TVHGC Thames Valley Hang Gliding Club

Review of Consultation Document for New Dropzone in Southern England

IN CONFIDENCE

Who are we? TVHGC is a BHPA registered Paragliding and

Hang Gliding club based in the south of England

It is a very active club with over 300 members and an additional 300 reciprocal members who regularly fly at 10 designated sites based in and around Wiltshire and the Thames Valley corridor

It’s pilots regularly use these sites as the starting point on XC (cross country) flights

Proposed Drop Zones overlaid on CAA Maps

CAA 500k Map CAA 250k MapCAA 500k Map CAA 250k MapCAA 500k MapCAA 250k MapCAA 500k Map

• It can be seen that the proposed dropzones create an additional block at what is an already very busy, tight bottleneck between the Salisbury Plain danger areas and the ATZs of Thruxton, Boscombe Down and Middle Wallop and Solent CTA creating an almost complete block for VFR traffic flying in the class G airspace.

How does this affect TVHGC and its members? One of the club sites Combe Gibbet is one of

the premier XC flying sites in the southern half of the UK

Pilots travel far to fly this site in Northerly and North Westerly wind direction

Due to the close proximity to Solent CTA, pilots will travel south east or south west of the airspace

Therefore XC flights from Combe and to a lesser extent Liddington would be impacted by the proposed drop zones

Typical XC flights with real data from Combe Gibbet

• Plot of XC flight tracklogs for multiple days flights

• This shows the typical flight paths for winds from a NW round to NNE direction that can be flown from Combe Gibbet

Typical XC flights with real data from Combe Gibbet with proposed drop zone added

Typical North Wind Day from Combe Gibbet (Good Friday 2012)

Typical North Wind Day from Combe Gibbet (Good Friday 2012)

• This plot of the tracklogs from Good Friday shows that all flights from Combe Gibbet on this particular day would have been blocked by the proposed new Dropzones

Summary The data shows that both the East and West proposed Drop

Zones would disrupt TVHGC members XC flights from Combe Gibbet

The National Paragliding XC League does not allow flights that infringe a Parachute dropzone as this is considered a flight safety issue

It would make it nearly impossible for the gliders to fly south west and more difficult to fly south east

Would limit the XC potential of this premier site, currently available to 600 pilots

Would impact TVHGC membership as many join the club to fly this site

The site may be lost due to lack of funds at it costs several thousand pounds per annum to rent

Therefore the TVHGC is oppose to the proposals for two new drop zones at the locations specified