We have had a couple of good wave days this year,here is a wee pic I took at 9,000 ft in a K8,it was fffairly ccccold in the cockpit - good job the sun was out :).Looking south towards the Forth.

https://i.imgur.com/LNPIgdL.jpg

I still have a model of K18 R43 in its livery at the time I flew it. While not the hottest ship in our fleet, it was, IMHO, the most fun to fly. I understand at some time in the intervening years, it unfortunately lost an argument with a hedge.

As for landing in unusual spots at Halton, my cross country check ride involved recovering from unusual attitudes and extreme ridge scratching before finally crossing the canal and spot landing on the volleyball pitch, all with a covered panel. But you tell the young people today ...

Sounds fun - the trip I was talking about was when I was on the staff of 613 GS,I already knew I was in trouble on that trip as our then CO Sqn Ldr 'Jacko' was parked up in the layby up on the tring road (he used to 'keep an eye' on us sometimes when he was not on duty :) ) - we were absolutely verboten to use the ridge/bowl in ATC gliders at that time :).
I had to do a x country 'field' landing into a very small area whilst flying in zimbabwe,I was flying a Skylark 3b - of course with excellent airbrakes but it was a cracking day - my pleas to leave it until early evening fell on deaf ears,I even tried again whilst airborne when I told them on the radio that I was climbing in a thermal with the airbrakes fully open :).But no - I had to do it - I had the devil of a job losing height on the downwind and base legs to get into the 'postage stamp' but I managed to stop just short of the far marker (the area was just off the airfield in a roughish patch of scrub) - they said ''you only just scraped in'' - I replied that it was a very unsuitable time of day to do it and if they had tried it with somebody less experienced they probably would have ended up with a broken glider.Gliders out there were like gold dust due to lack of foreign currency.

Yes, as I recall 613 GS did not encourage gliding and they did not seem to like us doing it either and certainly not on their side of the airfield unless we were high enough to need oxygen (ok, slight exaggeration).

I did establish the volleyball net and associated poles were removed before launch. I cleared the canal by not much then floated in ground effect briefly before arriving a bit short of the baseline followed by generous use of wheel brake which made an impression. I had the CFI in the back seat so I had top cover. It was a fun trip in may ways, he got me almost amongst the trees on the ridge at the Wendover end and asked me what I was going to do. I told him at that height I would already be downwind abeam the winch.

When I was flying at Halton - 613 was the sole gliding user of the airfield (except for occasional glider flights from the 'other' Bessonneau' Hangar/Chipmunk Flight down by the control tower),I would not say they did not encourage gliding - we did lots of training for the cadets which is of course where many of us started gliding/flying but the majority of our flying was more or less just in the circuit.

I also had a fun trip with a CFI doing a practice field landing in a K13 at a civvy club.

It changed then after the Chilterns Gliding Club moved in from Weston and they lost aviation exclusivity. A lot of turf warfare. We had similar at Cosford. For some reason the GS did not get on with the GSA which seemed odd as I thought the GS was there to foster an interest in the RAF. The advent of the red and white motor floaters made things worse in my opinion.

Yes thankfully I was long gone from Halton by that time.
One little coincidence from Halton was that I later (after leaving Halton) ended up in front of a Wingco Eng (MT related) and the fact that I had taken his son up for AEG at Halton helped enormously :)
One little bit of fun that came out of my GS flying days was when I joined the gliding club at Moffat Field,Gwelo whilst working on Hawks in Zimbabwe in the 1980's,a couple of instructors looked at my Log Book and were LOL'ing at my 330 Lchs for a grand total of 25 Hrs TT :)
They were also puzzled by the fact I had 'P2' grade glider pilot stuck in the back of my log book (thinking of course that all pupils are P2),I tried to explain it was a throwback to an old 1950's RAF Rank Structure and was actually a pax rating (Later replaced by G1) but I am not sure they ever believed me :).
The other funny thing was that I had never done any thermalling,I just could not seem to form a mental picture of what to do - eventually it 'clicked' and did quite a bit of exciting flying out there inc a thermal from 600' AGL up to 11,500' AGL :)

Cool the read these stories, old and new. Glad the K8's are still going strong. :)​​​​​​​ Most of my first 50 solo hours were spent in the cockpit of our club's beloved K8b OO-ZDT. Got my silver C in her and had my first proper outlanding. She was a lady and is still going strong. Please keep the stories coming! Roll on the soaring season. Greetings from Belgium!
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1ba571855e.jpg
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....12f2280e93.jpg

Hi BDM - nice pics of the old K8 and nice little write up.
A club K8 that I used to fly was an ex Netherlands Glider and had the anti Fence Wire Canopy Bars still fitted - very useful for the left hand to hang on to whilst flying - Did/do Belgian Gliders also have canopy bars ??

rgds LR

:) Yes, those protection bars always did seem more well-worn (if not eroded) on the left hand side... As the trim is on the right it was the natural place to put that idle hand!

In general the canopy protection bars are a Dutch thing AFAIK, but most of our K8's (we had 4 at one point) had them for some reason despite not having any Dutch provenance (as far as I am aware).

It was probably thought to be a necessary addition to protect the novice pilots from themselves on their first XC adventures. They certainly saved a few pilots from serious injury or worse during outlandings based on the stories told around the club house!

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4962ee928a.jpg
Inconspicuous she is not. Always fun to arrive at a different airfield.

Thanks for the nice pic and info BDM :)
The canopy bar equipped K8 was one of those situations where when I first entered the cockpit - it seemed a bit strange and almost claustraphobic to have the bars so close to the head/eyeline,but soon became accustomed to it and as previously discussed - a 'handy' handhold :)
Our K8 of course does not have the bars - so sometimes tricky to find a parking place for left hand,I usually have a kneeboard on left leg so that isnt an option LOL and the other obvious place is a bit cold in a scottish winter :cool:

On a gliding theme - does anyone know what the story is behind the two seat sailplane, possibly a Duo Discus - which landed out on a hill in North Wales last weekend. Appears to have landed out ON the hillside itself, amongst the heather/bracken near the top of a slope. No-one hurt, but getting it down without damage may have been, or may still be, a challenge.

Stretched the glide? Sudden loss of lift due to a wind shift? Or, as nearly happened to me once, mis-assessed the glide angle over gently sloping ground?

I would have liked to have had wire protection in one of my ASW-19b outlandings. I had lined up for what I thought was clear area but at about 50 ft AGL realized I was landing along a fence line. The glider left wing landed on the fence and the glider turned left under the fence. Some subliminal mental protection mechanism told me to raise my arms to protect my face and neck. The barbed wire shattered the canopy and pinned me to the headrest. The wire would have cut my throat if I had not raised my arms. I was able to get out my squirming under the wire and exiting through the broken canopy.

Wire is nasty and it took me a long time to be a competitive racer after that experience. No accident should be without some analysis. This accident happened because I was making bad decisions due to dehydration. That, in turn, was caused by having an inadequate relief system.

EXDAC, you were very lucky. I know of one fatality and one very near miss, involving barbed-wire, both in Alberta. Both were at airports, not out landings – one undershoot and one overrun.

I know it is not applicable to your incident, but I tell students that if they are heading towards a wire fence, even at slow speed, drop a wing and ground loop the glider. Much better to go through the fence backwards!

Definitely a Duo Discus. I only have this third-hand, but sounded to me like it was the least-worst landout option; being Winter, apparently the fields in the valley are all full of sheep. No damage done, and the retrieve crew got a free gym session.

Also heard that someone called Mountain Rescue (completely unnecessarily) who were then perfectly positioned to assist a hillwalker with a medical emergency.

Thanks pasta. It does look well conducted; the photos I saw were from different angles and made it hard to assess what had happened. Sounds like 'Plan B' should have been in use a tad earlier, before the 'oops, now what' point. Sheep are very panicky beasts so certainly agree best avoided if possible. It's the chance of rocks just hidden by the bracken/heather that would concern me.
(I like the idea of the free gym session; they'd have been too tired for that by the time they got it out. In the bad? old days it would have been many beers and dinner all round !)

A lovely machine the Duo, with handling so nice it is easy to get lulled into a sense of false security. I had one instance of a very low 'float' over a section of moorland.in one. Final glide, with just enough height to clear the top of the last ridge but what I forgot was the long flat slope behind, which felt uncomfortably similar to the glide slope of the machine for about the next 3 to 5 kilometres. Puckering, and a useful lesson !
When I saw the first pictures I wondered if that was what had happened !

Sorry, what I meant was that they got a free gym session *while* carrying bits of glider off the hillside. I'm sure the pilot was left with a hefty bar bill afterwards, some things never change...

I thought I had lost my old 'P2' Chit forever but came across it today whilst looking for something else.
I got my P2 rating when the CGS Trappers visited Halton during the best month to fly open cockpit in a T31/Mk3.
The 'P2' rating was changed to 'G1' (grade 1) fairly soon after this date.
Now suitably 'Foxed' by age https://www.pprune.org/images/smilies/cool.gif

https://i.imgur.com/O5BFk9T.jpg

I remember a chap from my old days in the RAFGSA (1960/70s) who had barbed wire marks either side of his mouth which he had collected from an out-landing in Holland or Germany. He was lucky he didn't lose his head. The first glider I ever flew fitted with the protection bar fitted was Ian Smith's old Skylark 2 (497) in 1969.

Sigh……You just had to post some glider porn 😩

It will be 3 months before my club starts up again……