Cambridge University Gliding Club

Hello everone and welcome back for the oh-so-fun term with unmentionnable 'E' words (for the proper students among us that is :-P). Our first social will be to follow the winch launch presentation at Lucy Cav college, please come along to both but if you can't make it don't worry, and just join us in the pub!

When: 20.30 (aprox, depends on presentation) until 23.00, Monday 30th April 2007

Where: The Sino Tap CB3 0AE (closest pub to Lucy) with The County Arms (castle hill) as back up if the other's shut

Hope to see everyone there. This is a fab chance for any prospective members/trial flight peeps to come along and find out what it's all about in a nice, relaxed atmosphere. Any queries to rw339 or my mobile 07759 612400

Becca

The date, time and place for the Winch Launch presentation has been set. Colin Cownden will be running it in the Wolfson Room at Lucy Cavendish College on Monday April 30th beginning at 7:30PM. The content of the presentation is mostly relevant to early solo pilots and trainee winch drivers and may well go over the head of ab-initios, but any member of the Club who thinks that they may benefit from it is welcome to turn up. A following social event is being organised by our most excellent social secretary, probably involving pubs. As usual.

Our final blog entry - a two parter today! Before we start with Adam's story, with my own underneath, I'd like to say:

Thank you everyone who turned up! I hope you all had a good trip - I certainly enjoyed it. (Mostly ;-) ) Thanks especially to Peter O'Donald and Peter Warner for so patiently instructing for the week, and to the MGC instructors and staff for looking after us. I look forward to seeing everyone back in Cambridge - or on the next expedition!

Anyway: On with the story - For our final day, Adam writes:

Adam's story:

The clouds were hanging low in the sky again. The wind was northerly at about 15 knots. The forecast was predicting similar conditions until the following week. It looked like we’d had the flying we were going to have as we all spent the morning packing to leave. The weather improved to bordering on flyable when the cloud base lifted a little, and at 10 the MGC instructors decided to give it a go and opened the hangar doors. For half of us it was not to be; Phil left as the hangar doors were unlocked with myself, Peter and Becca aboard. We were dropping Becca off at the station in Shrewsbury and then we were faced with a drive which was predicted to be 6 hours. We headed south towards Gloucester and Severn Valley Sailplanes first. The clouds had some breaks in them, allowing bright sunlight to stream through, but it didn’t look particularly good for soaring. At Gloucester we had to navigate our way down some very narrow twisty roads down into the river valley where the old farm which was now a set of workshops for Severn Valley Sailplanes was located. Phil’s Jantar trailer was sitting outside, but we didn’t get to assess the damage to the plane resulting from Phil’s last attempt to kill himself. That would be left for Gransden when we got home. Along with the plane, Phil picked up the damage assessment form with ‘Beyond economical repair’ written at the bottom of it, and we hooked up the trailer to the car. Now came the interesting challenge of getting the trailer through the old farm gates. We scraped the end on the floor as we went up the rise and the sharp turn onto the road got the wheel-guard in contact with the inside wall, but we just managed to squeeze through. Off to Oxford, listening to Radio 1 on the way. Oxford was three hours away with Phil’s speed limited by the trailer. Phil was puffing away on a pack of cigarettes as we moved, and Peter and I laughed as the radio reported the drug reclassification reports that ‘tobacco was the fifth most lethal drug in the U.K’. Phil smoking didn’t worry us though; both me and Peter knew that he would find innumerable other imaginative ways of killing himself before the fags got him.

Between Gloucester and Oxford the weather looked much better. The synopsis that morning was for two occluded fronts approaching from both east and west, and we were in the area between them. I got a text from Martin to say that it was soarable at the Mynd but nothing to be desired, and we arrived in Oxford after five hours of driving. Another headache with the trailer; there was no way in hell that we were going to be able to navigate a 10 metre glider trailer round Oxford, so we had to leave it somewhere outside. We solved it by finding a service station, unhooking the glider from the car, and me and Peter stopped for food whilst Phil went down into Oxford to pick up the cable hook he had had refurbished. Half an hour later he was back; the trailer was re-hitched and off we went towards Cambridge. It was taking a lot longer than the six hours we’d anticipated. Eight and a half hours after leaving the Mynd, at half past six, we arrived at Gransden. Flying had finished and everything was away. The sun was setting as we pulled the trailer into it’s parking space and opened the rear doors. Out came the Jantar, looking surprisingly intact for a write-off. Minor damage to the right wing, a broken undercarriage door and a crack in the skin coming off the trailing edge of the right wing connection on the fuselage were the only visible signs of damage. But inside the fuselage a compression member had failed, and although replaceable, half of the glider would have to be cut out and reattached to do it. Phil was thinking of keeping the Jantar for a project or maybe a simulator, but as Peter took some photos it was clear that she would not be flying again for many years, perhaps never. I also called Martin to find out where Beta Team was; not started back yet was the reply. They had just closed the hangar doors, and were hoping to get back in three hours. That meant 10 in the evening.

We arrived in Cambridge just before 8, after nearly ten hours of driving and trailer-hitching. We dropped Peter off at his house, then we continued on to Phil’s where I’d be staying before going home the next day. We partially unloaded the car and flopped down to try to recover. Becca had told me off that morning for not telling her that it was my birthday in two days, and had organised a pub-meet at 8:30 as a celebration of both my 19^th and a good week of flying. She’d arrived back mid-afternoon as the trains were much faster than a car and trailer, and was the only one who’d had time to recover from the journey. I left for the Mitre a little late - we didn’t stay long, we went off to Gardies for food, where peter and Phil joined us, then back to Phil’s and spent the night listening to my Lemon Jelly ’64 – ’95 DVD and playing card games. Martin and Donnie joined us just past 10, joining in with the drinks and chat, and the party began to break up at 11 when Becca went home. I went to bed shortly afterwards, Martin and Donnie disappeared later on, Phil crawled off to something that wasn’t a sofa and Peter didn’t. And so the Long Mynd expedition ended.

As for the next expedition; we are beginning to plan it.

My Bit:

So we hadn't had much luck yesterday, the forecast for today wasn't amazing, and Phil was planning on departing 'by lunchtime' so that he could make a multi-hour trip to SVSP to get his glider - things looked like they were going to wrap up quite quickly! Peter Warner declared that he would stay until the evening if we wanted to and there was an extra space in his car (Paul and Donnie had already claimed the other two) I decided to risk it and stay - the worst case was simply to get back to Cambridge very late. Fortunately, it paid off! As Phil was driving off the airfield things started rolling and we soon had the hangar unpacked and ready to go.

Things started slowly - the weather wasn't supporting much in the way of lift, and Paul and Donnie bashed out a few training flights each. Immediately before lunch, I hopped in - and hey presto! - some very broken lift appeared. With Peter Warner in the back, I just missed out on the longest soaring flight of the day - and I only made 23 minutes! (Compared to 24...) Nonetheless, soaring well above the club's CFI in the DG505 and a K13 restored a lot of gliding love that had been dented on Wednesday's disaster-day. The afternoon was much the same kind of weather, essentially some circuit practice for all of us (much needed apparently!) with a chance for a solo at the end of the day - what I hadn't realised was that in the 10 minutes since taking a launch for a final check ride was that cloudbase had dropped a good 400 feet - and I quickly found myself with no horizon at all at 1300 feet or so. Needless to say, I came down PDQ and let someone else have a go! Even that flight ended in a short circuit because of cloud I think and we called it a day for the last time.

And so our expedition ended - a good week seemed to be had by all, I think.

Peter drove us home after a final excellent dinner and Donnie and I joined the group at Phil's house for some post-trip love, and I retreated early for some much needed sleep! 

A final note: as I said above, thank you all for coming; and if you've read all this thank you (and well done! ;-) ) 

Sorry for the delay everyone! Bit of a comms failure, but Adam has written for the blog for the last two days of our trip... 

We woke up to a cloudy white-out. No flying in the morning then. The forecasts were not hopeful for the morning, and hardly more so than the afternoon. The cloud did rise a little during breakfast, high enough to see across the valley but not high enough to fly. We went down into Church Stretton to do some shopping for the morning instead, aiming to arrive back at MGC at lunchtime to see what the weather was doing. Unfortunately, it didn’t improve. Cloudbase hung around the level of the top of the ridge, sometimes above, sometimes below, the wind went round north-easterly and so the ridge had no hope of working. Generally a bad day. Although at no point was a scrub officially called, we all knew that it was a no-doer. The afternoon was spent looking at the weather reports for the coming days, and nothing good was expected, so we began discussing arrangements for going home. Peter O’Donald left that afternoon. Peter Warner decided that Friday was the time to go, once the hangar was shut up or the day was scrubbed. Phil decided that Friday was leaving date as well, as he had to stop by at Gloucester and Oxford on the way back in order to pick up the remains of his crashed Jantar and a refurbished winch hook. After an afternoon of lounging and then dinner, we retreated into the lounge and Phil pulled out some cheese and port, to which we managed to scrounge up a set of crackers and some Hobnobs. We were joined by Heidy, the cook, a local girl who was in her late thirties but looked a lot younger and, as well as dropping out of school, had a phobia of teachers. Throwing her into a conversation with a group of Cambridge academics was going to be nothing if not amusing. We had one of the most hilarious conversations of our lives that night. Some of the best bits included Heidy admitting that she had a phobia of teachers and that as a result Peter O’Donald (as a university lecturer) scared her witless. Once we had finished splitting our sides, we mentioned some of Peter’s past quotations (which will not be repeated on this website but those of you who are interested may ask any of the members as the aforementioned quotations are now legend). She then proceeded to try and place us all in professions judging by what we looked like. The results of this episode involved some seriously raucous laughter. Here is a rundown of what Heidy decided our stereotypical professions were;

• Becca: "Top Gun pilot" (close!)
• Martin: "Writer, or some other boring profession" (He wasn't impressed)
• Phil: "Fireman" (it took us five minutes to recover from the irony of this one)
• Me: "Mad Scientist, cutting up furry creatures" (Unlikely. I hate biology, and I'm squeamish. Though it was probably a mistake on my part to reply, "I can't deal with handling small organisms". Fortunately I don’t have to)
• Peter B: "He looks important. Politician. He's the next John Major" (Peter found it less funny than the rest of us)
• Donnie: "Long distance lorry driver. He's a nice bit'o'rough!" (Donnie was looking very uncomfortable for the rest of the evening)
• Paul: "Chippendale" (It was made funnier by the fact that Paul didn't know what she meant!)

It was midnight when we all finally got to bed. Except for Phil, who spent the night on the sofa… yet again.

We were amazed to wake in the morning to find the anemometer readout reading a 1 knot north-westerly. Today we all knew that were going to do some serious flying. We had a briefing at 8:50 and went out to find the gliders being pulled out by the MGC members. We pitched in and quickly got the entire fleet out of the hangar and did the DIs (Daily Inspections). Me and Becca began the day, I took up the motor-glider with Simon Adlard in the other seat and completed my annual field landing checks so I was cleared for cross country flying in the mountains, and Becca got cleared for flying the K23 and had her first solo flight in a glass single-seat glider. Her first launch and landing were beautiful. Her second landing was upset by the MGC gliders getting in the way of the landing area. It all went downhill from there. None of us got our landings right (the exception being Becca who flew the K23 in at the end of the day and landed perfectly on the Vega Strip, a section of the runway which doesn’t look as difficult as it is). I managed a perfect circuit for a flat field site, but that kind of circuit at the Mynd results in nearly crashing into the south hill, which wouldn’t have looked too good (and apparently it didn’t from the ground) but our instructors had mixed opinions about the manoeuvre.

Phil did exactly the same thing manoeuvre for manoeuvre in the K23 afterwards, Peter B managed a two minute circuit in the K23, the rest of us got scared of the hill and began overshooting. I finished the day very upset at my complete inability to land an aeroplane without killing myself, but managed to sneak a flight in the K13 (my favourite old glider! It is nice to have one back!) and did some ridge soaring after sunset, also managing to bring it down perfectly on the Vega Strip. That cheered me up. The rest of us cheered ourselves up by crunching away at our circuits at the end of the day until we were beginning to get them right. After we were all down, we packed up the hangar, tired and a little chilly (but not as cold as previous days) and piled into the clubhouse for dinner. After that, faced with a night of mixed emotions about a day which could have been better, I came up with the idea of Top Gun and Jaffa Cakes. And it was good. Martin disappeared off to bed early, the rest of us went at 11 once the film was finished (the exception being Phil who fell asleep on the sofa... again). Some of us were planning for a long sleep – the weather charts for the next day were not looking promising.

Today Adam writes: 

Day 3 promised much better weather, the sky was much clearer and the forecast was lacking the spells of bad weather we had on Monday. The wind was a 20 knot northerly with only some west in it, so the ridge looked like it was going to be quite dead. The ground had dried out completely after the previous morning’s snow covering, mostly because what hadn’t evaporated had frozen. I took a stroll out on the airfield to acquaint myself with the layout (having the place buried under snow on the day before hadn’t been conducive to working out what was where) and took some photos of the dewpond and tumulus (only the Long Mynd could have a small lake astride an Iron Age burial mound in the middle of its field). The three two-seaters came out to play and were pulled down to the south end of the ridge. The two instructors took the first flight in the K21 to get Peter O’Donald’s currency back again and we began flying CUGC members as soon as that was done.

The DG505 was showing us all how it was supposed to be done, thermalling away and not coming back for an hour at a time, but they were old hands at the game, so our attempts to mash our way through the circuit patterns in conditions we wouldn’t normally be flying in were always going to be outclassed. First up of the students was our alumnus, Phil. Last time he flew he put his glider through a tree so we were somewhat apprehensive of the outcome, but it seems the man becoming known as ‘the Cat’ had decided to keep as many of his remaining lives as possible. Myself and Martin were playing about with the two winches at opposite ends of the airfield, he on the retrieve and me poking round Colin Knox’s custom-built winch. We were having two each, one for demonstration and the second for our own practice. After Phil’s pair it was Becca’s turn to fly, and she took good advantage of the backing wind which had become a good west-north-westerly, causing the ridge to be working to a limited extent.

There were also some weak thermals, and both together got her and Peter Warner a 25 minute flight. After Becca it was my turn, and the conditions changed again for my flight; the wind went north again and dropped off to only(!) 20 knots. The ridge had no effect on the north wind, so this meant that there was only thermic turbulence to contend with, but that was tricky enough. It didn’t help that I was flying a K21 after getting myself used to the attitude the Discus takes when flying. Neither of the two final turns I pulled were at the correct height (my defence being unexpected lift and sink and the instructor can testify before any comments leave mouths!) After lunch break we returned to the field and Peter finished off the rota. I spent the afternoon back on the retrieve winch, Becca spent the afternoon complaining of the cold, and the rest of the crew worked the launch point between flights. Paul had an go at positioning one of the retrieve trucks on the upwind side of the retrieve winch to keep the wind off the crew, and Peter Warner succinctly summed up Paul’s driving performance; “He’s had one flight in the K21 and he’s already better at flying it than he is at driving that truck.”

After Peter we began the rota again with Paul, then Donnie again. The wind went back west and dropped to 10-15 knots, giving just enough to work on the ridge. It also was now low enough for the K23 to come out to play, and Phil snuck a flight in it after I passed up the opportunity in favour of another check flight. After Donnie’s second flight the sun was low in the sky and behind a cloud making it even colder, and although all of the gliders were on the ridge, we’d had enough of the cold and were ready for the pub. We sent up Phil, disconnected the retrieve cable from the main cable, and dragged the two winches back to the hangar. Gliders began flying in (the DG giving us another show-off pass downwind at VNE, next time we expect him to park it in the hangar for us the way it’s been flying), we put the gliders to bed, and retreated to the bunkrooms to change for a meal down the pub. Now in the warm, we were able to put our minds to the next great challenge; getting seven glider pilots in a Ford Focus. It promised to be interesting - but using our pilot's cunning we managed to get around it...

As it was, me and Martin had to get very personal again. We tried fitting us all in side by side but it just barely didn’t work. I had no choice but to sit on Martin’s knee. Peter’s map reading combined with Phil’s navigating made sure that our journey was twice as long as it needed to be. When we finally arrived at the intended pub we found that they weren’t serving food that night, so we had to pile back into the car to find another pub recommended to us. We found it the first time we tried (more by luck than by skill) and piled out to find that not only was there food, it was damned good food and we were the only ones in there. The table struggled a little to get seven glider pilots around it but we managed. Most of the group ordered a very tempting (and cheap) burger, and we finished off with various desserts, the conversation taking intellectual turns which only Cambridge University students could execute with such passion! We also generated a CU style bill. Seven of us spent nearly £100 (though in our defence, and I’m not sure whether this is good or bad, Peter managed to single-handedly account for £30 of it!). We then had to face the prospect of getting back to the Mynd with a) Phil driving b) Peter navigating! Somehow we managed and pulled back up at the clubhouse at 11. Becca, Paul and Donnie went straight off to bed and the rest of us followed at midnight – we were due a briefing the next day at 8:50.

Today Adam writes for the blog;

The first few bright faces looked out over the snow-covered hills at 6 AM. Myself and Peter O’Donald both went for walks on the Mynd after breakfast. The snow on the field itself was between two millimetres and ten centimetres (four inches) deep but in some of the heather areas there were drifts up to a foot in depth. I found this out when I fell into them. After an hour ploughing across runways which looked like Antarctic wastes I returned to the hangar to find the two-seater gliders being removed. The wind was a 20 knot north-westerly and after a brief spell of bad weather at 10 AM (during which we had a briefing) we pulled the gliders out to the south end of the field. Myself and Phil made a brief (and brave) disappearance down the snowy hills (armed with a good shovel just in case the snowy expanse with a road somewhere underneath it was too tricky for a Ford Focus) to pick up Becca from the train station at midday as well as do some shopping at the Co-op for the coming week.

We arrived back at the field at 1:15 to find the DG505 and K13 ridge-soaring. The wind was close to westerly and Peter Warner took a flight in the K21 to refresh his memory on ridge soaring. We had been assigned the K21 for the day. Unfortunately the break in the bad weather was short, and at 3:30 we were forced by increasing winds to bring the light wooden K13 back to the hangar for safety, securing the two heavier glass fibre aircraft to the ground with ropes and pins. Peter Warner made the decision that the conditions were too rough for his liking and so CUGC looked like being grounded for the day. However, the day was saved by the MGC instructors who, more used to the conditions, were happy to fly. And since the K13 was in bed there was a spare instructor for us. So, Donnie opened the week with a late afternoon launch, lasting 25 minutes on the ridge. I was busy playing with the retrieve winch system as I’d never seen one before – only a couple of clubs use them. In between launches Martin and myself (ever the engineers) spent our time poking round inside the engine compartment (Becca would have joined us if she had had more than three hours sleep the night before). The manoeuvres being pulled by the MGC instructors were spectacular. Donnie’s landing involved an average approach, less than average round-out over the heather, non-average steering straight for the launch point and plain ridiculous deliberate ground-loop to line up with the cable again in exactly the right place. After Donnie, Paul went up for 33 minutes of ridge bashing, and we found at the end of the day that there was a spare cable and the glider was the right end of the field, so Martin had a 23 minute flight which almost ended in the wrong field when he hit some unexpected 7 knot sink. Fortunately his instructor managed to stretch out the glide, execute a very impressive steep turn at a height that would have got Gransden pilots grounded, and pull up just behind the DG in front of the hangar. We felt we had to give the instructor, Steve Crowson, a standing ovation. But we settled for getting our rumps back in the warm clubhouse as quickly as we could. Dinner that evening was fish and chips cooked to perfection by the MGC catering staff, and we set a trend of finishing the day on the laptops, uploading photos, checking mails, and writing the day’s reports. We had a slightly earlier night, ending up all in bed at 11.

Adam is writing us a day-by-day account of our happenings at the Mynd - here it is!

 

CUGC At the Mynd, Day 1

During the Easter break of 2007, CUGC sent 7 of our pilots to Midland Gliding Club at the Long Mynd, a gliding site on top of a 1200 foot hill on the Welsh border. Also with us was one of our alumni pilots and two instructors. This is the story of the ‘general glidage’ which took place there written by Adam Spikings. Also present were;

• Martin Hughes
• Peter Buchlovsky
• Rebecca Ward
• Donnie McAusland
• Paul Howie
• Phil Scott (Alumnus)
• Dr Peter O’Donald (instructor)
• Peter Warner (instructor)

Our suspicions that the wind was too strong for towing were well founded. After being blown about the motorway for an hour and a half we decided that a brief stop for lunch at Burger King was in order (despite Phil’s protestations that McDonalds was far superior) and myself and Martin welcomed the opportunity to unfold our legs from their contorted configurations amongst numerous bags in the back footwells. After half an hour we pressed on into the worsening weather – rain, snow and hail joined the continuing strong wind in conspiring to make the day unflyable and a call from Peter Warner who was already at the Mynd confirmed that there was going to be no flying on arrival.

Our eyes were well peeled for the ridge as we approached. We arrived in Church Stretton at 2:30 and began the long climb up the back of the 1200’ ridge to the airfield. Martin was the first to spot the landing area (he used the term ‘landing blob’ to describe the strip of less-wild grass which was a runway) and we pulled up at the clubhouse five minutes later. We fought our way against the forty knot wind to the clubhouse to sign in and sign our paperwork, and had a brief exploration of the clubhouse and bunk-rooms. We bumped into the other half of our contingent, Peter B, Peter O’D, Peter W and Donnie (Becca Ward was not scheduled to arrive until the following day, due to ‘Operation Sleepless Night’ – one of the reasons why the rest of us avoid the RAF Air Training Corps like Vector Calculus) and arranged our quarters for the week. Our two instructors gave us a tour of the two runways and the bungee launch point, peppering the introductions with regrets that the wind was too strong to fly (our Ka8 could have landed BACKWARDS in the gale!) and we dived back into the clubhouse when the hail began pelting us to finish with a briefing on landing areas, approach patterns, and what precautions to take when landing.

 

Hi guys.

After our recent speight of successful first solos and (more in my field) drive to get members trained on the winch, I thought that I would share a bit of useful experience which I gained in my early-solo days.

Some of you may know about the winch launch safety lecture/presentation given as part of the refresher course. Now, for those of you who have just gone solo you may be fed up to the back teeth of safety, but trust me, this is a good presentation that really gets your understanding of winch launching up to good levels. It did for me when I did it two years ago. And the understanding also helps you with getting the best height out of your launches. Again, it did for me. Thirdly, if you are learning to drive the winch, it gives you a great insight into pilot psychology and general launch methods which will improve your ability to give consistently good winch launches. That makes you popular :) . And like I have said, it worked for me.

Now onto the point of the posting...

I'm arranging for an instructor to come into Cambridge to conduct this presentation for us. I have asked some people if they'd be interested in attending and have got positive responses. It will happen sometime next term somewhere in Cambridge so we can all get there easily (and don't have to go haring out to the field for an evening). It would be great to see all solo pilots who havn't had the presentation and any intended winch drivers there. We havn't fixed a date yet because I've only just sent round a mail to the instructor lists looking for a volunteer. I'll keep you all posted on developments. If you are interested in attending, please let me know at the_psychohistorian@hotmail.com so I can fill you in on developments.

Adam

Hello to all from your new Social Secretary!!

The next pub meet, and last for this term, will be on Wednesday 14th March (after the trial flight day) in The Castle on Castle Hill. Starting at 8.30 and going on until we get sick of each other (or they kick us out)!

I hope to see lots of new (and old) faces there, please come along and meet us if you've any interest in gliding. We're not all that scary, honest!

Any queries, or suggestions for events, please email me rw339 

See you all there

Becca