West Blackdown Model Gliding Club » flying

A fine sunday on the slope

admin — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:42:53 +0000

Couple of photos from Sunday’s (21st March) flying on at the beacon. Lovely day brought out a whole host of faces. Amongst the turn out; Steve Thorn was their with his 1/4 scale cadet and Steve Clark was out with a rather impressive looking x-blade.

The main problem on sunday was of course light wind, at under 5kt’s westly it could barely keep the floaters up. My new shinny Alulu (my only servicable model!) seem to fair quite well. Ted’s wild thing managed about the best, but I suspect that had more to do with sheer stubbornness.

Floaters on the western ridge

admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:08:49 +0000

Promised was a steady 7mph westerly, what we got was more like 3-7ish westerly.

Up on the beacon on at 1:30 it looked promising my *cough* ted’s 2 meter floater seemed to be going nicely right up to the point when Ted and Dave turned up and killed my lift. I’m not bitter or anything.

Ted optimistic as ever was sporting his new SAS wild thing that he picked up at the sale on Tuesday. Dave brought a 40 year old glider, having pointed out to him that’s quite a bit older than me dave pointed out it’s in better nick than me, can’t argue with that.

Being on a short pass I was all but packed up my the time that John Hills arrived up on the slope, didn’t manage to stay long enough to see him fly.

Gareth

All out on the beacon

admin — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:44:10 +0000

The first flyable Sunday in a good while meant a pretty good turn out. The wind was a good 10mph westerly at around 2 but drop quite a bittorrent nearer 5mph or less, still flyable but only really with floaters.

Jemery gave his skyrider fox it’s maiden flight. Seemed to go well, but the formation flying with stuart’s fox might need a little work.

Only one bin bag required this afternoon and that was for my mini x-blade, which had a mid air with a tree. Well a bin bag is a bit of an over statement, it’s got a bit of impact damage on the leading edge of the port wing. Should be fixable. It’s been added to the increasing stock of U/S models in the shed.

April Bank Holiday flying

admin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:09:38 +0000

A few pictures of the flying on the April Bank Holiday 2009.

Ted scratching around

admin — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 19:10:45 +0000

Still learning! This all too short video was made using my old Nikon Coolpix 4300 so the quality’s not great. It shows Ted, Chairman of West Blackdown Model Gliding Club launching his 100″Cambrian Elan in very light conditions. We took lots of planes but the weather forecasters were wrong both for the wind speed and the wind direction. We could fly the floaters, but only just! However, we love nothing better than scratching around with a floater! We flew like this until sundown….a great day.

Le fish at the Beacon

colin — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:07:38 +0000

Le Fish is an EPP aerobatic glider kitted by Leading Edge Gliders from USA. This is the first video shot by my partner Elaine Mendoza using a Olympus Still camera. It is the first bit of video editing I have done using Nero vision. Neither are Oscar winning performances but not a bad start.
It’s a lot more compressed than the original so it’s very jerky and grainy….more experimentation required.

Aggressor just holding on

colin — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 19:12:40 +0000

Still suffering from poor conditions! The Aggressor is very aerobatic but here it’s only just staying in the air