The Bicester Gliding Club Magazine December Issue The...

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The Bicester Gliding Club Magazine December Issue

Winter Issue December 2014

The Bicester Gliding Centre Magazine

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Editor’s Letter A warm welcome to the first fledgling edition of our Gliding Club magazine. Many thanks to all those who have contributed to make it what it is and I hope it meets expecta-tions . Further suggestions, advice and assistance would be very welcome. The front cover is only temporary as we are asking members to send in photos for the following editions. Thank you for sending suggestions for the future name and I would like to invite mem-bers to email me and vote for the title you would prefer from the following : The Bicester Whisper . Up and Away Horizon The Windrusher The Bicester Pilot Windrusher Club Magazine I look forward to hearing from you and wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2015.

Kathy Ludlow

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FORTHCOMING CLUB EVENTS:

Bronze C Talks January 10th, 17th, 31st. February 7th,14th,28th. March 7th,14th,21st, 28th. 6pm - all welcome.

Quiz Night 24th January, 2015

Casino Night - with Don Terry 21st February, 2015

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CHAIRMAN’S LETTER

Welcome to the new Bicester Gliding Centre magazine. A huge amount of thanks should go to our Editor Kathy Ludlow for taking on this task and for the excellent result. This is the first edition, but to make sure that it is not the last, Kathy will need support from all of you. If you have something to say please let us know.

I owe you all an apology. I managed to miss not only the club forum but also the AGM. I would have liked to have been at both events but on this occasion my health let me down. Thanks to Dickie for standing in for me. I am very pleased that the club chose to vote both OJ and Marie back on to the committee, so thank you for that. The committee has established a good working relationship and I am grateful for the continuity that your vote gives us as we continue to negotiate the many changes to which we need to adapt over the coming year. Congratulations to all the winners of a club trophy this year (and commiserations to those who felt ‘they was robbed’). I would have especially liked to have been at the AGM to comment on this year’s recipient of the Chair-man’s trophy. This went to Terry Mitchell for organising the painting of the hangar doors and the continuing work he is doing organising the winter refurbishment of some of our K13s. Also worthy of mention is the initiation of the Working Wednesdays ‘club evening’ which is proving to be very successful. None of these initiatives would have been possible without the support of our club members so I would also like to thank all of you who have supported Terry and I am sure he won’t mind me saying that each of you who generously contributed your time to assist him should consider yourselves as having a share in the trophy. We don’t award club trophies to committee members unless they are associated with flying achievements but I think it should be noted that committee members contribute a great deal of their time to making sure we are all able to fly and we should remember to thank them for their contribution. All the members of the current committee contribute equally and normally I would not wish to name any one individual. However, this year we have experienced an ‘all hands to the pump’ situation. Laura, who runs our, was taken seriously ill and was not able to work for a few weeks. This brought home how reliant we are on the excellent and often unheralded work that the office does. Most members were very understanding and helpful during this period and I would like to thank to those of you who helped. Special thanks needs to go to two of our committee mem-bers, Roger Wilson and Marie Mitchell. They stepped in and worked virtually full time in the office to get us through this difficult few weeks. I think they both deserve an award to highlight our thanks for their efforts. They say that every cloud has a silver lining and that has proved to be true in this case. The advantage of having two experienced business brains working in the office full time for a few weeks means that we now have a much better understand-ing of how our systems should work. We are now able to benefit from the improvements that they have made. However, I am sure both Roger and Marie would agree with me when I say ‘Laura, we are glad you are back, you do a great job’. We are now six months into our new lease with Bicester Heritage and I am very encouraged with the way things are developing. The activity that Bicester Heritage has brought to the airfield has made the site more vibrant. This is to our benefit and as this develops I think we can look forward to an exciting future. The 2014 season will go down as one of the good ones. Thanks needs to go to those who worked so hard both during the week and at weekends to make sure the field was kept in good order and that our flying was properly organised, safe and fun. We also need to thank the teams that gave up their time to ensure that our competitions were very successful and enjoyed by all who competed. As the year draws to a close remember that for the first time this year we will continue full-time flying opera-tions throughout the winter months. I hope you will support this initiative and come and take advantage of the ex-cellent flying that many days during this part of the season can offer. We now have 2015 to which we can look for-ward, let’s hope it’s a repeat of 2014.

To everyone, I hope you have a successful New Year . Bob

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Chief Flying Instructor's Letter Dear Club Members, I have always thought that getting the best out of your gliding depends on the balance of three things: Time, Motivation and Money. Unfortunately, when you are young, it is usually the case that you have time and motivation, but no money. When you are in middle life you have money and mo-tivation but no time. And when you are old, you have time and the money but have lost the motivation! Personally, I recognise that I have been very lucky with this balance. When I was young, I had a well-paid job as a pilot in British European Airways. In late 1975 it was decided that the runways at Heathrow should be resurfaced. To do this teams would work at night on stretches of the runways and during the day air-craft would be subjected to a slight bump as they crossed the lip of the old to new surface. As a result of this, the aircraft type that I was flying suffered cracks in the wings, which in turn resulted in much of the fleet being offline whilst they were repaired. As it happened, these repairs coincided with the remarkable Summer of 1976 and I was able to glide day after day, (often doing two cross countries in a day with lunch in between). My life consisted of waking up, pulling back the curtains to see blue skies, eating a quick breakfast, tearing up to Booker and flying all day. ( towing, instructing, motor gliding but mostly cross country gliding ). I would get back late, fall into bed and wake to more sunshine burning through the curtains. I won’t bore you my middle and later life story but suffice it to say, I have been lucky. Motivation is very important, and it is often noted how the progress from walking onto the airfield to going solo is almost al-ways a memorable and enjoyable time. This is because you have a clearly defined goal, ( solo ), you have clearly defined steps to the goal, ( the progress card ) and you can see strong improvement with time. After solo, things so often go downhill, ( there is a post solo card, but it never seems to have the desired effect ). Aimlessness can easily set in, so to keep your motivation up you must have further goals, and to do this, you need a clear idea of which direction in gliding you want to go. The choices are usually: to become an instructor, to concentrate on cross country, and /or competition flying, to concentrate on aerobatics, and /or competition aerobatics, to involve yourself in Vintage gliding or look to exploring other sites, and get involved in mountain and ridge flying etc. (There is often some crossover of these )If you can decide and then focus on the area of gliding that most appeals, you can then set a goal and make a plan to achieve it. Your chances of getting success and pleasure from the sport will greatly improve. There is an old Chinese proverb which says, ‘ Man who chases two rabbits catches neither’. As for time and money…I can’t help you. Good luck!

Dave

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TALES OF REJECTION by Anne Stotte

My partner has been the BGA badge claims officer since the early 1990s. Over the years I have spent time at home, and sat in parked or moving cars, listening to him being harangued by disappointed Badge claimants. I now can fill in most of the other end of the conversation even when it isn’t shouted down the phone so loudly as to be audible. The rules can seem opaque and irrational, partly because people don’t imagine how one might cheat, which would help to understand the logic of the regulations. For example: The 1% Rule

Punter: “I declared a silver distance from Aboyne to ScaryLynn. I climbed in wave and started, and after a while I could see a great bar over ScaryLynn. I could hear, on the radio, the maestros there above gold height, calling their climb rates. Of course, I didn’t know how low I would be able to connect but I descended to 3k as I got to 50k distance and was able to climb away below them and eventually got back to Aboyne. Awesome flight. Bril-liant. Thing is, I really need my silver for the Northern Regionals, both the height and the distance from that flight. You’ve sent it back. You’ve said you’ll allow the height under pro-test, but not the distance. I don’t understand. Are you saying I didn’t go far enough? I did! Everyone’s looked at the logger trace!”

“Well, it’s like this. For the height, there’s no notch on your trace to show where you came off tow, you went straight into lift. And you didn’t get the tow pilot to certify your re-lease altitude. Where it says on the form ‘This must be completed for all claims’ it means you should have that section completed. It’s a clue. However, since you sent me a logger trace, not just a barograph record, I can see where you first turned at the end of a beat, when you must have been off tow, and I’m prepared to accept that as your point of release. From there you’ve climbed well over 1000 metres so you have silver height.

For the distance, here’s the thing, there’s the 1% rule. It says for a distance flight you must arrive at your destination not more than 1% of the task distance (that’s 500 metres for a 50k flight, or 1641.5 feet) lower than your start height (or one thousand metres lower for a flight longer than 100k). At your start point over Aboyne airfield you were at 9200 feet, you’d had an excellent climb. You went exactly 50k into wind and were then at 2900 feet, 6300 feet lower than your start point, which is way more than a 1% difference. If you’re aiming to fly exactly 50k you’re allowed only a bit over 1600 feet height difference; that’s not even enough for a 2000 foot aero-tow.”

Punter: “But I did the climb and the distance! Are you saying that if I’d not descend-

ed (I was thinking that would be what I’d have to do if I landed there), if I’d arrived at more or less the same height as I started, Read the rules carefully before you attempt the claim. If you were to fly 75k, you’re allowed 1% of 75k which is over 2400 feet – you could

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have a 2000 foot tow and still land 200 feet lower than the airfield from which you launched!

It's not actually necessary to make a declaration for a silver distance. Your start

would then be your point of release from tow or the top of the winch launch. You mustn’t be aero-towed down track, though, unless your finish point is still 50k or more from the point of release; that’s another rea-son to consider doing a slightly greater dis-tance than the set goal. If you do make a declaration, that gives you the option, if you’re towed down track, to fly back, log an acceptably low point in your declared start sector, and then set off. For a silver distance, if you think you might fly back to base, con-sider declaring it as an out and return (even though it’s not necessary). You might then claim a 100k diploma too.

Get all the required sections of the form filled out (as soon as you can; it can be very

difficult to complete the form from Oxford in January when the flight was in Scotland the

previous October). A silver height gain without much of a margin might well have been re-

jected without the release height being certified. The phrase on the form ‘this must be

completed for all claims’ is the clue.

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A Rat’s Tale

By Anonymous

Hello, allow me to introduce myself. I am a rat who lives in the hangar and who just happened to stumble upon a running laptop computer so i thought i would write few lines about life at bicester and make a few casual observations about what goes on here. I know what you are thinking-how can a rat write? Well, rats are intelligent, which is why so many of us are used for experiments and a surprising number are quite actually quite literate. I come from a family of high achieving rats - some older members will remember my uncle roland, who became a television star in the 1980s along with a dubious limp pawed gerbil called Kevin. I do have a name but i prefer to remain anonymous and to be honest my real name is not really a name you would associate with a rodent of a high iq. My father, being a bit of a gliding nut, named me after a vintage glider which just sounds very silly. Now...any guesses? You are probably also wondering about my unusual writing style and why i only write in lower case with limited punctuation. well, thats because im a rat and am having to type this with my nose. It is possible for me to use the shift lock but that involves a lot of running back and forth and i just dont have the time or energy.

Life hanging out in bicester hangar is

good for a gliding rat. I get to go flying when i

like, usually hiding in the fuselage of whichev-

er glider i feel like flying and there is plenty of

food and beer left lying around, especially

after saturday night when the regulars have

been in. Scurrying around I get to see lots of

interesting things and hear plenty of gossip

which im looking forward to sharing with you

in future editions!

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DUTY TEAM DATES January-April, 2015 Team A Team B Team C Team D

Saturday Sunday Saturday Sunday

3 Jan 15 4 Jan 15

24 Jan 15 25 Jan 15 31 Jan 15 1 Feb 15

21 Feb 15 22 Feb 15 28 Feb 15 1 March 15

21 March 15 22 March 15 28 March 15 29 March 15

18 April 15 19 April 15 25 April 15 26 April 15

Team E Team F Team G Team H

Saturday Sunday Saturday Sunday

10 Jan 15 11 Jan 15 17 Jan 15 18 Jan 15

7 Feb 15 8 Feb 15 14 Feb 15 15 Feb 15

7 March 15 8 March 15 14 March 15 15 March 15

4 April 15 5 April 15 11 April 15 12 April 15

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Soup Dragon Rhapsody (or Ode to Soup Dragons) Mamma, just ordered breakfast, Put some pennies in the pot, Ate my food nice and hot, Mamma the day has just begun, And now I have to go and fly away, Mamma, ooh ooh ooh oooh, Didn’t mean to make you fry, If I’m not back again this time tomor-row, Carry on, Carry on, You are the ones that really

matter.

Anonymous

Reflections on Bicester Gliding Club, 1958. By Paul Herbert My connection with Bicester Gliding Club goes back to 1958. I was an Apprentice up at R.A.F. Halton and I started coming Wednesday afternoons & weekends. Windrushers had just been formed and the club was there as part of the fledgling RAFGSA run by Jamie Jamieson, Ted Simpson & Ron Newall. We had a fleet of Primary gliders, a Grunau (Anita Smchidt's, in white) a Prefect with closed canopy, a T21 and an Olympia. I got plenty of Primary time on the tripod, bungee hops and bungee launches to about 250 feet, landing straight ahead. I had 30 launches in the T21 before going solo in the Grunau just after my 16th birthday. After that I flew anything available but the NCO's & Officers got first pick! We didn't have many civilian members it was mostly RAF personnel. I progressed through the C license (15 minutes plus in the airfield vicinity & a paper on aviation, met and airmanship if I remember correctly) then straight on into Silver (no Bronze in those days) I did the cross country (Bicester to Keevil / Dunstable / Leicester etc) and height gain all in the Grunau and on one memorable flight I declared Dunstable as the land away airfield but totally lost all lift over Westcott and so had to land only to be sur-

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Westcott was then a top secret rocket test establishment. I had resigned myself to be-ing arrested when who should turn up but Dick Stratton who was based there working on the SR53 Spectre rocket motor. A great man who sorted it all out,( remember I was a mere lad of 16), He organised some tea and a recovery and this was the start of a long friend-ship. Getting a whole 5 hours in the Grunau proved to be very challenging, with only some 2 - 3 hour forays - the Olympia was to "precious" to entrust to a 16 year old Apprentice!. So I went down the road to Weston on the Green, joined the Oxford Gliding Club, went through a quick refresher and flew their Skylark 2, oh joy. On one of my soaring trips I had to land out at Bicester, lots of enquiries - what the * are you doing flying that ???? Well after having explained that I hadn’t been allowed to fly the Oly I was welcomed back in & flew the Oly, but still couldn’t stay up long enough until I joined an expedition with the "British Army of the Rhine" gliding outfit at Dunstable and flew their Fauvelle on the ridge. With a numb bum and a very twitchy pitch I finally man-aged it and still only 17 years old. Anyway I left Halton and Bicester in late 1960s going into the big wide world of the RAF, my service career progressed and in 1962 while based in Aden, I flew a T31 at Sheik Othman airfield where the biggest problem with heat & thermals was getting the thing back down! After leaving the RAF in 1983 I pursued a career in civil aviation forming my own Com-pany buying & selling aircraft spares and aircraft up until about 8 years ago when I took up gliding again via Hus Bos, Shennington, Turweston and finally back to Bicester also as a powered member with brief forays in a C150. This all stopped some 5 years ago when I re-tired, aviation stopped and I returned to my other love of motorsport and now actively compete in hillclimbs and sprints in a variety of competition cars. I am proud to have been in at the start of gliding proper at Bicester back in the mid 195's and can probably say I was really one of the original Windrushers members.

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