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South Wales Soaring Association

The aim of the SWSA is to promote the hobby of slope soaring and to encourage its members to enter and/or support their competitions. Three of the Board Members (Kev Newton, Pete Rundle and Keith Nicholls) are considered to be world class fliers and regularly enter international as well as national competitions.

Kev Newton is also the editor of QFI (Quiet Flight International) which is a well-respected magazine covering all aspects of Radio Control Silent Flight. QFI is a Traplet publication.

The SWSA slopes are situated near Bridge End and Cardiff and are considered to be some of the best in the UK, if not the world, as asserted by competitors at the Viking Race 98, a competition that SWSA hosted with 52 flyers from around the world.

Although the SWSA is competition based, they do understand that not everyone wants to compete, or may feel that they are not capable or have the experience to do so. All the same, they are happy to see such fliers on their slopes, whether experienced or novice. They reckon to be a friendly bunch, and will help all fliers out, whatever their level - their ethos being, "It's only a hobby, and hobbies should be enjoyable". Another motto of SWSA is 'Glider pilots do it quietly' - on the post box page you will find someone who does it lying down!

SWSA have a very attractive website with one of the smartest opening screens I've seen on a club site in a long time. The site is run by Kev Robertson (pictured right), and is a great piece of publicity for the club as well as functioning perfectly as a great source of information, etc., for club members.

Links on the opening screen lead to an interesting variety of dedicated pages giving details and clear maps to the club flying sites, an events calendar, a page of extremely good model reviews by SWSA members (there are six such reviews on the site at the moment and well worth a look in case your current project is covered), articles, competition reports, a list of club board members, F3F and Combat flying information, photos and links. For good measure, there's information about the Club, a message board, a link to real-time weather monitoring for UK flying sites, and even a page of jokes with absolutely nothing to do with model flying! Kev issues a health warning before you view the jokes, so please be sure to read and heed it before viewing! 

Drop in on SWSA at http://www.kevshome.co.uk - it's good!

For many years Windsock was published quarterly and sent to Club Secretaries, but for the past fifteen years, since Ian Greenacre became Editor (meet Ian on personal profiles), it has been published monthly and is sent free to every member of every club registered in Western Australia, as well as several addresses in the eastern states of Australia. The circulation of Windsock is just below 900 at present, and is growing every year. The magazine is A5 page size and usually around 36 pages, so there is a nice bit of reading in it for the members.

The main reason for publishing Windsock monthly was to get information from AWA out to members in a reasonable time frame, and this certainly seems to be achieved as the members usually receive their copy 8 or 9 days after the AWA meetings. The content of Windsock includes the Minutes of the AWA meeting, and any special notices from AWA, the Contest Calendar showing all State Sponsored events and any club event that is open to all members of AWA, Club Notes, and other submitted items of general interest. There is also some interesting advertising from local retail outlets, and clubs advertising their events (club material is published free). Published twice a year is the "law" as applied to model aviation in Australia, apparently, so that no member can claim 'they did not know' and Windsock clearly meets this criteria with room to spare! The magazine also lists all clubs in West Australia and their contacts, plus lists of Large Model Inspectors and FAI Observers and AWA Instructors. Add to that lot anything else that Ian thinks that the members will find of interest - especially when he has space to fill, he says - and you finish up with a great little magazine!

A recent very big step forward in the production of Windsock was taken when an AWA member, Stuart Wood of Fresco Design (fresco@foxgold.net.au), took on the printing of the magazine. Stuart has donated a colour sheet to the magazine, giving eight A5 pages printed on coated paper (in addition to the cover) allowing colour and monochrome images to be produced to professional magazine quality. Ian says, "I can tell you, it is nice to be able to recognise who is in the photos, instead of saying that 'blob' is so-and-so!" It must also mean that commercial advertising is more attracted to the magazine as they can be confident of good, clear, quality reproduction.

Ian very kindly sent me a copy of the current issue and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, even though it is clearly for club members' consumption. The mag has a nice friendly, 'local' flavour to it and the reports/articles from various clubs within the association were very interesting. I also picked up a link to a fascinating UK site that is featured on site seeing! I must say, I smiled at the recent UK motorway experiences of John Marshall as he recounted sitting for hours in a traffic jam on the M1 with nothing to do 'but just sit on the grass verge with all the other poms' whilst he was on his way to enjoy a bit of quality slope-soaring on Shipley Moors. Still, he enjoyed the English slopes and the pubs, apparently! It was nice for me also to come across other familiar names of Aussies who have been in touch with ModelFlight - Chris Mounkley (President of AWA), David Kidd and Norm Kirton. 

Nice one, Ian!

As reported on #44, jb mfc - the new club being launched near Andover, Hants, UK - has been patiently waiting for ATS to vacate the Dunnings Farm site (left) before the club can be officially opened. The latest and good news that John Simpson has already passed on to members is that ATS expect to move to their new site at the end of this month (October), so JBMFC should soon have their flying field.

Meanwhile, their application for BMFA affiliation has been sent off, the verges of the field have been cleared and general tidying up continues, so preparations are well in hand to have the field ready as soon as possible. It has been decided that the old caravan is past saving for use as a club house, so that will be replaced.

If you are one of those who have been waiting to see some real action before submitting your application to join this new club, you can confidently do it now and be sure of being in at the start! All the necessary paperwork can be printed off from the 'membership' page of the club web site or a membership pack obtained from 

JB Model Flying Club, 

The Old Dovecote

Forest Lane

Upper Chute

Andover SP11 9EL

01264 730624

Members will be told as soon as the field is open - otherwise, watch this space or the club web site at http://www.jbmfc.fsnet.co.uk 

are again running a

de-luxe trip

to the

Dortmund Model Show, Germany

leaving Southampton early on

Tuesday 16th April 2002

and returning on

Saturday 20th April 2002

Accommodation at a top 4-star hotel
for just £180, all inclusive!

To book or reserve a place, call Tony Baker

on 02380 233605