Flying Report Sat 14 May 22

With some members away mountain flying on the Tri-service expedition in the French Alps…..

…..and other taking holidays, we had just enough left to enjoy yet another great day of soaring at Shawbury.  With the forecast suggesting that the best part of the day was in the afternoon, it was decided to take the opportunity to rig the Motor Glider WG in the morning prior to its return to service next weekend.

So it was a late start that saw our two Air Scouts, James and Connor join us for the morning brief out on the airfield.  They were placed in the capable hands of Colin Haynes for an initial ground brief and cockpit familiarisation before flying.  It is always rewarding to see the interest and enthusiasm of our young visitors and we hope that they enjoyed the flight.

Readers may recall  that we were delighted to have been awarded funding by The RAF Central Fund in order to run the Mechanics Endowment Fund (MEF) Gliding Scholarship Courses, details in our blog of 29 Mar 22.  Today we welcomed our first MEF student Isaac who, with instructor Geoff Matthews in the back seat of the MEF dedicated K21 (R35), enjoyed a trip of 1h 4mins and reaching cloud base at 3,500ft.  Issac described it as “well lit, a really sick trip”.  For you old lags that don’t understand any of this just go with the flow.

The single seaters were taken to the launch point in anticipation that it would get really thermic in the late afternoon and that proved to be the case.  Booming thermals, some blue sky and cloud base to 5,000ft ensured that all got a great trip with over 12 hours of flying.  A cracking day out.