News
Mar 2007 News Update
Added on Sun 18th Mar 2007
Hello!
A lot has happen since the last news update so let's do this in chronological order.
We managed to attract a lot of attention at Fresher's Fayre this year, Cranwell loaned us the shiny LS8 for the duration and not only did we manage to return it in one piece we also signed up lots of new members and saw some familiar faces returning for more.
The Halloween party was a great success as always. Our president managed to break himself very early on in the night; of course this was nothing to do with the strength of our legendary pan-galactic-gargle-blaster cocktails (or the fact that he was knocking them back!)
In October we leant a helping hand to the BGA, we gave them Devin and Becky for the day, giving their assistance at the BGA's Chairman's Conference. It was a great opportunity to give the club some good publicity and Becky and Devin got their pictures in the December publication of S&G.
We had 1st year rep elections in November, congratulations to Rif Malik and Dave Calder, our new first year reps. We also acquired two new social sec's, Patrick and Eamon, who have to date been doing a sterling job. December was a very social month, with a Christmas meal at The Flaming Dragon. There were lots of new people in attendance and the evening was enjoyed by all.
The following Saturday we had the Cranwell Christmas party, another enjoyable evening and James mercifully stayed sober! A sad farewell was said to Jon Truman, Cranwell's barman, who has been posted onto Lyneham. Jon not only served cheap drinks to our members, he was a fantastic source of “generic help and advice” and also did a great job of keeping our vice president under control.
At New Year, some NUGC members went to join in the festivities at the Midland Gliding Club, at the Long Mynd in Shropshire. The weather only allowed for a bit of flying, and we filled in the gaps with getting utterly lost in Shrewsbury, bowling in Telford, a visit to the RAF museum at RAF Cosford, pub meals, a quiz about 2006, and the new years party itself! Lots of fun was had, and we shall definitely be back in force next year.
New year at Cranwell and a shiny new bus which has just recently come into operation, a big well done to James our president who worked very hard on installing the lights and the box – so if your winch launch is delayed by technical difficulties, it's probably his fault..
We have completed our purchase of our Grob Twin II Acro (trigraph 'JRW'), and thanks to the help of several of our members is now flying with the rest of the Cranwell fleet. There are too many people to list in saying thank you to, however special mentions go to John Vodden, Chris Emerson, Simon Taylor, Devin Giddings and (of course) Stevie Benn, who has taken our ignorance with extreme patience.
The Skylark is well on the way to being fully ready for flying, and will be ready in time for our annual trip to Portmoak which is fast approaching. If you want to fly the Skylark, you need to be current, so get yourself to the airfield! Huge thanks to Ged McKnight for helping us acquire the Skylark, and also to Sally Longstaff for kindly donating it to our cause.
The spring term is flying by, and that means that the Portmoak trip is fast approaching, the trip is already fully booked up and it's going to be amazing. We have several pre-solo pilots attending this training week and we hope that they will have lots of fun and will learn a lot from the experience.