West Blackdown Model Gliding Club

First flat field of the year

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 21:51:34 +0000

A glorious sunday for flat field, but not at are usually field. The normal field hasn’t been cut yet and probably won’t be for good couple of weeks. Thankfully Mr Auckland managed to pull a field out from under his hat at the 11th hour. The field is on the Millverton road out of Wellington and quite simply massive, the main bulk of the field is given over to corn, but there is a generous border cut all the way around for point to point horse racing (apparently).

Turn out was:

Ted
Dave
Phil
Peter
John
Me (Gareth)

Only being six in number didn’t stop us from setting up both bungee’s and the club winch.

The flying was good, well it was at least for 30 minutes I was actually flying for until my pass expired. Ted maiden’d his new giant electric toy only to break it a couple of minutes later (apparently manufactor’s glue wasn’t up to the job).

For my part I had a couple of nice flights and learnt the lessen that it’s better to go and get the small normal sized bungee rather than try a 2 meter floater on the uber monster bungee. Boy does it go up quick on that thing.

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

Club meeting

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:23:42 +0000

The next club meeting will be:

Friday 26th Feburary at 19:30

The Holywell Inn near Wellington

Address:

The Holywell
Holywell Lake
Wellington
TA21 0EJ

Main item on the agenda, the election of a club secretary.

View Club meetings in a larger map

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.

New site design is Live!

admin — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 09:03:45 +0000

Well I guess that isn’t a surprise since you are looking at it.

A couple of things aren’t finished yet, the most notable of which are the gallery pages. For these I’m hoping to use a new Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/wbmgc/

Currently the images that I’ve uploaded aren’t visible publicly, I’m hoping to get this fixed in the next week or so.

Minutes of the 2009 AGM

admin — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 13:56:10 +0000

The AGM was held on 14 Dec 2009 at the usual venue of the Sampford Peverell village hall.

Download the full AGM Minutes

The meeting was quite well attended and ran on rather late.

The executive summary of meeting goes something like:

Had a good talk about the events of last year
The North Hill event will go ahead at North Hill, but on a smaller more controlled scale
Gareth and Pete where elected Chairman and Treasurer respectively, but nobody stood for Secretary
Colin won the Arther Withers award
The fish and chips where much needed (at nearly 10pm)
Ted Williams won the Build and Fly comp.

The big issue in that lot is the fact that the club no longer has a secretary, Colin has done a sterling job in the position and I don’t think anybody can blame him for wanting to give it up and let somebody else have a go. Trouble is nobody seems to want to step up and have a go.

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.