We had a great day today with an excellent turnout and excellent weather. The field was in dense fog at 8-30am but by 9-30 it had mostly burned off leaving a blue sky with the promise of good things to come.

The wind was even better than expected being almost due west, only around 10kts but still good enough to give us some good launches. It was warm on the field all day and there was no sign of rain. By 12noon it had started to get thermic with a couple of flights of 15mins or so. Just after 1pm Dave C. launched in the Junior as we went in for a Charlie Curry, we did not see him again until after we had finished when he landed (he claimed he only came back to make sure he got some curry) after a very good 31mins.

John H. not to be outdone jumped straight into the hot seat and tried his best to outdo Dave, he nearly succeeded but had to admit defeat after 30mins.

Dave J. managed to finish work early and as he was not far away came down and managed 18mins (also in the Junior) much later in the afternoon.

The field was very good and we had no problems but it was a shame we only had 2 x 2 seaters as the K21 was in the workshop for an upgrade, so there was a lot of pressure on the 2 x K13’s. We had a great day, everyone flew eventually, but apologies to those who had to wait a long time for a flight.

Statistics are…………

Total Launches…………….33.

Longest Flight……………..31mins, Well done to Dave C. and to John H. and to the Junior !!!

Average Flight Time…..10mins.
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Total Flight Time………….5 hrs. 20min. This is just for the Gliders, I have extracted the Falke time.

And finally just to remind everyone we start two day a week flying (Tuesday and Thursday) from week beginning 3/4/17. So only 2 more weeks of one day a week.

Steve P.

Cold, overcast and an awkward wind direction.

It didn’t stop loads of Stratford members turning out along with members of University of Warwick Gliding Club for a day’s training and local flying at Snitterfield.

An area of the airfield was coned off at the start of flying due to water-logging and that area became larger as other poor areas were identified. The telemetry signalling was back in operation and working well, assisting with a high launch rate.

The members from UWGC are a mixture of ab-initios and pilots with experience so we have both initial training as well as solo flying and a conversion to Stratford’s Standard Astir G-FECO. They also bring with them a Skylaunch winch driver.

Stratford member Kit was introduced to basic aerobatics for the first time while Jesal also practiced his basic figures.

There was no soaring to speak of under a steady overcast but it didn’t dampen the enthusiasm for taking launches.

The club’s LS4 G-DEMG rejoined the active fleet after coming back from ARC and is now back in the hangar waiting for a dryer field and some thermals.

We normally only see the whole glider fleet at the launchpoint during the summer months.

By the end of the day, we’d completed 64 winch launches, not bad for this time of year!

The last glider to land was the Junior flown by our CFI at SS+10. Obviously the key to doing so many launches is finding the right balance of efficiency at the launch point and not losing momentum.

With a steady queue of gliders at the standpipe for a wash, it was pretty dark by the time the hangar doors were closed.

Packing away after sunset