Cambridge University Gliding Club

The first success of our week of flying - Iain had his first solo, punctuated shortly afterwards, by his first launch failure. However no difficulties were presented, and he followed up with another two solos all handled excellently. More to come hopefully.....

The new year is starting in a couple of weeks time and its time to entice everyone to take up gliding. We'll have a stall at the freshers fair on the 4th and 5th of October along with our glider on Parkers Piece. The squash will be on Monday the 10th at Emma in the Gardner Room from 7:30, and we'll be running trial flights on the 12 and 14th. Come along and pay us a visit if you haven't tried gliding before.

 

 

Sunday proved to be a completely different day, with us being created by a classic soaring sky stretching as far as could be seen in every direction. With cloud streets pointing straight at the Lakes, it was a day to go and get pictures of Ullswater.

I was told by Pete that morning that the Pennines were beautiful but the Lakes were ‘heaven-on-earth’, and from a glider he couldn’t have been more right. James did the run first out to Penrith and back – only about 10k but worth every second for the view. I followed and had a stunning flight, marred only slightly by landing a wheels radius closer to the ground than intended. Thinking at the time that ‘the wheel brake was working rather well today’, I skidding across the ground on the belly of the glider.

Still no damage was done – thanks to Eden’s long grass – and I paid the penance with being drafted into a retrieve before I’d had time to catch my breath. One of the local pilots had landed in a field some 10 miles south so with the trailer hooked on and a team of hardy volunteers we arrived to discover we’d have to carry the glider out in pieces over the top of standing crop. After plenty of grunting we arrived back to find I’d missed the last train out of Penrith – never mind, I’d just have to stay for the end of expedition port and cheese then.

Some people remained for a couple more days but that was the end of my contribution to the expedition. A massively welcoming site with some incredible flying, dispelled any worries that had been put in my mind at the start, I think we may have found a regular expedition site for CUGC – home away from home.

And for anyone that found Eden boring, Pete invited us all to Latrigg (but you have to beg). A mobile gliding club he sets up once a year on top of one of the fells in the Lakes and proceeds to lob gliders off by a homebuilt winch. I think I might be just mad enough to give it a go.

Lighter winds greeted our awakening for the next few days, but the ridge still worked intermittently, with such a huge slab of rock it doesn’t seem to take much encouragement to provide lift for the patient pilot, particularly in the light wooden gliders that Eden has hidden away in their trailers.

Iain, Oliver, Jason and Vitaly managed plenty of flights over the next few days with several of us having the opportunity to fly solo in the clubs K8 or CU – the universities ASW19, with the dutiful arrival of Julia towing our pride and joy up from Cambridge.

James and Alex the professional instructor and winch driver at the club for the week provided excellent flying for us all of the week flying till sunset or rain stopped play everyday.

Towards the end of the week the winds began to pick up again and James and I had the chance to test out CU on the ridge working in all its glory, after a couple of hours flying each we concluded it was the most fun we’d ever had in a glider – the 19 was born for this place.

Saturday sadly was rained off but it did give us the opportunity to pay a visit to Penrith, and for me to demonstrate my inability at board games, spending most of my time either trapped at Wick, or being unable to invade Africa.

So the first real day of flying started, strong westerly winds blowing onto the ridge promised us a good day. Skelling farm is about as different an airfield to Cambridge as it’s possible to get, characterised best by the wall that runs across the middle of the runway, and the gulley down one side towards which the whole airfield slopes. That said a judicious use of rudder on the ground rolls to head uphill quickly takes care of those problems – the sheep however require a slightly different technique.

Not to be prevented from flying by the mobile hazards though, a quick call to the farmer, and he arrives with quad-bike and loyal sheepdogs to make the airfield useable for the day. With the airfield setup complete, and a choice of gliders – including a mysterious Romanian design (an IS-28), owned by Pete Whitehead available, it was time to find out what made this place so special.

Calling Eden Soaring a ridge site doesn’t really do it justice – presented with 50km of the Pennines to play with, (covered in enough bowls and gulleys that bits of it work in any wind direction with a bit of west in it) here was something that was going to take a lot more than one expedition to explore in any detail. Still you’ve got to start somewhere.

The flying commenced, pulling off the winch launch and making a dash for the ridge. It starts by slowly working your way up the bowls and gulleys with care to avoid curl-over from nearby outcroppings until there was sufficient height to climb onto the upper ridge 2000ft above the airfield. Then with cries of Ye-Ha diving down at high speed to make use of the strongest lift near the cliffs, and ensuring any remaining sheep are sent running for their lives. Everyone was doing flights up to an hour long - all of this under a solid overcast layer, not a chance of that happening back home.

Having been convinced by Anne and Richard Walker that I should go, and admiring the seductive pictures on display on the Eden Soaring website, I decided to abuse my position as club chairman and make an executive decision on the location of CUGC’s summer expedition.

The advance guard headed up on Friday evening to find our accommodation, but while waiting for my ride with Iain, I spent the night in the Bicester bar being told in no uncertain term how completely mad I was for organising this trip and taking inexperienced pilots up to the Lakes. With seeds of doubt having been sown in my mind I awoke on Saturday morning and the journey to Cumbria up the M6 began.

Meanwhile a rather more epic trek had been started by the Eden CFI, Bruce Cooper, who on hearing about our visit and difficulty in finding an instructor for the week, agreed to drive Cambridge’s Two-Seater Grob up to Eden and instruct in it for a few days. This more than anything set the tone for how welcoming the local pilots were going to be to us crashing their little corner of soaring paradise.

Upon arriving at Eden a bit of flying was achieved, but primarily we spend the time swearing at the Grob trying to get the wings together, turns out two-seaters are a bit heavier to rig, but finally with broken backs we retired.

Julia had found a gem of a cottage for us to stay for the week, about a 10 minute walk from the airfield, a marvellous old converted chapel, which we got cheap. Among other things it came with a full sized snooker table and jukebox (which sadly was not working), and far more room that the 10 or so of us needed.

Right progress report on this trip. Having chatted to the CFI at Eden (very keen to see us  :) ),

I reckon the best time for the trip would be dates within the period 27th August through to

the 6th September - although I wouldn't expect everyone to be there for the whole period.

 

I reckon that's a good compromise which should let everyone who's emailed me turn up

for at least a few days.

 

I'm working on that policy so if everyone could email me again letting me know which

dates you'll be around I'm going to organise instructors, there's going to be at least one

at Eden already, and I'm hoping to take a two-seater up from Gransden as well. 

 

There's still plenty of space if anyone else wants to join us - it doesn't matter what

your experience level is, just get in touch (gms41). Remember if you don't come

I'll force you to look at all the awesome photos we're going to bring back

Who'd have thought it would have happened - CUGC organised a flying week
and we actually got decent weather - 3 good cross-country days out of 5.
Flying and banter abound. For those of you that missed out - fear not
because we're already planning the next trip, this time to Eden Soaring in
the lake district.

Look here for cool pictures....

http://www.edensoaring.co.uk/glfusion/mediagallery/album.php?aid=7&page=1

I'm currently thinking about a week near the end of August or beginning of
September, either 22nd or 30th August or 6th September.
If anyone who's interested can get back to me sooner rather than later,
particularly if you're pre-solo as I'll need time to organise instructors,
that would be grand. Let me know which dates you're available and your
experiance level. I've been looking forward to this trip all summer, trust
me it'll be epic :). A chance to finish off the summer with some awesome
flying - even if you haven't got much experiance in gliding yet.

Well done to Alex Hoffmann who completed his first solo last week.

Booking is now open for our summer trial flight evenings which will be on Friday 3rd and Monday 6th June. Go to the trial flight section of the website to book your place.