Wednesday 11th April 2012

A good days flying had by all. There was some good soaring to be had , The Assistant Rating Instructor course flew all day and a flying visit was paid to NGC by National Coach Mike Fox. The day culminated in Matt Vanston going solo, so congratulations to him and many thanks to the club members who helped out at the end of the day to finish the launches which were required to make it possible.

Sunday 25th March

Congratulations to Siona Ladley on going solo, Pictured here with Instructor Steve Flowitt-Hill

Sunday 25th February

Another great day, and by all accounts yesterday was good too! Somehow Mark and Steve managed a double duty and did much instructing; thanks to both of you for a great weekend.
Out today were JRK in LS7, Ray in HNC, Ben M in Libby, David in Y11 (tail skid repaired), Mark in the K6 and a majority of the club fleet. The only set back was a noon change of ends which delayed soaring but there were two hour plus flights to be had.
Well done Phil on your MG endorsement, and thanks to Dave M for doing it. All you need now is to get the Stemme started.
Last flight of the day launched at 17.18hrs! Superb!

Sunday 19th Feb - A cracking cold day

Well winter's been here for a few months and annual flight reviews have been in full swing, so there's not been much to post on here. But it seems spring might actually be on the way with a some good soaring conditions over Norfolk on Sunday. The usual Sunday crowd were about, with Andy V running the day and myself and Chris L doing the trials. JRK got there nice and early to rig, only for his syndicate partner to show up once it was done to nab it. Nice one DM I'm sure he didn't mind!

Many had good soaring flights with cloudbase up to about 4000ft (well predicted Mr CFI) and thermals lasting a few hours. A few even braved the T21 - did you lose many fingers to frostbite Mr Wright?





Thanks to everyone who helped out with tugging, winching, logging and all the other jobs that get done so we can fly. I won't try to name names (we'll be here all day) but you know who you are.

Fingers crossed the good weather will continue (haha) and we can get off to a good soaring season.

Our Last Flying Day

All the talk was of a great day so we were up early. Typically all was not as expected, the ASW19 needed defrosting and misting was a problem for everyone so there was a later start. John was a little stir crazy and keen to go, so as soon as a local member launched and reported climbs he was away.
Unfortunately as he made his way above cloud the gaps closed sufficiently enough to stop the rest for a while. Above the clouds, John was having fun at around 12000' or so, looking down at the countryside through valley-like gaps in the clouds. Soon, however, the gaps widened enough for the others to climb in and go. All had a good time.
After five hours John found a 6 knot climb which took him from 13000' to FL192. On the way up the wave box was opened but the wave broke down as he reached the top of the wave cloud. 185 metres short of diamond height! We will just have to come back next year.

footnote: John's feet took two hours to warm up after his longest flight for a long time. He is checking to see if 6h8m is his longest ever. (I've checked; it is my longest flight to date, by over 30 minutes; JR-K)

A Golden Day

The weather forecast was not great, and we had the usual slow start, changing ends and having to wait while some strong turbulence cleared. Steve, Josh, Adrian, David and Mike all got away first time and were climbing in wave very quickly. Highest climb was to over 15000' and Adrian and Josh (the old'en and the young'en) both claiming their gold height gains. Well done both of you! Weather looks even better tomorrow; stay tuned.

Aboyne Expedition

We have all had to play a waiting game, although David, having arrived last week had already been flying. The rain and low cloud of the last few days cleared sufficiently for us to launch this afternoon. Wave had set up in the Dee valley and could be reached from a 3000' tow, so off we set. Steve, John, Josh and Mike having varying degrees of success. Steve, in the Discus, getting the longest and highest flight. Adrian took a ride with Gerry, the seasonal instructor here, to gain more experience of wave, preparing for his first solo wave foray this year in the ASW19, planned for tomorrow.

No records broken today and the forecast over the next few days seems to change every hour, but we remain optimistic of a few days more decent gliding.

Fantastic footage

Have a look at this!
Down at the Sea-side! - YouTube Looks amazing (but is it safe?) The first part of the soundtrack is pretty good too.

3rd August: a Good Time.

I promised Peter Carter some cross country coaching, but the day was slow to improve from poor; that gave us plenty of time for a briefing and tea! I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the President's Triangle.

We launched after 14.00hrs and got down to 1400' before we found a thermal. Up to over 3000' and a proper start. A good series of thermals took us to Norwich East and we turned this high after a climb. A line of lift continued all the way across "the fine city" until we got to the western edge. Here we lost all battery power (for the third time today!) but continued for a while. Without the audio vario we decided to return to TIB but at Wymondham fell into a 5kt thermal to over 5000', so game back on. At PIC we met up with Phil in the DG and lost out to him on the run back to DIS. We did take a climb or two edging toward TIB, with one flying and the other being audio vario and additional lookout. A great first time cross-country for Peter. I am sure this has whetted his appetite!

Competition Photo's

Images taken on day2 of the competition can be found on the Tibenham Photo Album website

Images were taken of all of the competitors and tugs

World Vintage Glider Rally 2000

With thanks to Bob Sage - I have just scanned 25 photographs taken at the 2000 event ( we now have a sub Album with 63 images taken the 2000 VGC rally)- these have been added to the my Tibenham Photo Album together with images of more unusal types seen at Tibenham at other events approx 2000-2004 .
We now have over 1,500 images of gliders and aircraft taken at Tibenham

Hope these are of interest

Cracking day, but not obvious From RASP

The trouble with RASP is that it is pretty good. So when you see a day that does not look too great, you tend not to bother. The kind of mackerel pattern you see below would suggest that maybe there are loads of showers or something. Speaking for myself, I would rather an all over smooth yellow colour than the mottled red. However, a few days showing up like the day below, which have turned out to be OK (well pretty good) have led me to at least turning up now.






If you'd looked earlier in the morning, say 11am, you would think that it would be a complete non-starter in Norfolk.





However, it was 'going' from pretty much ten a.m., and those people who got out to the club were in for a treat. Ray Hart was Duty instructor, with Chris Lawrewnce providing some great flights for trial lessons, as it was great soaring weather. I wonder if we get better conversion from trial lessons to members when the lesson is on a good soaring day.

In terms of acheivements:

• Beth Redpath got a Bronze leg


• Paul Gould got his silver height

Tim Heighton and Art Kerkhof explored XC in the Janus, and Mark Wright, Steve Brownlow, Dave Munro, David Taylor all went off in single seaters. I'm pretty sure I saw one Grob 109 exploring about too.






A couple of pictures: The east coast from near 7k', just south of Norfolk. I never knew my iphone did geo-tagging either, but going on the little maps in iPhoto: it must do.






Honington, with Mildenhall & lakenheath barely visible as sun pools in background. Note time is just past six in the evening. I've never been heading away from home so late before. The showers never reached Tibenham, you could see them to the North and East coasts, and later in the West.






Finally, if you look at the cumulous cloudbase for late in the day, you can see that it does indeed promise to be good up to around 7k'. Paul G saw around 7,800'. It was well worth turning up.


Now why could we not have this weather for the Eastern Regionals.

Snetterton's New Layout

With many thanks to Phil - we had a very enjoyable flight in the G-DKDP, Grob 109, to have a look at the new Circuit at the end of March - also I was also able to get a view of our neighbours at Priory Farm and a view of the airfield looking west - soon to change with all the new buildings

Eastern Regionals 30/5

Here are a few images taken today 30/5/2011

G-AODT off for a local flight before the Gliding got started

G-BSOM DG-400

Rotax Falke from Marham helping with the tugging

Finally - winner of the task "HNC"

Many more images, as usual, can be found on the Tibenham Flikr Photo Album now nearly 1500 images all taken at Tibenham

All out

Keith

Air to Air Pictures of Tiger Moth

What is it about Tuesdays? Tues 24 May.TIB BUN BIC TIB

Two brilliant Tuesdays when I had to be at work, followed by a third, when I could skive off! What a run of exceptional weather unless you are a gardener or farmer!

Saturday 21st May began with spectacular thermals when I was tugging. I reported on the radio at least 7 knots in the Gissing area, as I regularly saw the VSI showing 1000 t0 1300 ft/min. A few listened and had a launch. I was itching to get gliding myself, so thanks Steve for doing the afternoon stint. By the time I launched it was surprisingly difficult to make progress. I take off my hat to Paul Gould for hanging on in those conditions for a Silver 5 hours!!

Rasp was already showing Tuesday 24th to be the best day for a week, and the predictions of a post cold front classic day kept on coming right up to Monday night. The wind strength was the only dampener on the optimism of a superb 500k day. So arriving at about 10 am I was unsure of the excellence of the day, but already quite late for a 500. I was really surprised to find no other glider pilots there champing at the bit for a launch. I had already resolved to offer to tug only 1 or 2 if there was no other tuggie on site. No need to worry! I was on my own.

I spent a while talking to Phil and Mick and reduced my original plan of Hereford and back to Bicester, with a downwind start to Bungay to assess the streeting strong wind.

Easy climb off launch to 3500 feet, so I set off downwind and arrived at Bungay at 3700 QNH then into wind, failing completely to find the lines of lift, so another start, this time more cautiously, arriving at Bungay at 4700 with a 20 kt wind behind me.

Then into wind. What a slow slog it was! after an hour and only at Knettishall made me decide that the task was not achievable. However, the lift slowly became more reliable and I just kept on going, joining a good street and getting to the now 5500 cloudbase west of Honington. Much better, but realised that Bicester could not be achieved by anything like the 4pm turn back time I had planned. Gransden passed at 4pm and then great progress as the wind eased to be past Milton keynes at 5 pm, having difficulty keeping below the 5500 airway, and so arriving at Bicester at 5.17.

Lovely view East, but no photo of Bicester as it was in evening shadow!

I was thinking that a technical or real landout was inevitable, but on the downwind home journey, the thermals just got bigger and smoother, with regular 4 or 5kts. No need to get to cloudbase, but I indulged myself at St Neots at 6pm with a climb to just over 6000.

What a brilliantly clear afternoon! From just after Bicester the Lion at Dunstable, MK of course, and other towns like Northampton were clear. I reckon at least 60 NM visibility. What a blast! I only saw one other glider nearby between Bicester and Gransden, and then none at all. Yet the thermals kept on going, now with an Australian or South African look to them, a long way apart, no streets, and over 6200 feet bases. Last one was at 6.30 3 to 6 knots at Newmarket and home to upset the wind buggies using our runways.

Turned out to be half a day of superlatives, though the Dunstable and Hus Bos boys had a whole classic day with a 750 by Robin May in his EB28 starship and seven 500s, notably 2 in ASW20s in 15 m mode.

Where were the rest of you?? Not everyone had to work!

Sorry, I could not get the blogger to put the photos in the right place.

Anyway the top one is looking at the Dunstable lion from about Buckingham. Next Arrival back at ten to 7.

The third is Bungay and the coast.

Ladder entry is here:

http://www.bgaladder.co.uk/dscore.asp?FlightID=31512

Peter

Soaring PNA - cheap price alert

I walked into PC world last week, and picked up a Navman Mio M400 for around £57. I just mention it here, as I think that they are probably selling them out, as they are no longer on the web site. It is cheaper than I have seen it anywhere online (typically over £70). The other ones they do sell are the Navman Mio M475 for £80. I am not sure if it is effectively the same model with TMC traffic device actually included.

It's a 4.3" PNA which can be cracked to use LK800, XCSoar or Seeyou Mobile on it's built in GPS.

Both XCSoar and LK8000 specifically target the device.

There is a review of it compared to various devices on the postfrontal (LK8000 support) forum here:
MIO M400 PNA, pictures compared with other units, which should give you a clue of other devices to consider.

It has serial port capability (in common with many other PNAs), so you can hook it up to your FLARM (to see where everyone else is & how well they are climbing, unless in stealth mode) or otherwise hook it up to a glide computer vario, e.g. LX 16xx, CAI 302) for real-time wind calculation, even in cruise.

I have not fiddled with my M400 yet, as I spent the weekend getting FLARM talking to my HP 314. It works a treat. I used a line level converter from glidertools.com, here. Note that their picture shows a Mio M400. A converter is required to get USB working at normal RS232 voltages. I will in due course get my M400 working too.

The converter is compatible with Oudie and Wayteq too.

IMI also make a converter, here. I have not tried it, but I found them very good to deal with when I got the new glider tow-bar.

Ruby Tuesday

As in one comes along every x years.

Soarable from 9.50 till 17.30.

For once, the best cloudbase was East Anglia, up to around 6K' as far NE as Fakenham, less than 4K' SW of Stony Stratford.

Up to 6K' over Tibenham.

Phil Morgan was soaring his G109 up to 5K'. 4 engine units for around 2 and a half hours soaring.

DT, JRK, PW, DM all went XC.

Berkeley got his 5 hrs. Well done Berkeley!

Pictures for "What a Day"

What a day!

A poor turnout yesterday, even for a bank holiday, but what a day! The forecast blue certainly was not going to happen but the 25kt wind did. A number of us rigged or prepared to fly. Tim and Chris in the Janus, Paul G. in the Cirrus, Steve B in 20, David in Y11, Pete in BSOM and this writer in FGP. One club two-seater was kept busy all day, landing well after everyone else had finished.

All of us had more than two hours of fun and frolics with some of us completing our declared tasks. The sky was boiling in parts, but that wind, wow! Thanks to Andy for running the day and to the busy tug pilots (Steve and Steve).

Great fun. More please.