GOWER GLIDERS

Four Play
Last Sunday and this Sunday Hunts has been the home of some slope combat.  Last weeks battle wasn't so good due to the awkward wind direction which meant we were flying from the Eastern facing slope in some very bumpy lift.  It was also pretty cold.  However, today both the lift and weather conditions were so much better, even the Sun made a brief appearance between light spits of rain.  I managed a little warm up with my P6 before the real fun started, it was blowing 15mph just slightly off the empty slope so I had an enjoyable time until I made an unplanned landing which dislodged the fin (OK I snapped it clean off and this wasn't to be the first fin of the day to break away).  Not to worry Oscar and Sam had arrived with a Cobra each and Pat also came along with his Easy Glider which he kept well out of harms way.  I brought my 60" Wildthing out for a few rounds with the youngsters.  Oscar planted a flag on the lip and a GoPro was perched in close proximity to record the proceedings:  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9dbnbc38jmr23nd/Qa-gnG-xt7  
The next hour was filled with some very near misses, not so near and the occasional full on impact.  A buddy lesson for Geoff. Some air time for the Traceur and a long walk for Patrick. This was all swilled down with good banter, brevardo and laughter. Afterwards Sam took the Quad for a slope spin.




Great Gower Gorse
It's not often I will sing the praises for Gower gorse bushes but yesterday was an exception. You know the saying "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence"  Well in this case the wind was a lot stronger on the other side of the bush.





FATBOX!
Another OC relic from a bygone era.  How many more cobwebs are going to be disturbed. I've heard a rumour that a 'new' glider may be purchased soon but only if it's value is in librae solidi  and  denarii (LSD) for short.   More commonly referred to  as, Pounds, Shillings and Pence.  Now we can  forget decimal and use the most common form of currency, PAY- PAL 






New Years flying
Our first sortie proved interesting given the pretty poor conditions,  keeping close to the lip with low, low passes was great fun. later in the week the visibility improved but the wind dropped.

Rob joined us and  was duly inaugurated by the ritual FPV goggle wearing experience, he passed this challenging ordeal without so much as a slight stumble, but his dress sense, or lack of was a cause for concern



Time flies by
Same plane flown by the same pilot.  Perhaps both are now showing the signs of their age.




Friday 28th Dec

concentration

The forecasted light rain held off nearly all day so we took to the slope.  The wind was pretty strong and strengthened from 35-43mph on the lip.  Oscar, Sam, Chris and myself wrapped up after a brief chat outside Hunts Farm and made our way over to the Launching area, the wind was smack on the slope.


From here it could be easier to real off the list of plane fatalities rather than describing the fairly difficult conditions.  Perhaps difficult is the wrong word, the main problem was achieving penetration.  Chris's Wildthing just flatly refused, then one of Oscar's relics just folded it's wing's in defiance.  My Wildthing did take off and the cobwebs were certainly blown off.  Rolls, loops and a couple of half-pipes but just keeping infront of the slope was quite tricky and any mistake was punished with the walk of shame.  Both Oscar's powered assisted wing and Vintage balsa fruitcake made some headway and indeed did some proper soaring!  Watching an old glider fit for e-bay helped me pluck up the courage to maiden my speedo MKIII.  However, the flight only lasted a few seconds, she took off on a downward trajectory and never picked up her nose enough to get out, away from the slope.  The Port wing started to flip over and no amount of stick correction could prevent the inevitable twisting crash which proved too much for the fuse to take.  Only the fuse was damaged with a nasty split seam and stress fracture behind the wing.


Speedo seconds away from the deck


 Oscar's fruitcake


My Wildthing with a lead belly

Saturday November 17th
The first crash meet of the Gower Gliders took off last Saturday only a field or two away from Oscar's warm kitchen.  Rather than taking the cars to a suitable slope due to the NW  wind direction we decided to do a little power assist gliding just to blow off the cobwebs.


Tony took out, unwrapped and put together his Radian which was perfect for the given conditions.  It just took a bit of sorting out due to a missing clevis and stalled rudder servo.  However, in the air and trimmed it relished the light conditions.


The Fournier was my choice of weapon!  She flew fine but I did have one pretty hard landing.  I brought her round on finals at low level but rather than completing the turn back into the wind for a gentle slow landing the Fournier dictated that Oscar's shoulder was a more suitable LZ, Oooooouch!


Beer goggles


At times it did feel as I had had a few pints but in reality I was watching exactly what a digital video camera was filming from Oscar's Multiplex Easy Glider.  This is called First person View or FPV for short.  It offers a pilots perspective and was quite remarkable being similar to a 3D movie, the picture quality was really good and looking over Mumbles and Langland was astonishing when you think we were using a small polystyrene plane powered with a small electric motor.  It takes some practise but pilots can fly solely using this technique rather than the more usual (perhaps safer) view from the ground.