From the committee

There is a lot happening at the moment, some good some not.

Tugs.

MM has had a problem with corrosion and will not be flying until March next year. The problem is that the manufacturer requires the aeroplane back to the factory for repair in the jig and took a long time to decide that we would not be allowed to do the repair here. The committee have decided to bring forward MM’s 10 year rebuild and allow Robin to refurbish it completely at a cost of Euros 47,000 plus vat. We will use money from the “VAT fund” to fund the overhaul. Lasham refurbished one of their tugs last year and are so pleased they are doing a second one this year. MM will be sent to France on a low loader at the end of August and return in Feb
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GH is overdue a 10 year rebuild and would have gone to Robin for refurbishment this winter if MM had not had a greater need, we are looking at sending it away next year, finance permitting.

The Pawnees are causing a huge number of noise complaints! Booker Gliding Club have gone from being hardly noticed by the locals to generating a significant proportion of the noise complaints. I went to the last meeting of the JCC which David Draper kindly attends for us, and has done for many years, thanks David, and was stunned by the sheer number of complaints. Tony Hughes is looking into noise reduction on the pawnees (the main culprit of noise complaints) and has written to Aboyne for information about their noise reduction kit. I was at Aboyne last week and their Pawnee was very quiet compared to ours. In the meantime please redouble your efforts to reduce our noise problem when you are flying the Pawnee.

Thanks to Dave Watt for all his efforts as Chief Tug pilot. Dave has put in a huge amount of work for us this year and his efforts have helped us greatly in exceeding last years number of launches.

Lastly, I have been looking into the perceived problem of tug pilot shortage. We do appear to have lots of tug pilots, but with no rota and the absence of a clear list of who is available, we have ended up without enough tug pilots to cover the weekends and this has lead to us having staff flying tugs instead of instructing and this in turn has limited our ability to service the trial lesson flying with obvious financial implications. Hilarie Luxton is going to organise a “ stand by list” so the office staff know who to call if we need a tug pilot at short notice. I will look at starting a Tug pilot rota for weekends, so if you would like to commit to towing at the weekend leave a message for me in the office. In the mean time please come and fly the tugs at weekends…. we need you

Trailer park and perimeter track

Thanks to Guy Sutherland and Daniel Cooper for spending 3 days each driving dumper trucks and rollers to make the road smooth enough for us to use again. It was a lot of hard work and my car will notice the difference! Tim Orchard has reminded us that we must use the track when driving to and from the 06 launch point and not take a short cut by driving across the 35 threshold area. Basically we may only drive on the airfield if we are towing, or about to tow a glider. The power runway 35 has been re-seeded and will have to be protected as much as possible for the next 6 to 9 months. We spent over £1000 repairing the track and Daniel has asked me to ask members to please drive in the middle of it to stop the edges from crumbling, also please drive at less than the airfield speed limit of 15 mph.

Final glides and finishes

We have become a little, and I stress “a little”, over exuberant in our finishes and have been asked to calm things down a bit. Specifically, final glides from the west when we are on 24 are causing some limited concern, please give the aeroplanes in the climb out lane a little bit more space by choosing a track a bit closer to the river. Their look out is not as good as ours and they are not as comfortable with the situation as we are!

CFI and Manager
Sadly G is leaving us, but might return in a different role next year. We are currently advertising for either a CFI/manager or a CFI and a part time manager. G will work for us until mid October and we will have an amateur CFI for a short period to allow us time to select the best candidate available given their need to work notice etc. I hope the new CFI will start early January, or earlier if possible. G will concentrate on instructor training from the beginning of September until mid October, so please phone the office and make your booking to fly with him to gain or renew your rating before he leaves. G is one of the best instructor coaches that I have flown with so please make the effort to fly with him.

Gliders
ECZ has arrived back this week (thanks Pete) and is equipped with artificial horizons in the front and rear cockpits so we can now start teaching cloud flying. ECZ, the Duo, both Discuses and 987 will have Garmin 2 with airspace maps fitted so we can claim 300 and 500 badge flights again. I hope we will use the Duo and ECZ to teach pilots how to use the new toys safely. We now have 3 K13s, 3 K21s and the Duo available. Last month we spotted a refurbished K18 for sale at £6500 and decided to buy it. It should be ready for next year.

15 metre Nationals

We have 28 entries and are looking forward to a good comp, if you have some spare time and would like to help contact G or the office. If you are thinking of competing please sign up soon as we need to know how big a marquee we need and how many tugs to hire in. We need to bid and plan for competitions next year, and as we won’t have G to do it all for us, we will need a volunteer team to run any future comps. If you think we should run a competition, or even 2 next year, or would be prepared to help or run one, please contact me in the next 6 weeks.

Business brief
We are ahead of the number of launches that we did this time last year, even with a Gulf war, a bad winter and SARS to contend with, but very slightly below our target of 9000. As I said earlier the thing that is limiting our business most at the moment is the lack of tug pilots turning up on spec, especially early at weekends, so any help there would be appreciated. Clearly we have incurred a loss by not having MM available this year (insurance, depreciation, hire of tug for Nationals etc) and then having to send it to France by low loader (£2100) and then repair costs, but the management accounts for this quarter are quite encouraging and our overall profit will depend on doing as much flying as we can in the next two months.

Barbeque
We now have a gas barbeque, which lives in the K13 trailer, it is there for us all to use so don’t be shy, drag it out whenever you want. I was surprised how many people joined in for the last 2 impromptu events.

Instructors!!

A quick reminder: AEIs should be towed to 2000’, with the OPTION of going to a maximum of 2500’ when it looks like the flight is going to be shorter than normal. Please endeavour to use your skills as soaring pilots to lengthen the flight such that the requirement to tow higher that 2000’ is kept to a minimum. Also half-day courses are sold as exactly that – half a days gliding over a morning or an afternoon – some customers are going away after less than 2 hours with the club. Obviously it is your decision on the day as to how to organise your instructing, but please try to keep an idea of what we are actually selling in the back of your mind!!

Happy landings.