Bath Wiltshire & North Dorset Gliding Club November Update

Sunday 21st November

A beautiful sunshine has welcome the brave on Sunday. The lively northerly wind made take off & landing very interesting & gave us the opportunity to practice our crosswind skills. It has not been much of a soaring day but the great visibility allowed us to enjoy the view of the wonderful countryside & remind me how lucky we are to be able to enjoy such sceneries & a very friendly, enthusiastic & highly knowledgeable community.

All the trials flights has been a success & overall has been a very positive day.

We are all looking for more sunshine & soaring days in the following weeks.

Wednesday 17th November

The fair-weather forecast brought out a good selection of stalwarts, newcomers, trailers, trainees, visitors & even ab-initio students. A very pleasant day in some welcome November sunshine was had – many thanks to those on duty.

However, the weather did spring a little surprise (though with no effect on flight durations). Our local Met guru Mike Thorne was able to explain these striking cloud formations – known as “fallstreak holes”. I won’t attempt to repeat his explanation but you can look it up on Wikipedia. Certainly not something one comes across in the Bronze syllabus!

Saturday 13th

Saturday 13th saw uni, club & day members make a decent turnout for a November Saturday. With a northerly wind, tales of last Sunday’s wave abounded, with Mike as optimistic as ever. It was great to see Clive again after a period of absence, & it was like he’d never been away as he immediately set to work abusing the unbelievably diligent, hard working, under-appreciated & youthful LPC!

The wave never materialised, but thirty-four launches kept the club fleet of three Puchaczs & two Astirs busy until the light started to fade. There was some soaring to be found, with the longest flight of the day being 34 minutes from the winch. The motor glider also returned to the field from its maintenance, making two test flights which were reported to be satisfactory.

When the light started fading & bellies were rumbling, the launch point was packed up & around 20 people headed to the clubhouse for a chilli & raffle organised by J&J in support of the Wiltshire Air Ambulance. The unbelievably diligent, hard working, under-appreciated & youthful barman kept glasses topped up, & it was not long before everyone was tucking into the chilli (a straw poll suggests a unanimous verdict of it being absolutely delicious). The raffle was drawn, with some winning big, while others didn’t even get their bus fare home.

Wiltshire Air Ambulance Fund Raising Event

Dear all

In case you’ve forgotten Julie is cooking Chilli Con Carne with Rice & Salad (very mild or medium heat with extra chilli’s available for those that like even more heat) on Saturday 13th Nov at 5pm (or after flying as appropriate)

A raffle is also being held, if you have any prizes please bring them along on Saturday, tickets on sale to the last moment (£1 a strip of 5) – all profits & raffle proceeds will go the WAA.

Hope to see you there – please email or text J & J if you’d like food to avoid wastage (we will be cooking extra portions)

Wednesday November 3rd

We had a very useful demonstration today of the latest EuroFox 915iS tug. We did four Puchacz tows to 2000ft & Mark & I had a couple of passenger flights to assess the h&ling. I need to look at the traces but the initial impression is that it climbs exceptionally well at around 7000ft/min.