Sunday 29 December 2013

Sunday 29th December 2013


Another unstable day. Gary towed us up early but it was already raining in the hills. Phil dodged the rain locally, and Pete and JR headed south again, Pete making the Blue Mts. We all got wet trying to get home.


The start of an unstable and wet flying afternoon

Saturday 28 December 2013

Saturday 28th December 2013

It was a big effort but the airfield is mowed. Russell, Gary and Richard drove tractors Friday night and most of Saturday, many thanks. We also had a good turn out from other members moving the tyres and marker boards plus a general tidy-up. The airfield looks really sharp now.


Blue Mts














The sky looked good too and Phil kindly winched me (IR) up at 3pm. I got a good thermal over the tailings and up to cloudbase at 7500'. There's not often thermals for a southern trip, but it looked on today. I aimed for the Blue Mountains, having never thermalled that far south before. I got there but it was over-developing so quickly scuttled away with wet wings. There was a reasonable NE wind and the thermals didn't work as well as advertised. It was raining on the Dunstans so I headed home after an OK 2.5hr flight.

Sunday 22 December 2013

Sunday 22nd Dec 2013

New snow on the hills and a strong cold southerly...damn near the longest day of summer too! Just Phil, Pete and JR keen, we met at 12 and were airborne about 130pm with Russell towing. Phil took a high tow in search of SW wave, Pete and JR released almost too early in the first thermals over the tailings. In the end we all flew a pleasant 4hrs or so. There was wave, though pretty localized, JR flew down to Roxburgh reaching 13,000', and later pottered about rather aimlessly in thermals. Pete flew down the far end of the Garvies, having a low scrape or two. Phil enjoyed the thermals in the basin which at times were pretty good once the southerly died out.
Thanks to Russell for the 3 tows.

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Flying JW Home to Alexandra 23rd November

JW had been up in Omarama for three weeks, initially with the Aussies from Mt Beauty to fly for the week before Jerry's cross country course and then for some club members to taste a bit of Omarama flying. We were fortunate to have a hangar spot so it was just a matter of driving over and rolling the glider out to the grid. Wouldn't it be great to have the tow out gear than Southern Soaring has for MN? I borrowed it one day and it sure beats a long walk with the wing on a hot morning!
Over two weekends Jack, Jacques, Allen, Phil and I had some good thermal flying in the high country and got a taste of the excitement of the South Island Regionals. Jacques and I had a good look at the Dingle Burn and Ribbonwood strips but climbed away and did about 250km in thermals to about 7000'. Allen has a nice fly along the Benmores in morning thermals and Phil had a nice fly in thermals in the western mountains... Dingle, Barrier Range, Huxley, Geordie Hills, home.It was fun spotting John and KG in our thermal on the western slopes of Mt St Mary which was still carrying a bit of late spring snow.
Phil and I ventured down to Geordie Hills but elected to not fly back to Alex as there were showers about and we didn't fancy sitting in a paddock at Bendigo in the rain.
The mission was to get JW home with minimum fuss and expense so early the following Saturday Christine dropped me over to Pete's place, interrupted his housework, and we set off up to Omarama on a day which had a bit of promise.
Pete and I launched after the South Island Gliding Champs grid which was having its last day of racing. We climbed together on the Nursery Ridge before going our separate ways. JW and I got a good climb over Omarama saddle after a bit of scratching around, climbing to 9,000' in a convergence which was basically my ticket back to Alex. Poor Roland in his LS6 was on the strip below probably very disappointed after an encouraging start in the competition. A beautiful convergence set up down the Dunstans which took me to the north end of the Garvies abeam the gold mine before I turned around, landed in Alex and tucked JW back in its own bed with the assistance of Phil.
The Omarama expedition was a very successful one. We should do it again sometime.
Doug

SI Regionals report GKD

Had my best regionals ever, second in class, Most Meritorious Flight of the Competiton - won a big cup, but mainly had a great week of flying, 6 flying days out of 7 - I really needed the day off!

Pretty much all thermal days, I reckon we used up at least a years worth in the one week, no wave, very little ridge was working apart from thermal. I managed to get round each day apart from one, where I got dumped on Ben Avon in the Ahuriri and just managed to sneak back through the Ribbonwood Gap and with a couple of 1 knot little thermals across the basin and Cloud hills, snuck back to OA. Basically a 40k glide visiting all the landout strips en route trying to minimise the cost of the aero retrieve. Had my hand on the undercarriage lever a couple of times - climbed away from 500ft over the Ben Dhu strip. Very low all the way but had a strip in sight for most of it. Very stressful!

However the good times. I won 2 days, the first by default as Wilson had a technical L/O and Kev's logger stopped, but who cares! My first day win for 3 years. Apart from the fact I had to stand up at the briefing and describe a very scratchy day's flight. A number of the 'guns' commented to me it took them back to when they didn't know what they were doing either!

The second win however I felt I really deserved. When I got back I knew I could have saved perhaps 10 minutes where I dicked around at the end of the Dingle trying to get some extra height - which I never got to go out into the valley to ping the waypoint. The rest of the flight was perfect, 2 massive climbs, one at Magic and one a 10,300 ft 8kt thermal over Ben Avon which meant I could just follow the ridges for the rest of the flight - no turns! For once I planned the flight and actually followed the plan. Speed for the day was 100.3kph, which apparently is quite good for a club class glider, typically the winner was in the 80-90kph range. So that flight was awarded the Fred Dunn Trophy for the Most Meritorious Flight of the Comp. First ever gliding cup, very pleased!

Final results below, you will see I just didn't win by 23 points from Wilson - if I had managed another 500m or so distance on the last day's AAT task I would have won, but Kev was probably going to win overall had he not had logger problems. Next year...!!

I have added Google Earth kml files for the 2 days I won, so you can follow the good and the bad. igc files as well for those with SeeYou.

AAT task (AAT Task.jpg), which means 10k or 20k circles around the waypoints, the idea is the maximise the distance over time by going as far into the circles as you can. AAT is used for days when the lift is likely to be hard to find, which it was this day. The waypoints show up in the KML file but not the circles. Spent a lot of time trying to get over the Dingle Saddle and again at the southern end of the Ohau Range to get the last 2 waypoints out in the Mackensie basin. Ended up very low at the north end of the Dobson a couple of times, once just above minimum height to reach the Glenbrook strip.

Second win: 2013-11-22-XCS-AAA-01[1].igc.kml  2013-11-22-XCS-AAA-01.igc
Conventional Racing task (Racing task.jpg) with 0.5k beer can turnpoints. Just to show how it should be done.

One side benefit of the comp is the photography, I have attached some pics - sorry about the shirt!

Finally we really ought to get some more people over for at least the Cross Country course before the regionals. JW was over there for some of it, but it was all planned too late. Next year why don't we plan well ahead to get JW over, I am sure John/Doug/Pete (even me if you could stand the stress) would be happy to back seat and show people around the mountains. 

Club Class - Overall Results.

PilotRegoGlider typeHcapDay 1
(17/11/2013)
Day 2
(18/11/2013)
Day 3
(19/11/2013)
Day 4
(20/11/2013)
Day 5
(22/11/2013)
Day 6
(23/11/2013)
Total
Wilson ElleryNGStandard Astir899041000836245756083668
Brian SavageKDASW 19b936156843035338336773645
Kevin BethwaiteCCLS 4b9640517636339241410002750
Glyn JacksonVVVentus 2a104662667099001428
Kerry GreigUPDG 800b103381069753001131








Mid week 3rd December 2013

Dying convergence on Garvies
We wanted to fly last Sunday but the strong cold southerly persisted and it was pretty uninviting. However we did rig (VB, KG, and LP) with the plan for mid week.
Tuesday looked stable and inversion-like but the day proved good in places (and difficult in others). Russell launched us from 2pm and we all got dropped into a nice fat thermal but we still wasted a valuable hour or so getting above the local inversion.

Vivienne flew local, John and Pete flew north. It was nearly completely blue and what clouds appeared did so late in the day, and topped out over 11,000' inland.  On the way north the Dunstans were eerily quiet, just a big climb at Leaning Rock then nothing til a save at the far northen end near St Bathans.

Pete flew 200km up towards Mt Cook before returning south and sqeeked home as the day died. John went to the head of the Ahuriri and back, plus had a look down the Garvies in the last of the lift while he kept in touch with Pete as he made his way home.

By the time re derigged it was 8pm so straight to the Post Office for beer and dinner.