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2 more good weather days so plenty of flying. Looks like spring may have arrived! Photo curtesy of Barry.

Thursday 19th and Friday 20th March, the club hosted 6 people from Airbus on a flight appreciation course where they learned about some aspects of glider design and then flew actual gliders to see this in action. We had perfect weather for this, which made the 2 days quite de-stressed for everyone. We hope they take back a different view and something of the love for flying that gliding provides.

Started on runway 08 with a gentle easterly wind. We had the winch and tug out and managed about a dozen flights before the wind shifting to SE made a change of runway necessary. Another blue day with mild temperatures. Spring is coming! We had one first solo today as well - congratulations to Simon Jackson on achieving this first milestone.

A good day coincided with the weekend! Lots of training flights done and 3 of our most experienced cross country pilots took the opportunity to get some kms. Thermals over 5000' were reported. Also a record number of launches for this year - 53 launches, both winch and aerotow. Lovely sunset as the club gliders were put away. Photo (c) Jack Boynes.

The BGA has published the 2026 Safe Start booklet which can be viewed and downloaded here:
gliding.co.uk

Fog and then low cloud stopped flying today. However we used the time to change a wheel on the cable tow car and to rig the Club's ASK23.

Unfortunately, due to the increasing wind strength, today's flying was cancelled.

The last day of February brought fine weather for a change. The wind started off WNW with it forecast to change to WSW, so runway 26 was the obvious choice. Despite interruptions from a cable break, which needed the dynema rope to be spliced in 2 places, and a rain shower, we managed 31 launches in 6 hours of activity. 7 student pilots were flown, 2 winter refreshers, a site check for a visiting pilot and 2 air experience flights also, along with a few solo flights. We look forward to more of this in March.

A rare pleasant flying day for the Wednesday Flyers. Runway 20 with no significant cross-wind and the only thing that delayed our start was the Class D airspace that was NOTAMed until 10:45. Cloudbase was only 900' to begin with but soon went up so that winch launches could go to full height. Winter refreshers, SPL 2 year recency flights and a conversion on to the Sport Vega were notable, and a few "Descents on Tow" behind Eurofox EZ.

Today the club hosted the second of our regional Go Gliding sessions for local schools. We had about 30 young people visit the club to be given a tour of the hangar, a go in one of our gliding simulators and some hands-on STEM experiments covering how a wing works and how gliders fly without an engine. For a change the weather was dry and we even had a visit from a very pretty Tiger Moth.