It’s Meteorological Spring! Flying Report Sun 1 Mar 26
It is Meteorological Spring and it was that famous Soothsayer Mother Shipton who predicted that a mighty man would appear from the West on 1 March. She didn’t mean that Al, the Ex-dear Leader, would drop in for a visit - INSTRUCTIONS!
It was the BGA Sporting Conference and Exhibition 2026 yesterday and it’s congrats to Simon Adlard on his joint award of The Saundby Sword Safety Award 2026 that is awarded in recognition of a gliding club or group contribution to flight safety. We get giving him another framed award to put up on the wall of his downstairs bog but it is far too dangerous to let the old lad loose with sword – he has no idea where to put that!
Meanwhile Ian’s pic of Laura has achieved worldwide fame – not this pic of Laura, although she is famous, but the inverted one of Laura behind the standing one of Laura!
A bumper turnout from members saw Team Adlard organise the day and well down Liz on surviving your first duty. With conditions grey and overcast, a sporty wind and rain never far way it was a credit that we got everyone at least one trip,
Welcome to new junior member Jensen who is the proud recipient of an Air League bursary. Hope you enjoyed the day and fingers crossed for better conditions on your next flying day.
There were a few blue holes around but never where they should be when needed. Tempting though they were, they were all downwind - downstrongwind more like!
There were a couple of pauses for rain that was never far away, and the wind gradually increased in strength as the day wore on……
…..but Geoff M in his Ventus 2CT fired up his iron thermal to get above the cloud and enjoyed the best trip of the day, only coming down as the clag closed in.
Two of our MEF gliding bursary students braved the elements to join us today. In really testing conditions Elijah continued his flying with Simon and completed a very creditable first landing. Top job Elijah.
Meanwhile Sam took to the air with Nick for his first trip in a glider. Hope you enjoyed the day Sam and look forward to seeing you next time.
Welcome too to another new member George who is on a course at Shawbury. We managed to squeeze a very tall George into the back seat of R22 for a trip with Brad. It was only later in the hangar that we found that George would fit into R35
George is an experienced aviator and we aim to get him on to a SLMG conversion, get him solo before training George as a tug pilot.
Last flight of the day went to our aeros team of Brad and Laura but a cloud base of 2,000ft didn’t allow them to get their teeth into their lesson.
Good work by the tuggies today in challenging conditions. Eventually, with MORTY recording a gust of 30kts we called it a day at 15:00 after 19 launches. Thanks to all for your hard work today.