Saturday 28th September

A superb day at Milfield with a brilliant combination of sunshine, wave, happy visitors and a first solo for Trevor Parish. Trevor is a power pilot who has recently joined the club and has used his previous flying experience to good effect to progress quickly to solo in a glider.

 

Trevor making his first solo landing in a glider

Instructor Richard Abercrombie watching Trevor land

A happy Trevor being congratulated by Richard

Another of our solo pilots, Adam Wilson, had another good wave flight.  Adam achieved a two hour flight in wave the previous week to take a large step towards gaining his Bronze Cross-Country Endorsement.

Adam with the Alliance 

The sunshine and ideal conditions meant we had a full complement of visitors for Air Experience flights. Several were celebrating birthdays and one group enjoyed a very nice picnic lunch whilst their family members were in the air.

Happy Birthday!

The wave lasted all day with everyone having a good flight, including two professional flight crew from Poland, now based in Glasgow and Toronto, who came along in the afternoon and asked if they could fly. Katarzyna has recently gone solo in Canada and enjoyed the last flight of the day in wave with Richard. Karol had never flown in a glider and thoroughly enjoyed the flight with Ian Surley. It must have been quite a change for Karol to be shown how to fasten his seat belt!

All in all a wonderful day all round at the club. The views of Northumberland in the autumn are breathtaking and the conditions allowed everyone to enjoy their flights, whatever their goal.

Milfield from 4000ft in wave

Sunday 22nd September

Well - what a start to our first wave week ! Two Gold heights were claimed today (subject to confirmation) by our visitors from Peterborough and Spalding GC with Murray Spittal climbing to 13,995ft in his Discus 'B' and Ross Morriss beating him by a few feet to get to 14,086ft in his Astir CS.  Murray is on his second visit to Milfield and Ross is on his fourth. Congratulations to both pilots.

Ross Morriss with his Astir CS G-CKBD

Murray Spittal with his Discus 'B'  G-CFES

There were several other flights over 10,000' and quite a few between 7 - 10,000'. We started with bad news that our big Pawnee was u/s with a suspect crack in an undercarriage bracket. With the Cub still off line, but due back on Monday, we were left with only the little Pawnee. It coped very well and even managed to launch the DG1000!

We had a late start because the wind was too gusty at first but, by the time we re-briefed at 12noon, the wind had dropped sufficiently for launching to start. Off we went into wave ! There was a brief spell mid afternoon when the wave shifted and gave short flights for some but then it re-established and, as we closed the hangar doors, tired but happy, it was still evident in the sky. Congratulations to Kate Ashley who had her first solo wave flight and returned delighted !

A delighted Kate Ashley following her first solo wave flight. Congratulations !

The last few pilots waiting to launch into the wave.