Plug for Landable Fields DB

Now that many of us are addicts of glidernet, we can see that the last couple of days have been difficult with the high pressure becoming established, and the continually lowering inversion.

On 23rd we can see gaggles forming near the start point,

 

 and even the rest of the grid getting ready to launch. 

Yesterday we could see a whole bunch of gliders at <1,000' near Ely and Littleport

This is a good time of year to be thinking about landing out. Much better than say May and June, when the crop is long, and a land-out could mean minor repairs. It would be good if you could see all the good land-able strips nearby at that time of year.

With that in mind a couple of us in East Anglia have started gathering some info's on Landable fields. For Norfolk Gliding Club Mike Crook has a folder of land-able fields in the area. I have gathered a couple electronically working with Martin Gregorie of Cambrdige GC (I have yet to reconcile the two).

A couple of file-formats are supported, and you can find the info on his website, here. The gist is you can download it as additional waypoint info, and it can show in your glide computer as options to land at, should you need it. XCSoar will even predict arrival height there (other programs probably do, but I have no recent experience).

If you have spotted an airfield (hopefully from high enough to be thinking about your task, not landing), it would be good to have it validated. Martin is interested in both positive and negative affirmation on the sites. We want to remove a strip from the DB once it has been ploughed over.

New stuff is also interesting. As an example, I took a picture of Fen End Farm (52º18.800N 000º07.400E) strip last year and have only just this week got around to asking, and yesterday had its existence confirmed by the owner. Google Maps / Sat view is still showing it as a normal field. We need to update the database and add it back in.

Fen End Farm strip from N of Great Ouse

 If you have any Farm strip sightings, or helpful comments, please update Martin Gregorie (look for the contact page on his web-site).

You can also drop a note on this post in the short term.

Off into the Blue...

18m Nationals task here.
Juniors task here.

Weather window not big enough to task on 22nd Aug.

So from 21st Aug. Side view of what Nationals 18m pilots fly in 2016.

The ventus 3 sure has the biggest dihedral. It looks like it's pulling 3g turns even on the ground. I wonder what it looks like when it is pulling 3g.

It makes me wonder how the span is worked out for the classes. Is it the shortest bit of string between the two tips, or is it from lying the string along the wing. Is a curved wing a way of getting a bit more length of wetted wing, i.e. a slight advantage for any given class (nominal span)? If it is I guess we'll see more aircraft like it.

The tech of all of those on the grid: (JS1s, ASG-29s also) is pretty amazing. You would not turn your nose up at any of them. Top speed of 111kph with a 19Kt wind, and cloud-base that looked around 3k' seems quick to me. The top 4 finishers were over 100kph and the slowest finisher over 78kph.

Trying to read a bit more about wing shape has lead me via rec.aviation.soaring group to an article by Dick Johnson on side-slip in turns. I have heard several people say about a side-slip in turns is a good thing (unless you have winglets), but this explanation makes me want to experiment more... The notes about the string would show a slip around 5º when you're flying true... as it is forward of C of G.

Get set.....

Juniors scrubbed today, but the 18m nationals are lining up:

18Kt Westerly mean lining up on runway 26.

The back of the queue is snaking back up 33

The back of the grid...

Ready to go....

Progress is on Soaringspot.

2016 18m Nationals and Juniors competition starts today (20th Aug), and runs to 28th Aug.

... though unfortunately today is scrubbed.

The soaringspot site is here. This will have tasks, and daily results.

The juniors general purpose facebook page (that talks about the comp) is here, along with another one specifically for the comp is here.

The Norfolkglidingclub page is here.

2016 April showers

Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur

Our very own Griff has a letter from the French Government stating that he's been awarded the status of Chevalier (Knight).
 If you click on the link below you'll see an image of the medal plus a comprehensive explanation of what the medal is all about,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legion_of_Honour  

Apparently if he were to write to the crown he could also be awarded the status of Sir/Knight in this country.

We are proud of you Griff!

Graham's turn to make his first solo flight.

Saturday 24th January. Congratulations to Graham Patrick on his first solo flight. It has been a pretty decent winter for ab initio training; I am sure Graham will not be the last first solo we see before the spring is over.
Pictured below, just after his first solo landing, a very happy Graham.

Youngest solo at Tibenham

What a great Christmas.
Only four days after his 14th birthday, and only delayed because of the weather, George flew solo for the first time. Many congratulations from us all George; probably the best Christmas and Birthday present ever.

Going solo? It was a breeze!

Congratulations to Sean Maciejewski on going solo today! Conditions weren't great and the strong breeze had a cold bite, but Sean persevered and flew alone for the last flight of the day.

Here he is just after the flight with DCFI Will Day. Congratulations Sean! Shame the bar wasn't open, maybe next time.

Portmoak Expedition

What a waste! We arrived safely and our hosts were great BUT! The weather forecast for the next fortnight, and even longer is very poor. Easterly winds if any at all, the worst direction, poor visibility and rain.

We all came home again, hoping for a weather window later in the month or next when some of us will return.

Another First Solo

The day was bright, some pundits were planning 300km and more, but as they struggled to make their way towards distant turnpoints (or more accurately back to TIB) one of our number was being prepared for his first solo. Pictured is Witold being congratulated by CFI Mark. Well done Witold!

Good day Sunday...

Possibly the best day we have had in East Anglia so far in 2014.
The RASP forecast on Friday for Sunday was not great, and Saturday - which had been looking good on Wednesday and Thursday had gone off the boil. But by the end of Saturday the prospects for Sunday had improved.

There were a good few vintage gliders on site still from the Vintage Rally, and these took advantage of the good weather. The weather also brought out a few glass syndicate aircraft: LS7, LS4, Astir, ASW27, ASW19, ASW20, Cirrus, Vega, all heading off to the south west.

Peter Carter turned in a quick time in an  ASW19.

I had my first un-powered aerial visit to Ipswich. You can see the Orwell bridge below. It was slightly difficult to get a shot in the sun.

In trying to do so I set my camera into video mode by mistake. You can see the clouds get dramatically lower towards the coast:

You can also see quite a lot of deep green in the fields, making them not great choices for landing, as is typical from late May to Mid July. For those who wish to track farmers strips, Mike Crook is maintaining a list of farmers strips, and the like, which are land-able. There is a book in the club-house with aerial photos, maps and descriptions. He showed me two new ones, which he had seen in the week. I will need to add them to the land-ables list which Martin Gregorie maintains here.

Ex-Members, Jan and Ian Atherton flew in for a cup of tea with their dog (who has his own ear defenders for the noise), and reported that it was indeed overcast between Gransden Lodge and Northampton, just as RASP predicted. It was good to see them, I must read up on their adventure, as reported in Sailplane & Gliding.

Pretty much the whole of East Anglia was working well on the day though. Here's a photo of Kings Lynn from the south east.

BGA Instructor course

Mark delivers the hangar packing patter to Don at the end of a very tiring day. They disembarked eventually!

Memories of last year

The walk of shame, We've all been there !

Improvers' Week; day 1

What a cracking day! The course got off to a great start with booming skies giving everyone a chance at a flight of around an hour, brushing up skills and making progress. Thermals in the 4 to 5 knot range and cloudbase up to 4400', who could ask for more?. As well as Will and me there was: Phil, Kevin, Allan, Graham, Mike (who went on to fly for almost four hours after a check flight) and Paul (working towards his BI rating.) A truly lovely day.

Sunny and Busy

What a nice blue March day. The wind had a bit of a chill but that didn't stop the band of many merry pilots from turning out and enjoying it. All three club two seaters, an Astir, the Grob 109 and Mark Wright's ASW27 all made an appearance, although the wind and inversion meant that there wasn't much in the way of thermals. I did manage to hover at 2,800ft for about 5 minutes with a trial flight but I'm not sure how!

Lots of training flights and pilots (including myself) blowing off the cobwebs after the winter. Congratulations to Angus for going solo again after 10 years away from gliding and thanks to Andy Videon (duty dog) and David Taylor (duty winch dog) for keeping the show on the road, along with the many other volunteers pushing gliders around and constantly retrieving from half way down the pesky runway 26 - you know who you are.

Let's hope the good weather sticks around but with a few more fluffy bits!

Horizontal Rain

High winds and rain meant a late start, but a small bunch were coerced by the CFI to stick around and enjoy a winch launch. As luck would have it the heavens opened just as the glider was out of the hangar, but despite the horizontal rain we stuck it out and flew anyway.

Tibenham; back on the competition map.

Now that it is all official I am delighted to announce that NGC has been selected to host the 2014 15m National Championship. This is great news for the club, an opportunity to showcase the newly upgraded clubhouse, and to welcome friends, both old and new.

Please put 16th-24th August into your diaries; enter the competition, or the Eastern Regional Championship, which will be running at the same time. If competitive flying is no longer your thing there will be plenty of opportunities to help Ray Hart (the Director) and the team both before and during the competitions. Please look out for future announcements.

Wednesday: at least one XC, Thurs might still be OK.

CFI lead from the font again, and flew an O/R to SMB.

Although it was hot and blue, the thermals seemed to be working to a reasonable height, as shown by MD's trace
Current RASP for tomorrow shows there might be a window of opportunity between 12:00 and 13:00. If there is a chance of something, Bob Grieve will do a briefing.

Task Week .Tuesday was good

Mike Watson completed the club 100K in possibly record time.

Five long flights. Three flights just over 300K (MW, RG, DT).

One 374k flight from the CFI (leading from the front).

And Clive Wilby and Alan Hall circumnavigated the London TMAs (535K).

Mike Hoy also did a first XC of 130K (TIB-WYM-DEP-WLW), giving him a silver 50K leg (to complete his silver),  a second 5 hour flight (he never submitted the claim on the first), and a 100K diploma leg. Congratulations.

There may be more that I have missed.

On top of the XC flights, some good local soaring, and enjoyment of the conditions

The 'Grid', after RG launched

The ab-initio course had another good day, with the students making good progress with the high-intensity instruction.