News

Now's your chance to help SUGC continue being one the the best universty gliding clubs in the UK.

It'll be held in B6 room 1129 (L/R F) which is in the Nuffield Theatre.

Now the exams are over, we should all have a little free time at the weekends to do something fun.  How about getting back to the airfield to continue learning to fly or for those that already can, remove the rust that has built up over the winter months!  The soaring season is just weeks away (yes it can be thermic in march) so now is the time to get ready.  Check the lists and get your name down for a flying day.

Our bugdet has come through for this semester, which means we can look at organising some club trips.  We had a committee meeting this week, and we discussed the possibility of a trip to PNGC (a club in portsmouth that is right on the coast) as well as a return to Shalbourne for ridge soaring.

As stuff starts to happen again I will keep you updated and hopefully the fun will follow.  Right now the best thing you can do is get back to the airfield!

Im the mean time I'll leave you with this :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQw5AjrBjXE

We have finally bought a covered K8 trailer for Denzil to call our own, thanks to a find during our recent trip to Shalbourne Soaring Society. Marvel at its industrial beauty below:

Though it's structurally OK, and has new tyres and light board, we'd like it to be as shiny as Denzil. Over the summer the plan's therefore to sand down the rusty areas, protect and repaint. We also need to patch some areas of the cover. Should be fairly pleasant summer work though...

Also planned are a few practice runs of putting Denzil in and out of the trailer. There are a few weird bits of wood with metal prongs that we need to figure out what they do (hopefully good things). Would be nice to put together a cheat-sheet showing how the thing actually works too; will be handy when you're at a field land-out and it's starting to get dark..

Plus - if anyone needs a place to sleep at Lasham, here's your accommodation! ;)

SUGC is planning a club expedition to Shalbourne Soaring Society over Easter just before we come back for the summer term. We'll hopefully be taking over the club for a couple of days and getting as much flying done as possible.

We'll be going on the 15th/16th April and it's a great opportunity to get a lot of flying done either if you're just starting out or to make some significant progress.

More details on the facebook event or send me a message (ab22g08)...

Shalbourne over Christmas:

Denzil has some shiny new elevators and the annual maintenance has been completed, despite being towed around on a fairly haphazard trailer and so Denzil is readly to fly again (almost). Still needs to be rigged but there's a few of us going up tomorrow to get that done.

Well, firstly, I think its fair to say a big thank you to all the committee that did such a good job last year but are now leaving us.  The committee elected for the forthcoming year is as follows:

Captain: Calum Leslie

Vice Captain: Alex Beharrell

Treasurer & Social Sec: Vidullan Surendran

Equipment Officer: Matt Bennett

Webmaster and Secretary: Russell Newman

Now the weather is looking up, I expect to see lots of fresh faces coming to Lasham in the coming months!  See you soon!

Hi all, 

The time of year for the AGM is fast approaching, the main (probably only) reason for having an AGM is to vote in next years committee.  This gives time for the outgoing committee members to help the new committee members learn the ropes. 

The meeting will be held on Wednesday the 10th of March at 6pm in the Clubs and Societies Room, above the Stag's Head.  All club members are encouraged to attend so that you get your say on how the club is run and who runs it.  Even if you don't want to be part of the committee the AGM is a good time to meet the old and new committee members. 

There are seven (or possibly eight) committee positions available, hopefully there will be seven people willing to fill those positions.  Any member may put themselves forward for any position, so long as they have the vital attribute of being dedicated to gliding.  Another position (or an extension of the resposibilities of an existing position) may be added, that of PR officer.  

Captain:    The captain leads the club, he/she will be expected to liaise with with the AU, Lasham and SUGC members.  The captain also needs to be able to manage the rest of the committee.  Experience of the way that SUGC and Lasham operate is essential. 

Vice-Captain:    The vice-captain aids the captain and performs the role of the captain if the captain is unavailable. 

Treasurer:    The treasurer handles the finances, writing cheques, setting fees for the coming year and chasing members who haven't paid!  No previous financial experience is required, but trustworthiness definitely is! 

Equipment Officer:    The equipment officer looks after the equipment that the club owns, this is primarily the glider, it's parachute and the data logger.  If any maintenance or paperwork is needed then the equipment officer will be called upon to organise it.  No previous experience of aircraft maintenance is required. 

Webmaster: The webmaster runs the website, the information on the website needs to be kept up to date and extra functionality is often required to be added.  Experience with creating and maintaining websites is necessary. 

Social Secretary: An important aspect of any successful university club is socials.  The social secretary organises these events, creativity and organisational skills are required here! 

Secretary: The secretary takes the minutes at meetings, an important job since meetings tend to be a rather disorganised  affair. 

PR Officer (provisional): This potential new role will involve advertising the club, especially at the Bunfight.  A flair for design and organisation is required.  

Anyone can put themselves forward for a position, you don't even have to be a member of SUGC yet.  A position on the committee requires a level of commitment, but can be very rewarding.  And it looks great on your CV! 

See you all at the meeting, 

Mark Pearce

SUGC Captain

The AU has granted us with some money to partially fund our new Parachute.

The club will now have its own BRAND NEW and COMFORTABLE parachute, therefore not needing to borrow Lasham's every time! 

We ask our members to take great care of it, as it isn't a cheap peace of equipment and it is a VITAL safety equipment. The very unlikely day you will need it, you will be thankful that it works at 100%!!

We hope that this new acquisition will encourage new and current members to come and fly more often. HAPPY FLYING EVERYONE

Em =]

Suprisingly, Febuary has given us two successive soarable weekend days! The weather was atrocious for almost all of the first semester, and we flew a disappointing number of times. In turn we had fewer new members join than expected. Nevertheless, good weather on the past two saturdays have seen a promising bunch of fresh pilots emerge! As we move towards the summer, hopefully we will see some new faces start to fly more regularly. It was also nice to see some alternative drivers lending a hand today. (OK Emeric was 25 mins late, but still, its better than nothing...)

After a long winter of doom and gloom for our very own k8, DNZ returned to the sky today, piloted by Mark, Emeric and myself. It has a new instrument panel (including a high performance yaw string installed by myself), and also underwent some crucial repairs. I think in total we flew it for about 2 hours today, and I'm sure as the weather improves it will be spending a lot of time in the air. To fly DNZ you must be solo with 5+ launches, and seek the necessary briefing from an instructor. This year it is now required to pay a one off £20 fee to fly the glider, a bargain considering its free soaring!

The recent condor sessions run by Mark in the flight sim lab have been a hit with potential club members. Many people have been turning up to find out what gliding is, have a go at it, and discover how fun it is to cause mid-air collisions and perform stupid aerobatics.

So all in all, an excellent start to the new semester! Hell, i might even organise a social soon!

As promised we will be having an introductory meeting on Thursday the 9th starting at 6pm. The meeting will be held in building 32 (the new one opposite the nursing building) room 3077. 

Hopefully all those who signed up at the bunfight will have already received an e-mail about the meeting, if you haven't clicked on the reply link please do so! Everyone is welcome to the meeting, there will be a short talk about gliding and then time for questions.

Welcome to all the freshers of 2008, and welcome back to those students returning to Southampton. With the summer pretty much over, we have many months of winter flying to look forward too... Hopefully everyone will be motivated to get up to Lasham and continue thier training.

If you are considering joining, this year we will be bringing a glider to the bunfight on Wed 1st Oct. We are going to be on the grass outside the Garden Court building, just before you come into the main student concorse. If you have any questions, want to see what a glider actually looks like in real life, or just want to meet the current members, then come over and have a look.

If you are already a member, come over anyway and lend a hand. The glider is arriving at about 8am and will need to be rigged.

I expect to see you all there, and hopefully we will get a nice bunch of new members!

9 Universities came to compete at Lasham for the inter university gliding competition. Because uni gliding is as much about learning to fly as it is hardcore cross country racing, the scoring system used over the week allowed pilots to submit points for progression as well as XC results.

The comp lasted 9 days, during which we had 2 first solos, many many glider conversions, some successfull XC attempts, some not (unlucky Emeric), some crazy beat ups, and lots of cans of beer emptied.

Mid week, Surrey and Southampton were battling for first place, but come saturday (the last scored day), Steve Morgan flew his first solo, to give Leeds Uni enough points to clinch the title. Congratualtions guys.

I'd like to give a special mention to Sheffield Uni, who were represented by just one member, yet finished in a respectable 6th position!

The hosts for next year are yet to be chosen, but if this week is anything to go by, we should already be looking forward to it.

Photos and videos are on the facebook group. http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24184381650

Have a good holiday :)

Despite poor weather at the start of this years Nationals, Matt Plumridge, an SUGC member, has taken first place as the National Aerobatic Champion Sports Class at Saltby. Joining him was our own Emeric Massaut, narrowly missing first in the beginners class.

Further information, including results, is available from The British Aerobatic Association.

 From the 12th to the 15th of June is the Glider Aerobatics National competition. Closing entry date is Monday the 9th, so if you want to get on it, better do it quick. It's open to all levels, and the beginners' comp is free of entry. 

Already 4 young people from Lasham will be going, including 2 from SUGC!! So if we want to be even more to show our standing, just ask for details by email.  Anyone is very welcome to come along and watch as well. For details where etc. please contact us saying you are interested. It's going to be an exciting event.

Just a quick update from the airfield, we had two SUGC pilots go solo today, Calum Leslie and Aria Noroozpour. Congratulations to them both, I'm sure they'll be sampling the delights of Lasham's single seater fleet and our own Denzil soon.

Colin Watts is looking for helpers for the Lasham Regionals between the 16th and 24th of August this year and would welcome any uni students who would be interested in helping run the competition.

At the same time as the regionals there is a vintage comp running and they would very much like us to enter denzil into this comp...... For those that are worried about the idea of a comp then this is a very informal affair consisting mainly of a week of downwind dashes so its ideal for a pilot who has never flown a comp before. Even better they are happy for us to enter a team with different pilots flying on different days during the week. So if anyone is interested lets see if we can get the old girl into the comp would be a great week out for the club if we all took a day each.....

Furthermore Bob Bickers has approached me to see if anyone would be interested in helping out at the nationals this year I believe they are running from the 2nd to the 10th of August for anyone not flying in the juniors this could be a great opportunity to see how competition works at the highest levels.

- Matt

A new committee was elected at the AGM today. Details of who's who are over on the Who page (oddly enough).

Our new Captain is Mark Pearce, formerly the Treasurer. Emeric remains incumbent as Vice Captain, although Russell is the new Equipment Officer. New additions to the comimttee are Tom Davies, taking over as Secretary, Calum Leslie, our Social Sec, and Lawrence Thurotte-Weech, who is in charge of finances. Russell remains the Webmaster.

Former committee members who are graduating are kindly sticking around to give the new committee a helping hand.

This year, we've competed at the Inter-Uni's, at UWE, performed some fairly major maintenance upon DNZ and now have a logger. Looking to the future, we aim to raise more of our solo members to instructor level, so that other members may progress faster. DNZ is, as ever, available for free flight to our solo pilots.

Feel free to drop in on a Tuesday meeting to meet the new committee!

Hope everyone is having a good Easter break so far. After Easter we are going to have a social over the weekend of the 28th to 29th April at Lasham. The idea is to make a weekend of it. Turn up on Saturday morning and fly during the day, then we are going to have an evening out in Lasham village or Alton then stay at Lasham for the night before a second day's flying on Sunday. In the case of a non-flyable weekend then the social will take the form of a round of pub golf in Southampton.

Matt

Last social before easter break is on Thursday 15th March. Meet at the Stag's head 2000 hrs for some Kareoke. Hope to see you all there.

A new Committee was elected on the 27th of February at the AGM.
Most positions were completely renewed and Rob Hines is now back on the Committee as Captain. Other important positions such as Webmaster and Secretary were taken over by Russell Newman, a first-year IT and Organisations student, who comes to fly regularly on weekends. The treasurer is taken over by the very keen Mark Pearce, who's been flying with us for about two years now. Our brand new social secretary is Matthew Plumridge, who comes to fly on a regular basis as well. Lastly but not least, I (Emeric Massaut) will be keeping my position as Equipment Officer, as well as serving as Vice-Captain on this year's Committee.

Denzil now has its very own parachute! Please use it & not the LGS ones from now on. It has a seat built in to make things a little more comfy! It is kept with the other private 'chutes in the Flying Office (next to the briefing room, in the Brown Elephant), so please put it back there & not with the club 'chutes. It is in a blue bag, with "DNZ" on, last left in the cupboard on the left of the door.

Non-alcoholic social! Tuesday 31st October - Halloween - We're going to Cineworld to watch SAW III - Starts at 21:30. Be there!

Quick update to remind everyone of the introductory meeting tonight in the Clubs & Societies room, above the Stags Head. It starts at 7.05pm and we'll be heading downstairs for a beer afterwards. See you there!

Welcome back everyone! A new year and, as a special treat, a new airfield. Some of you may have been aware of the difficulties at Lee-on-Solent following the change of airfield owner(s). After several months of discussion we took the decision to move our base airfield to Lasham instead. Lasham is a popular, large and well-established site and the club owns its own land - so it isn't going anywhere soon. A handy side-effect is the improved location for soaring; while the previous costal site had pretty views, the sea-breeze (and sea in general!) didn't do much for thermals. We have already flown DNZ to its new home. We hope all our members benefit from this move, and I am sure we can look forward to an exciting future ahead. Our website will eventually catch up with this change too!

After a day 1 win for our two strong team (Laurie and Emeric) and Emeric achieving a Bronze leg on day 2 the inter-unis went downhill almost as much as the weather. Laughs were had watching Edinburgh uni's trailers going out the gate most days and Bath's Mike Schlotter landing out at Hus Bos and having to stay the night, only to land out 11km down track on the way back the next day! Sadly Denzil did not make it out of the hangar at Lee due to a dead trailer tyre, however our K8 knowledge went to good use showing Oxford uni how to rig and de-rig theirs (surely there must be points available there!?). In the end we came 6th in the cross country category and 5th in the progression category. Oh and congrats to Parkey who (after 5 years of trying now is it?) managed what looks like a valid 50k, albeit a downwind dash in a LS-4. Anyway, next year's IUTW will be hosted by UWE at Aston Down, so hopefully we'll see a few more SUGC faces there!

A quick update on Denzil. She/he/it has got through the CoA with only a new nose hook (due to new regulations) and minor fabric repairs. Once again, many thanks to Dave Bullock at Bicester for his work on this. Denz is currently still on its trailer at Lee, but will be flying at the inter-unis at pocklington next week (5th-13th August). Congrats again for the excellent results by SUGC members Rob and Laurie at the Junior Nationals!