new year getting things started

[gary stenhouse]

to be fair I think the trophies had a good spread most years, yes ali in recent years has won overall distance.

however the cross fell trophy the weekender the northumbrian site distance has rarely been won by ali.

so to make it fairer
northumbrian sites only six flights instead of one longest flight
cross fell range the same
and overall champion any site in the uk Scotland wales.

the hangliding trophies need hg pilots and saying you have not got time when you don't work Dave is offensive, I want to see flights this year from you and Steve as I know Steve is still out there kicking ass.

the one thing for sure is Ali is still the best pilot, and also the most humble pilot that never tries to get one over on you. I have been out with ali and every time he pushes out front and tries to help us not so experienced.
more than anything he never makes you feel bad about yourself and always encourages even on the rare occasion when I flew over him at the saw mills, I new for sure ali was willing me up and not down that others would of hoped for.

like ali I am out there to improve and do the best I can on every flying day s this is what makes it fun.

cheers gary

[Sad Northerner]

I’m sorry you felt that way Bryan… there was a lot of radio chatter that day and with 30 plus pilots all on the same channel I thought it wise to change. I expressively invited Smarty to join me because I recognised his wing in the gaggle and, because I have flown with him a lot, I knew we could make decisions and lead out for the gaggle; if you rerun the traces you’ll see that this was mostly the case.

Your point has some validity though and, I think, identifies the need for a session on gaggle flying for the rest of the club.

Hope you will forgive me

Ali

[brian day]

Was only joking Ali, I'll forgive you, but only if you learn to spell my name.
I think I only tried the once to talk to you and just presumed you were to busy at the time to reply. I learned loads that day by watching everyone around us.
Look foreward to flying with you again soon.

[Sad Northerner]

Fly with you again?...definitely Brian.


Ali

PS everyone; please kick me if you feel I'm being ignorant, arrogant, uncommunicative and unaccommodating etc.

[Sad Northerner]

Back to the theme of trophies...
... just been reading some of the other clubs websites and seen trophies awarded for things like 'the biggest contributor to the club' and a 'pilot's pilot' awarded to someone who assisted in the development of others.
To me these seem like the right things to be awarding people for.

Ali

[brian day]

Yes, might be nice to get away from numbers a bit and reward the people that really make the club succesful and breed camerwaderwee.
Maybe Ali is right, a total overhall of the trophies and bring in some new ones rather than re-using ones that are not competed for at the moment. Perhaps the person who has won the trophy the most should be given custody of it until such time that there are pilots who want to compete for it again.

[steve-gill]

I agree with Dave and others, that it would be a shame to mothball the hangliding trophies, or the memorial trophies.
But how many hangliding members do we have left in the club? Is this likely to increase or decrease? Do we get the hours in, or the days out to hold a competetive league?
Better put them to good use until we have a resurgence in hangliding.

[steve-gill]

it makes it possible for one person like mr Guthrie to walk away with the lot.

How about a new rule........... you can't win more trophies than you can carry.

[John Wallis]

Quote:
this would be confusing for anyone winning the trophies to determine whether Rutherford, Wallis or Gill won the said trophy

Wallis


Don't make me angry you wouldn't like me when I'm angry......Mr Day

How about a bunch of us going to the lion and lamb and thrashing this out so things can be ready for the new season

[Dave Hume]

the hangliding trophies need hg pilots and saying you have not got time when you don't work Dave is offensive, I want to see flights this year from you and Steve as I know Steve is still out there kicking ass.

Oops. Didn't realise the info I needed was just up there at the top of the page. Pure laziness. Sorry.

Sorry if I offended you Gary. I may not be working but I still get busy with other things sometimes. And as for time for getting out flying. Yes, I thought I would have loads of time once I finished work and word be out flying every day. Ha. of course it doesn't work like that. Not having as much money means I have to ration my trips out to the hill and can't go out at the drop of a hat on the off chance that it might be flyable. I had far too many wasted trips last year meaning loads of wasted petrol for no return. So I need to make sure the weather shows a good chance of getting in the air before i venture out. Unfortunately that inevitably means there are some days I miss when the weather turns out better than forecast.

Anyway back to the trophies. At the moment we have two trophies for summer XC champion. The Phil Trotter for hang gliding and the Paragliding one which doesn't have a name. Rather than see the Phil Trotter retired why not just make this trophy for hang gliding or paragliding then at least we are still remembering Phil every time it's awarded.

We could maybe use the spare trophy that's left for a new category. One suggestion. How about a "Biwingual" trophy.ie, best total with a percentage on hang gliders and a percentage on paragliders. Since there's quite a few in the club who've moved over from hang gliding to paragliding this might encourage some to venture out on the hang glider again. Just a thought...

Dave

[ron freeman]

Hi Dave, good idea about having a Bi-wingwal award the club should recognise this effort ! but will have to run a crash course on how to land hg's without breaking them (rusty pilots)

[colin keightley]

Before we start thinking about bi-wingwal trophies I think we need to see an increase the amount of hangglider flights submitted. And if all Hanggliding parties are happy then allow all flights to be witnessed and just submit your flight on the forum. I can set something up separate from the XC league for witnessed flights

[gary stenhouse]

I must say that other than the hg trophies I think there is no real need to change as this year there was 6 different people getting trophies,

so I think that seems to be a fair spread of trophies and I think as long as dave steve and a couple of others put flights on for hg then it will still keep the hg trophies alive.

[brian day]

Biwingual

I thought that's what I had done when I moved up from the south in order to understand you lot....

So which circle are we going to go round next? Cancelling meetings, changing meeting venues, which site to go to????

Sounds like its a possible, maybe, that we should leave things alone and save anyone the bother.

[gary stenhouse]

simplicity is what works best and keeping the history so I think we need to take a print of all the trophies what the stand for.

then at a meeting go through them and see if we can get a good compromise where needed

[bill-scott]

Brian has volunteered to run the competition side of things and for that we should all be very gratefull he done a great job in the past and I am looking forward to see what he comes up with this time
If we cant put this to bed at the meeting tonight then maybe we do need to get the interested parties together at a seperate venue and just do it
as they say you cant please all the people all the time
too much debate and you just go round in circles

[Chris L]

First chance I've had to read this post, and wasn't able to make the meeting I'm keen to know what was decided?
I do think one important element to XC flying is understanding and following the national XC league rules so that as a club we can encourage members to develop and compete at a national level and enter flights in this league
We did really well last year as a club and as individual members submitting flights. Its the first year I've put my flights in and its really interesting to see how you compare with others and to start to understand triangles out and returns and multipliers and how pilots use these to get higher in the league
So I'd propose we have atleast one trophy based on this and for any site in the UK
I think we restrict our potential by flying just on club sites so this trophy should be for any sites and this will give better results in the national xc league as a club.
Taking this a step further and going back to what Ali was talking about flying in a gaggle this works for the Niviuk boys so why don't we do more of this? I for one need to get a better understanding of flying XC at cloud base so in the Spring getting Ali out to give a bit radio guidance in a gaggle would be good.
Also a talk on fully understanding GPS dump and/or similar software for downloading flights to maximise results in the national league and on our own would be good so more people realise how easy this is to do and how to do it

I don't think we should start restricting trophies to just club sites there are far far better sites to visit that are more reliable and give better quality flying and not just XC
How about a trophy for the best flight abroad Most of us have a flying holiday so this might be a good one to include as well??

[RonDon]

Yes you have some god points there Chris. But we must get the "CLUB" kick started first. I do think, "Bill and Brian" have some good ideas so let get theme started first. And I know we are going to have some good flying weather this year. And here we go.

[Chris L]

Sounds interesting
What ideas?
Anything decided for the trophies/comps at the meeting?