SCSA NEWS

A further F3J practice session is planned for this month, we will watch the weather, please email me if you want to take part or watch. 

Slope flying

Tuesday at Haresfield
A light breeze with fickle lift, the breeze getting quite strong by mid afternoon

Friday,  strong lift at Frocester with the wind a lot stronger and colder than forecast and a few drops of rain

Saturday 
Selsley, light thermals in the morning building up to some strong lift at lunchtime, some slope lift in the afternoon

Sunday  
A good breeze on Selsley, 4 scale model enjoyed the strong lift, Bryan's ASW27 was the star performer getting very high. 

Middle Wallop Areotow 2nd May 2009

I went to the Middle Wallop Areotow event hosted by the Thames Valley Scale Aerotow on Saturday. I arrived at 9:30am ready for the 10:00am briefing, but everybody was waiting in the Army Museum carpark - the Museum had got the dates wrong and weren't expecting a TVSA event until the 16th& 17th May.

Eventually the Club officials arrived and managed to clear the cockup so everybody could drive round the perimeter track to the venue.
The weather was sunny with plenty of cumulus forming in a line above the airfield and a 6mph wind blowing making it feel quite cool. The briefing was now re-scheduled for 11:00am and flying was possible until 7:00pm for the very keen participants. There were dozens of scale gliders being assembled and also about 9 tugs were being fuelled etc.

My 20 year old 1/4 scale ASK18 was dwarfed and looked like some free-flight chuck glider compared to 1/3 scale and 1/2 scale glass ships that were being assembled from a number of transit vans and trailers. Making a guess at the cost of these models of around £10,000 each there was probably £1/4 Million worth gleaming in the sunshine! I jumped into the flying queue early so that I had the the 3rd tow of the day. I got a brilliant tow and after about 20 seconds I was up to about 800 feet and having difficulty seeing my wings against the bright blue sky, so I released and flew for about 10 minutes without finding any lift at all. It was a good flight and landing so I was very happy. I think every 35 MHz frequency was in use and nearly all the pegs were being shared by at least 2 pilots so this would limit the number of possible flights in the day.

At about 11:50 we all had to land because there was a WW1 display team of English and German bi-planes and tri-planes based at Middle Wallop for the day and they need to practice their routine. It was very good to watch but took about 45 minutes out of the flying time. After lunch I had another good flight and then there was a further practice display by the Army WW1 team.

After this 2nd display there were loads of gliders queuing for tugs, I was unfortunate to get a  new tug pilot who said that this was his first aerotow and could I talk him through it!! I was a bit apprehensive, but told him to give it full power and not leave the ground until the my glider was flying and to change direction slowly after telling me what he was going to do. We got airborne and climbed slowly out, the tug was very low on power so we staggered around and I had to use a little bit of break to avoid overtaking the tug, we turned once and were now flying down wind, I think, and I told the tug to turn left gently to get back into wind. The tug suddenly made a handbrake turn so that the towline was at 90 degrees to my line of flight, this jerked my glider round violently and stalled the left-hand wing and caused an instant flick roll so that my glider was hanging tail down from the tug. I immediately released (and saved the tug!) and my ASK18 was launched into a tail slide. Luckily it recovered and I flew into a thermal to compensate for the hassle and flew for about 15 minutes.

I decided to have a further tow, making certain to avoid my last tug pilot and I was about 18th in line thinking that this would be a 20 minute wait - wrong - somebody broke a tow line and lost about 10 feet of orange line and a small black flag which had to be located and recovered before any more flights could be made. About 40 people set out at 10 yard intervals and walked forward towards where the line was thought to be. We walked to the perimeter fence  - over half a mile and found nothing and then moved down the fence and walked a new patch back towards the flying area. After about 35 minutes the line was found and recovered and so flying got under way again. By this time it was 4:00pm and I decided to remove myself from the tug queue and pack up and drive home.

It was a good day out with plenty of fancy sailplanes to look at, unfortunately there were so many participants that I only had 3 flights, accounting for 40 minutes of transmitter time all day, it reminded me of thermal competitions that we used to attend - lots of waiting and not much flying.

Bryan Tucker

There are 4 photos at http://www.ebley.plus.com/photo/?M=D 

Please contact Doug Garland if you would like to try aerotowing