encouraged Toby to get prepared and BI Mr Potter to have his Cirrus ready, a 100K was on the cards. Oh, and the K8 was made ready for Jeff and Terry. I took a launch at 10.30 (ish) as the first bubbles appeared with Toby’s brother Peter, followed up the wire by Toby in the K6. Peter and I had a productive flight and we observed that Toby had got away though the sky was not overwhelmingly brilliant. However away he did get, followed by Potter in the cirrus. We flew trial flights, the K8 flew, the field looked good with freshly cut grass, clouds grew, wind changed direction, it got cold. We monitored Toby’s flight but around the 4 hour mark we hadn’t seem him for a while. And then he appeared over Dover as a speck in the sky ! Surely he was going to do it. We changed ends, half an hour to go, still high. Then with a few minutes to go he was on circuit. Toby landed with 5 hours 4 minutes. Well done. Oh, and silver height too. Brilliant. Toby did say that he had pretty much fallen out of the sky and wasn’t at all sure he had managed it, the logger confirms he had ! Mr Potter whizzed round his 100K, rubbish landing mind you, must work on that. I also flew with Ian who made good progress with the use of the trimmer during the day, keep it up Ian, fly regularly, it helps. Once again a day at WDP that would surprise many other glider pilots around the country. We MUST build on this.

 

 

 

 

SUPERB WEEKEND

What a weekend ? Saturday, 6 trial lessons, thermic conditions, hale stones, sun, wind…. yes it’s England. Contrast to last Sunday when it was thermic all day long and some excellent flying was performed. Sunday was a day for the Birchington Scouts who camped overnight at the club in what must have been, let’s say challenging conditions. However, morning briefing at 10.00am and we got underway reasonably promptly with a good turn out of club member’s to help. And at this point, let’s not forget those in the background, Simon’s wife Liz and daughter Janine. Thank you primarily Paul and Steve Pot flew the 22 scouts and their leaders during the day, a bit of shower dodging but we got it done.  We enjoyed the company of the scouts and how good it was to see the airfield being used to it’s potential. I would really like to see more diversification and that’s possibly it’s real future. The winch was of course nursed by Simon for the two days and gave good launches. Nicole, helped with log keeping and Greg did his stuff. We hope to get EDU back very shortly and we will have two superb K13’s and a back up in the form of G CLOC when required.

Just need one of the BI’s to bite the bullet and get that AE rating before the existing instructors “move on”.

 

 

 

FIRST FLYING DAY OF 2016

Finally, the field dry enough to go flying. However, would the wind strength and direction allow flying ? Well a brisk wind straight down the runway greeted us, and boy was it cold but fly we did. We got the instructors all checked and current and commenced flying with our solo pilots, essentially the mission was to get the club back up and running after the longest break due to weather in my memory. We had a visitor from Australia, Alan Ruth. A lovely fellow glider pilot who was touring England and northern Europe with a very big ruck sack !  Paul gave Alan an extended flight which I think he enjoyed, viewing Deal castle from air prior to actually visiting the castle. Keep in touch Alan. Sadly the wind freshened mid afternoon and flying was abandoned for the day but overall I think it was mission accomplished. Alan from appears on the left in one of the following pictures along with some rather cold WDP pilots and instructors. See you all soon.

 

WARM WET WINTER

So yes it has been quiet on here for a while. Most airfields in the south of the country, certainly gliding club ones are currently water logged. We seem to have had a run of wet winters preventing flying for several weeks if not months. Certainly makes the financial affairs of gliding clubs hard to manage but I believe we are coping. Whilst not much flying has been going on some of the very committed members of the club have been performing some fantastic maintenance work at the club, cleaning gliders, leveling the ridge at the north end of the field, fixing hangar roofs etc etc. I have some fantastic pictures via our whats app group but accidentally deleted most of them. However, below should appear a splendid picture of the hangar roof and flashing repairs performed only yesterday. Superb work folks. Hopefully a picture of the K6 having an airing should appear as well.

I have also set up a group whereby I can communicate with the clubs instructors and have already had some positive commitments towards establishing a “proper” rota system to improve the cover we provide for trial lessons and club members. We want to move towards being open both days on a weekend this summer but this will require increased commitment and possibly a small rise in membership numbers to achieve. It’s an ambitious target and one I think we should adopt.

Please be aware that when flying recommences most of us will not really be current so be prepared for an annual check or two before you can fly solo. Check out the BGA website for a guide to currency and it’s overall importance.