Thursday 9th July

At last a perfect sunny day, with puffy clouds and a light westerly wind. The flying list for the club members was pretty long, and there were also several private gliders out. Course and Club shared out the gliders, and had the usual staggered lunch break to maximise the flying. 

A successful day for Course and Club: Rob R first solo (club), 
Pete congratulates Rob (Hans)
and Chris W first solo (course): congratulations to both. 
Stu congratulates Chris (Pete B)
  Another first for the course was a conversion to the Junior by Paul K, 
Paul converts to Junior
 and the added bonus of a re-conversion by Wendy W-F. 
 
Wendy flies the Junior again (Pete B)
The other course members continued their intensive training, doing a series of cable breaks, circuits and soaring. Enormous progress by all which was extremely pleasing. All in all, a frantically busy and successful day: huge thanks must go to the course instructors and the helpers for their seemingly inexhaustible energy. Jill H manned the launch point for most of the day, which enabled smooth co-ordination of Course and Club flying. So, especial thanks to Jill for her efficiency and patience. All in all, a good haul of achievements for Course and Club!  Sunshine forecast for tomorrow, which promises another full day of flying. - WWF

News from Sid's Task week at Nympsfield

A good day at Nympsfield, Matt and Pete both completed 500 km flights NYM Cambridge Bicester Graffam Water NYM-  Congratulations to Pete St in 230 for completing his first Diamond distance. 
(This follows a good ridge day yesterday for them both -  227 km and  Matt also got to 13,000 ft in wave- just low cloud at NHL!) -J&P
The Severn snakes under a cloud
Captain Slow and Tom with Diamond Chariot 230

News from Competition Enterprise

So, after a reasonable start on the epic day, about 100 km in the battery dies... Ok not brilliant but back to mechanical vario and feel, after giving up folding my map in the cockpit and having to rip sections off the southern one I kinda had an idea where to go. At this point I was at about 3000 ft and pretty happy.
After a little while I began to smell burning thinking that it was just the air around me but after realising that the battery had gone began worrying about an electrical fire so I landed. 
 
Another nice field (Liam)

 There are no visible signs of burning but the battery connector was ridiculously hot... Days like this don't come around often and I'm spending the rest of it miserable in a field...-Liam