Two nice flying days this weekend. Very quiet Saturday, but a good level of activity Sunday. Not too many weekends left in the season so get out and fly while you can.

We have a new 1-26 pilot! After successfully completing the 1-26 pre-solo written and a ground briefing/cockpit briefing, Colby made his first two 1-26 flights today. Looked rock solid on take-off and two nice spot-landings. Congrats Colby!

This just in from Bill Batesole…

Sunday 10/3 -The VSF weather stayed mostly dry with a high ceiling. Ben flew two flights in the 1-34. No problems. He did a great job in the glider.

Two nice flying days this weekend. Sat was a perfect calm training day but with some lift around. Sunday much breezier with a mix of thermal and wave soaring. Lots of activity in addition to the training flights with YZ, i1, 5E, B9, Q2, FE all having some good long flights. CAP orientation flights both days also.

Next weekend is October already, so time to come out and enjoy some good fall soaring.

The latest SMS Bulletin has been published summarizing safety lessons and reminders from recent events and submissions. Please take a read!

The SMS Bulletin library is located available here: SMS Bulletins

Well, it’s all over. Thanks to the many NESA, PMSC, GBSC, CAP and other volunteers who helped us pull of a sucessful week of fying and seminars. Hope everyone got lots of Wings credits!

Lot’s of great presenters and seminar topics – including Club Safety Culture, Mountain Wave Flying, Advanced X-C tecnique, EPIC flight stories, techniques for blue days to name a few. Presentations are available here.

A great team of instructors from NESA and GBSC and stellar XC mentors including Karl Striedieck, Roy Bourgeois, Rick Roelke and Kempton Izuno.

With the help of both the NESA and PMSC tugs we had 137 launches for the week (109 WSPA + 28 NESA) or 548 aircraft movements! Zero incidents and lots lots of folks getting to fly sailplane types new to them. We operated seven two seaters (2 x Duo Discus, 1 x Blanik L-23, 1 x K-21, 2 x SGS 2-33A and a PW-6U) plus many club and private single seaters. Bill even checked out several participants who got to fly in “003”, his 1-26 serial #3 which was assembled specially for the event.

The week finished out Friday night with a catered banquet held in one of the hangars.

Back to regular club flying next weekend – Sign up now!

As of Wednesday evening 80 flights had been made. Thursday looks to be a rain day with some prospect for soaring Friday.

A few pictures from the week so far:

Bill, Ben and Alasdair all made a trip to Harris Hill for this years International Vintage Sailplane meet. Bill was in fact the organizer of this years event.

Here are a few of the sailplanes that were flying:

Bill flew his 1-26 “003”, Alasdair flew “002” (owned by Hank Nixon), Ben flew the K-13. A good time was had by all.

Q2, 5E, YZ, B9 rigging for some Father’s Day fun. All looking forward to a great day. One with no intention of landing back home.

A special fathers day for Greg Hunter. The plan – fly from VSF to Eagles nest where his daughter would meet him with his trailer for ground retrieve. All went to plan and a great little father/daughter adventure. Nice.

Been a lot of flights recently getting to 9K or better, if these strong conditions continue please be aware that there is a T-MOA in effect this month for F-15 training between 9,000MSL and 18,000 MSL (bottom of class A) as depicted on the above.