Immediately on return from Germany we went straight into the Longest Day, kicked off at dawn by Dawn in a charity shop RAF uniform that appeared to fit remarkably too well, Pete Yeo and Neil (our Treasurer!) in a rather fetching dress and red hat – I think he got confused with Ladies Day at Ascot!  First launch was about 0530 and there followed a really cracking day of soaring and gliding and polished off with the Chairman’s Supper in the clubhouse. My thanks go to Julie Hull and Mandy for putting the latter together and to Terry for a supply of Chianti that slowed me down the following morning.  It was tremendous to have 42 club members seated for dinner and I hope to do something similar later in the year – perhaps the Chairman’s ‘Winter Warmer’.

Longest Day weekend was followed by an absolutely superb week of Wyvern Wings 2 during the day and ETPS in the evening – both were highly successful and I look forward to reading Andy G’s report which will include a few ‘300s’ and, I believe, a ‘500’ as well.  John Hull did a sterling job collecting, piloting and returning Lee-on-Solent’s Super Cub tug for both these events and Longest Day where we got a good clutch of club members re-qualified on aerotow and  introduced it to some of the newer members.  Thanks John and I hope we can borrow the tug again later in the year.

At the time of writing Wyvern is delivering its fourth Ab Initio course and we have the 5^th to look forward to in July with up to 6 members of that course coming from Headley Court under the BattleBack programme.  Whilst I believe we have sufficient instructors, it would be good for any club member to visit the airfield during the course to show your support for this initiative and do your bit to extol the enjoyment, fun and freedom of gliding.

I think all that I have said so far illustrates that we can do a lot of gliding when we want and the weather permits, but it is easy to start thinking that our future at Upavon is limited.  Whilst I would acknowledge we have more than our reasonable share of problems, I remain confident that we can find a way through them and ultimately come out in a better position.  It is because not only do I believe Wyvern has a future but I want the club to be in a better position to exploit it that I ‘commissioned’ Ken Moules and a small team to investigate computer logging.  Ken’s team has identified suitable software (Glidex) and hardware to operate it that not only meets the aim, but provides significant benefit to improving the club administration.  This will not only raise the quality of the data we need (pilot and aircraft statistics, membership, costs etc.) but will remove much of the drudgery some club members tolerate on our behalf and has the potentially for Wyvern to move to a cashless flying account system in due course.  Ken has made his recommendations to the Committee which, in principle, were agreed.  Because there is a cost involved, we just need to check that it is affordable and a sensible investment at the current time when some of our other costs have increased.  I most certainly hope to get this into place this year.