FOOTLAUNCHjuly

If the cap fits…

 

Looks like we had summer last April.

Next club meeting; on Wed 11th July somewhere on the Malvern hills - probably. Bring own beer and walking boots. Why not bring along the other half for an evening of sprained ankles and dog s**t removal… What fun! Do come along! On the other hand it may be a DVD at the Pheasant in Welland  - Probably a film about walking on the Malverns.

 

Doreen has been inundated this month. She is over the worst though and is making a speedy recovery. Thanks once again to Simon for his antipodean missive. A lack of flying seems to have made him a bit tetchy this month.  All the better for us I say!

Safe flying, Richard

SAFETY MATTERS and other stuff

(The following comes under the heading other stuff but it is from the safety officer – vote him out, he’s rubbish!)

 

Did you ever wonder?

How is it that we put man on the moon before put wheels on luggage?

Why is it that people say they "slept like a baby" when babies wake up

every two hours?

Why are you IN a movie, but you're ON TV?

Why do people pay to go up tall buildings and then put money in binoculars to

look at things on the ground?

How come we choose from just two people for Prime Mimister and fifty for Miss

UK?

Why do doctors leave the room while you change? They're going to see you

naked anyway.

Do illiterate people get the full effect of Alphabet soup?

If a deaf person has to go to court, is it still called a hearing?

What disease did cured ham actually have?

Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are

always clear?

Why do they call them "Free Gifts"? Aren't all gifts free?

Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?

Where do forestry workers go to "Get away from it all"?

Whatever happened to Preparation A to G?

If a cow laughed hard, would milk come out of her nose?

 

Dear Doreen,

Do you have a problem? I think you do! C’mon, you know you want to. Ask me anything – yes anything! 

 

 

Dear Doreen,

How come?

Yours, A very perplexed Simon Papermill

 

 

Dear Simon

It’s one of life’s great mysteries Simon. As is trying to fathom what the heck my correspondents are on about. Try to be a little less comprehensive if you write again.

I hope this helps, Doreen

 

 

Dear Doreen,

Here’s a bit of a conundrum Doreen. It’s to do with drag Doreen. Yes, drag. I’ve heard it said that in order to fly efficiently we should do our best to minimise drag as this will degrade our performance in the air and ultimately (as far as I’m concerned) the amount of fun we can achieve for a given flight on a given day. Well, I’d be the first to admit that I want the most fun I can wring out of a day’s flying and so feel that I should try to minimise drag in order to go home at the end of the day with the maximum feeling of satisfaction and a weary but smiling reflection of the day’s events. To this end I have decided to ditch the fishnet stockings and corset but do you think false eye lashes and a bit of lippy would have that much of a detrimental effect? For me any extra performance-enabled fun achieved by totally eliminating drag would be negated by the lack of enjoyment I would experience by not wearing any form of drag at all. Hey Doreen?

Yours, Rock Housebrick

 

Dear Rock

If you could wear some goggles and make sure the lipstick is glossy I feel that you would have reached a pretty good compromise.

I hope this helps, Doreen.

 

 

Dear Doreen,

Why oh why oh why does the BBC offer us so many repeats when I could be out flying or cutting the grass?

HHM! Dirk Spindle

 

 

Dear Dirk

This is another one of life’s great questions and I can only point you towards the words of that great scholar, Shirley Bassey (no, not that one, the other one) who said, “Who would have thought a little girl from Tiger Bay would one day become a Dame?”

I hope this helps, Doreen.

 

 
Dear Doreen,
Can a helicopter be slope soared? I fancy having a go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
Yours, Chief Constable Sir Edward Nitromors 
 
Dear Sir Edward,
Do you mean a helicopter being used as an artificial slope in order that a small glider could soar any updraught caused by its intercession with the air currents? Or do you mean could a helicopter be sustained in the air solely by utilising the upcurrents caused by the interaction of a slope and the prevailing wind? In either case the answer is no.
I hope this helps, Doreen.

Dear Doreen,

Whilst sitting waiting to fly the other day, Brian and I had an interesting discussion about the geology of the Malverns. He maintains that a cactolith is a quasihorizontal chonolith composed of anastomosing ductoliths whose distal ends curl like a harpolith, whilst I say they are thin like a shenolith or bulge discordantly like an akmolith or ethmolith. By the time he’d finished shouting at me it was too dark to fly. What do you think?

Tim

Dear Tim

I think you’ll find it is second-grade hardcore with a thin topping of tarmac. Some gypsies did it in 1934. Typically, it has all turned to bumps and weeds.

I hope this helps, Doreen.

Dear Doreen,

President Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theatre whilst Kennedy was shot in a Ford Lincoln. Gerald Ford was shot at but they missed. Lincoln’s secretary was called Kennedy and Kennedy’s secretary was called Lincoln! Both wives dreamt of assassinations before hand, both Presidents were succeeded by a Johnson. The week before, President Lincoln was in Munroe, Maryland whilst Kennedy was in Marilyn Munroe. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t exist, he was made up by the government to keep us from killing all the jews who Hitler thought were Mexicans that are actually Arabs. I don’t want to know the truth, nor do I care about the truth. Everyone else that bothers about it are idiots – that’s why I don’t like talking to people because of my higher intelligence. If you disagree you are an imbecile and I will stop at nothing to prove it, even if it means lying and distortion of the truth. Actually I disagree with this, which brings me to my next point mobile phones were invented by the devil.

M’ahmate Jezfahted

Dear M’ahmate

How long have you had this trouble with your neighbours?

I hope this helps, Doreen.

 






 
News – mostly mad

 

Woman Goes Hang Gliding for 90th Birthday

 

A birthday marks a milestone for many people.
One Lakeview, Georgia woman made sure this birthday was one she and her family would remember for a long time.
It's a big day for Elaine Thomas. This spunky great-grandmother will celebrate her nine decades with cake and candles later...but first, she's got something a little more adventurous in mind.

Elaine Thomas: "I'm 90 years old today."

"I'm going to hang-glide if it will clear up a little. I'm ready to go."

Sandra Martin, Fat granddaughter:
 "She's my hero, not many 90 year-olds can even walk and do the things that she does and she stays real active."

 "Elaine is no stranger to the skies, she took her first ride for her 88th birthday.  And she says if she lives to see 100, she'll do it all over again."

"She's always been adventurous: she's travelled in every state, she's always been interested in new and creative things.  She doesn't just do the generic."

Video here

Canberra Calling

The fantastic winter flying weather that I was telling you about last month seems to have completely vanished as soon as the article went to press. Over the last few weekends, we've had “blown out”, “blown out and then some” and last week we managed fantastic blue skies, sunny, but absolutely no wind. A few students with the local paragliding school did some sled runs straight to the bomb out landing, but the local hills are not big enough to give much hope for the rest of us to catch a winter thermal. As a result of not having my feet off the ground for three weeks I'm running short of flying inspiration for this month's missive, so I'll resort to one of my pet gripes to keep you entertained.

One of the first things the keen follower of news and current affairs notices on arrival in this fine country is the total obsession that the media and to a slightly lesser extent, the general population, has with sport. In particular sport involving chasing assorted spheroid objects around a designated playing area, and especially sport where an Aussie national is either going to give a foreign team a good hiding, or is playing for a foreign team and showing the locals how to play the game properly.

At this point, I should probably do another of my soon to be famous “Canberra Calling” confessions and declare that even when residing in the UK, I have little interest in the sport that gets shown on the telly, I'd rather be doing the sport that I enjoy (generally involving pitting my wits against those of mother nature) rather than watching a team of overpaid prima-donnas doing their thing chasing a ball around a field. As a result of this I guess that I am probably in a minority and I am opening myself to a flood of hate mail or accusations of being somewhat “limp wristed” (Am I allowed to say that sort of thing in these politically correct days?)

Back in Oz, the media are working themselves up into an orgasmic frenzy at the moment because there are lots of competitions going on right now.

·         In Wimbledon, Lleyton Hewitt is taking on the world and of course is going to win. Occasionally it gets mentioned that there is a Swiss bloke who happens to be playing quite well at the moment.

·         Having failed to shine at the world cup, the Aussie soccer team has stopped playing with the big boys and is taking on teams that it is more likely to beat in the Asian cup which starts imminently.

·         The rugby union team is working up for the World Cup in France soon and beat the New Zealanders last night

·         In rugby league, the forthcoming second game in a series of three between New South Wales and Queensland has been occupying a large amount of airtime, generally with discussions about which players are not going to be available because of injury or because they have broken the games rules and been banned from playing for a period.

·         The organised thuggery known as Aussie Rules football is about half way through it's season and it is starting to become obvious (to those who care) which teams are going to be in the running for the league championship this year.

The media are extremely nationalistic when it comes to sports reporting, always giving coverage to the Aussies who are participating and only mentioning in passing that there's someone else with a reasonable chance of winning the competition. I will always recall with extreme amusement the occasion when the lead item on the sports news was the fact that the Australian contestant came 37th in their particular skiing event in the Winter Olympics. The news item completely failed to mention who had actually won the event.

This enthusiasm for hero worship of yobs chasing balls around fields (OK I admit to gross generalisation here) does have a couple of interesting side effects for the uninterested bystander participating in water cooler discussions in the office. The locals get extremely frustrated when they try to wind me up because the English xxx team have lost again. Seeing their reaction when I shrug my shoulders and say something like “so what's new” is almost as much fun as the ease with which they can be wound up on the rare occasions when a Brit team wins against the Aussies. Some would say that I'm not playing fair here, but I reckon it's my part of my patriotic duty as one of Her Majesty's overseas representatives.

Simon Dillworth

 

I put this in again to fill in space… sorry, in case people missed it.

Low Air Time Malvern Members At Kettle Sings

 

At the committee it was raised how we often do not get to see new low airtime members. And consequently they do not get involved with the Club. A problem that arises because of the 15 hr minimum limit that applies to Kettle Sings. So just when they could do with some help, we leave them to their own devices at not a particularly easy site, Castle Morton.

 

So we have decided that on selected days, under certain conditions, they can fly from KS. Apart from a couple of reasons; spine back and houses underneath, a much better site. It has a much better take off, a reasonable top to bottom, and huge bottom landing.

 

How will the days be selected? Well this will pretty much be up to you. If you want to fly, even mid week, give me a call.

 

01684 572723

 

But I will also flag up days that I think will be good on the mail list.

 

If you need any more information, or are not sure about something, give me a call.

 

Conditions:

 

1    A Malvern club coach must be on site.

2   You must be a full member.

3   You should have some airtime achieved recently, say 5 or 6 hrs

4   You should have a working 2 meter radio.

5    A reasonably modern glider, good glide angle, with speed system.

6    And on the day you must report to the coach before flying.

 

See you there, Bryan.

Oiyitsmytubesobuggeroff

 (Editor’s selections from Youtube – Send in your own favourites)

An old Vet having fun plus Steven Stills bonus track!

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o40_MzuKIGA

This is scary and also has a very interesting story of events driven by human frailty leading up to the final SNAFA.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YQa4PpIkOZU

This is pretty easy to watch but I dare you to watch some of the other parachute related videos without getting palpitations or nausea. 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=tdYW2RkSfq8






 
Nothing to do with flying (But SD gets away with it). They were brilliant while they lasted and anyhow I’m having a self-indulgent midlife crisis. Good old Shakey!
 
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=N82zbKpWRtw






 
Still waiting for some black and white shots of Western Supermare. In the meantime here’s Kobus’s Annecy paragliding photo (complete with the prerequisite boots in shot).
Nice to see someone has a sense of humour.






Go4IT

WIN WIN WIN!
 


READ THIS AND DON’T                                                                  anything of monetary value

Entries to Tim Crow to be in within one month of the flight.

GO4IT Rules

 

1.    UK flights only.
2.    No infringement of airspace, club or local site rules.
3.    Must have Pilot rating or be under instruction from one on the day.

4.    Flights between 01Dec to 30Nov.
5.    Co-ordinates for T/O and landing required plus distance from point to point in Km as a

       check. Flights will be scored to nearest 100m.
6.    Defined flights score extra, see BHPA rules below.
7.    Stone's throw award for smallest flight submitted (or known about) provided
       distance 5km or greater.

 

Flight Types and Scoring (see http://www.pgcomps.org.uk/ for complete rules)

 

Standard Flights:

 

Loop Flights:

 

Declared Flights:

 

Rules at http://www.pgcomps.org.uk/