RAF Shawbury Gliding Club

View Original

Flying Report Sun 25 Sep 22

A really busy day that kept the tuggies fully occupied and that saw us achieve 25 aerotows.  Given the early morning hint of rain and the 8/10ths cloud cover for most of the day, we accomplished more than we had expected with over 8 hours of flying time.

Many congratulations to Harri Reilly.  Alan Swan sent Harri, one of our MEF (see our Blog of 29 Mar 22) students, on his first solo following a check ride.  Well done Harri and all that hard work earlier this year really did pay off.

A good turn out by members and a number of visitors contributed to some hectic activity at the launch point.  We enjoy reciprocal membership with the Midland Gliding Club and it was, therefore, great to see a couple of Mindies join us for some aero-tow refresher training during the course of which we managed to persuade Sue and Steve to spend rather more money than they had planned for although, it has to be said, the 3,000 ft aero-tow price is a bargain.

We welcomed two 60th Birthday visitors.  Dawn had been given a BGA “Go for Gliding” voucher that entitled her to three 2,000ft aerotows all achieved in the capable hands of instructor Nick Lewinton.  Dawn lives locally in Shawbury and especially enjoyed the trip over her house.

6’3” tall Neil had travelled from Stourbridge for his 60th birthday treat and having been neatly packed into the rear seat of the K21, he took a trip with instructor Will Dean, only recently returned from honeymoon. 

Finally, it is always good to see succession planning at work and we now see some of the youngsters coming through the system.  Will Dean is about to commence Part 1 of his BGA Instructor’s Course at Hus Bos and Toby Jones is building up the hours as a pre-requisite to commencing his BGA BI Course.  John Luke has completed the TMG - SEP Training course at Motorglide Bicester and the first steps to becoming a new club tuggie. Good luck to them all and it will be great to see them strutting their stuff on the airfield.