Members' area

The final Saturday in January was forecast cold and possibly wet with lots of hot air in the evening at the AGM.

Four Air Cadets arrived for their first flights, along with three Semichons and three other Junior pilots. Gary Cross was almost the only other member present who wasn't on the duty rota, which proves its worth.

The first task to show the cadets was how to rig a K21. Geoff didn't manage to frighten them off doing this and they all flew during the day. The rain never showed up, Gary did his winter refreshers and best of all several Semichons and other youngsters managed to re-solo after a gap of several months. The final task was de-rigging the K13 for its ARC.

The AGM was an excellent evening, with great food from Steve Glassett. Thanks Steve. Andy Smith took a lot of cups for flying too far and too fast for an old chap, and Matt Page was awarded the Mike Weston Trophy for significant service to the club. Matt has helped with IT, Junior gliding, and last year the competition. Helen Wilson was the Best Junior in 2016. A full list of prizes will be published in Polebender, except the White Stick Award.

A cold but sunny winter day. By the time we had towed the K21's to the launch point a layer of frost had formed on the wings. However, a test flight found no effect on stalling speed or any other aspect.
A 10 knot wind straight down runway 09 gave launches up to 1500 ft., so a useful day was had by the few members present and the day's batch of Air Cadets.
The new K21's main wheel tyre mysteriously deflated on landing. Since nobody fancied working on it exposed to the wintery conditions it was derigged into the syndicate K21 trailer and a K13 brought out instead.

Correction to the previous posting from the office:

The AGMs of ADF Ltd and Cotswold GC will be on Saturday 28th JANUARY 2017 not 28th February. The formal notice and agenda for the CGC AGM will be published later next week.

David Roberts / Chairman

After a miserable New Years Day, Bank Holiday Monday dawned beautifully clear and frosty. By 10.30 we were all ready to go, but sadly our enthusiasm wasn't shared by the winch which stubbornly refused to start. It was eventually diagnosed as a seized starter motor. Things weren't looking good when the replacement didn't work either. Luckily the third one did. Huge thanks to Simon Lucas for saving the day.
Once we had an operational winch we enjoyed a good day's flying in the winter sunshine. The northerly breeze gave some high launches enabling us to see in the new year with some aerobatics and one or two flights were long enough to incur soaring fees. Not a bad start to the year. Here's hoping 2017 is going to be a good soaring year.

As many will know, Don Puttock decided at the end of the 2016 season to move on to 'pastures new'. For three years he has delivered a great and very successful course programme, for which we thank him sincerely.

So, the search then started for someone to replace Don. Over this last weekend we met with and interviewed a candidate for the course instructor for 2017. I am pleased to say that Stanislaw Sawicki from Warsaw met with our requirements and we have offered him the role which he has accepted verbally. Stanislaw (pronounced Stanislav) hopes to start at the end of March but may have to delay his arrival until sometime in April due to his other job in Warsaw, from Autumn to Spring each year, teaching English at the Academy of Warsaw. We look forward to welcoming him in the Spring. His wife, who works in a school, and 9 year old son will probably join him here in late June.

DGR / chairman

Sunday the 4th of December dawned cold with a brisk easterly so runway 09 was the order of the day, one of the early launches was Steve Glassett in the Cirrus who had a bet with Jonathan that the Ikarus wouldn't tow the Cirrus to 10,000 feet, 30 minutes later, they did. Steve took the following pictures on the way down, landing just over an hour later.
A busy day with trial lessons and with winch launches up to 1600' on the short runway a good time was had by all. Several club members had aerotows in the K23 as did Andy Smart in the Cirrus, this time just to 3000' . Jonathan Apperley completed his winter refreshers, and also took an aerotow, the photo below was taken in the smooth air above the 1500' inversion. Thanks to all who helped.

Yesterday the Ka 23 was test flown by Robin Birch and then an orderly queue of club members formed to fly it. The other photo is of company owner Robert Novak and Ksenija Novak handing over the finished product to me at their workshop in Lesce, Slovenia.