The Malvern Hang Gliding Club       April 2003                                   http://malvern-hang.org.uk

 

                                                                                                           

April Meeting - Wednesday 9th

 

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

 

The AGM will be held at the Brewers Arms, West Malvern (address below) next
Wednesday at 8.00pm  West side of the Malverns on the B4232, post code
WR14 4BQ



All members are welcome and encouraged to attend

Each committee member will be required to present their annual report (so
please prepare one!)

An agenda will be provided on the night, but should any member wish to raise
any new items please email me no later than Monday 7th April

We look forward to seeing everybody there.

Peter Wood, Chairman MHGC


 








 

 

 


Easter Fly-in, Scotland Aerotow Field

Situated 25 miles north of Glasgow in the Stirling Valley

18th - 21st April get as much flying as possible.

The emphasis will be on getting people into the air, with an early start for the competition if the weather is good enough, and then signing off aerotow endorsements and taking dual flights.

1 XL and 2 Quantum tugs.

Static winching organised by Selby Potts.

A race round a course, starting and ending at the airfield, for hang-gliders, rigids, and hopefully sailplanes and paragliders

Free flying, dual flying, demo gliders, hopefully paraglider winching, FLPA, microlighting.......

The usual bar-b-q, camping on the field, B&B’s near the airfield.

Derek if you start walking now you’ll be there right on time. Mark and I will take your glider up. Ken you could fly up in Romeo Oscar.

Contact Ken McAlpine 0141 5754828 ken-mcalpine@beeb.net

 

 

Flying Reports

Sunday 31st March: Dave Jackson-Hobbs wrote:

‘I ended up at Heol Senni in the Brecons. Fabulous day ! Had at least 4 hours in the air. At midday I encountered the strongest flying conditions I`ve ever experienced in the UK. 13 up everywhere. Made base so many times I lost count, Would have gone XC but for commitments on the ground. At around 6pm the restitution lift was amazing, I flew several miles out from the hill without losing more than a few feet. What an incredible day ! Hope everyone else had as good a day. (one for the records)’

 

 Mike Hoppet (from the Mynd Club) reported last week:

‘Had eventful day yesterday...
We were flying in Wales at a site called Sarn, and two of us landed out in the valley.
We heard a noise like thunder and looked across to the ridge next to us.
This big 10 ton logging tractor was rolling end over end down a 45degree
slope for 300 feet .I saw the driver being thrown out..It looked very bad.We were four fields
away so we ran..Miles and Andy Breeze in front..me last..Hey I was on the Mobile!
We got there and he was alive but had broken bones at least. He was conscious and in
pain(understatement).We had all some first aid experience and the Ambulance guy gave us instruction over the
mobile.Miles and Andy Kept him talking and kept him immobile checking for serious bleeding.....
I ran back to the Hangglider to open it out for the Helicopter to see.The
ambulance was there in 10 mins the Air ambulance took 20min.
After he was flown out we went back up the hill for an hours evening flying
in the wave that had set up giving climbs to 1800ft above the hill.
Who said Hang-gliding was dangerous!’

 

Sunday 6th April

Great flying for Stiffies on Sunday, once we got the Floppies out of the way!!!!!. Brian Pilcher and Bryan Hindle (birthday on AGM day wednesday 9th April!!!, Apparantly Malvern has run out of candles for his cake!!!!!!!) plus other flops flew before the stiffies took over. Derek showed us how to thermal up from nothing and disappear (he eventually landed on the common next to Welland to be retrieved by Mark B-M). Frank, Alan, Bendy,John, Jeremy(Mercian), all had good flights on a day with no Sun. If the Sun had come out, the day would have been an XC epic!!!!!

John (Bevan)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brian Gaylor

 

The last Newsletter I edit is also the saddest I have ever written. Sam just rang to say that Brian died on Saturday morning as a result of the injuries he bore in a hang gliding accident near the South Coast on Friday. I still can’t believe he’s dead, I rang him on Monday to ask what kind of grout to use in the bathroom he had designed for our flat above the shop. Should I use grout for floors and walls or water-resistant grout? He replied in his typically breezy way ‘Hmm yes, I should, why not’, implying as usual that I should get on with it and stop talking about it. I said, ‘You’re only saying that cos it’s not your shower’, ‘Well yes’ he replied laughing. I had persuaded him in February to come up from London and help, on the strength that it was Easterly and he could fly the Malverns as well. He had a good flight, only landing because Ian Bradley was waiting for him in the Official Field. We briefly made the Committee Meeting the next night, from which some of you may remember him.

 

Brian was a superb laugh. He was in a successful band in the punk era, and then helped set up a recording studio on a farm outside London, that subsequently became well-known. I don’t think he had any formal qualifications, but managed then designed other studios in London. Fresh out of hating Oxford Sam Moody worked for him in one of these. They had it so well-taped that one of them used to be there in the morning while the other would go out and see the sites or whatever, returning in the afternoon for the other to go off. Sam and I  and Ken started hang gliding in the early nineties in Scotland, but it took a while for Brian to catch us up, looking after his daughter Daisy and adoptive daughter Clemmy. Brian used to come up to Scotland to watch us fly, and eventually got himself trained with Tony Webb. He saw it as a way to get on with his plan to design and build his own aeroplane (see www.gaylordesign.co.uk ), but was competitive nevertheless. He organised a trip to Rio de Janeiro and Governador Valadares in 2000, joking as he related how he and Ken were mugged on Copacabana beach. To this day, it’s the most exhilarating exhausting trip I’ve ever been on. We were planning to go up to the Scottish aerotow fly-in at Easter.

 

He was extremely charming and good-looking, without any malice. Being one of the few, Brian’s leaving us behind is hard to bear, impossible to make sense of. We must celebrate his life with our own flying, carefully. We must be happy that he died with the sun shining expressing himself doing something he loved.

 

 


Newsletter Editor’s Job up for grabs

After about 5 or so years of editing the newsletter, it’s about time someone else had a go. I am resigning at the AGM in April.

Gordon Allison