Peter Miller. October 2010

Soaring the Sea Breeze Front

Some desperation attends our flying these days, what with the tow plane in bits for most of the winter and some rather wet and windy weather during August/September.

We had had a good club day on October the 3rd and Tuesday the 5th looked good so we rang Ralph Gibson, JT could instruct and Glyn was raring to go. Once under way, there were some useful instruction flights for Glyn and he got a number of check boxes ticked off. Steve was “taking a lunch break” and was on his way.

John & I pointed out a likely spot in the sky and Ralph towed us there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t so likely once we got there and after a few minutes sculling around, just maintaining height, we headed for another cloud, a couple turns under it and then angled alongside a cloud street to the SW of Stratford. Thereafter, we hardly ever stopped to turn during the rest of the flight. Flying along the cloud face and swooping around the headlands of white and into bays behind them we were treated to a continually changing scene of form, colour, degrees of white and the sound of the variometer audio as it related the values of lifting or sinking air that we flew through.

Rounding the Stratford Mountain House complex, we followed the cloud back out to Stratford in company with Steve Barham in TE just off our port wingtip. Unfortunately, Steve couldn’t wangle an extended lunch break so he headed back to the field. About this time, David Drummond came on air, advising us that the only area of cloud in the North Island was where we were. Back up over the National Park and headed out over to Toko. John enquired as to the direction to Tim’s place, so off we went. Picked up some height east of the Ngaere swamp and kept going. We knew Tim & Sue were docking lambs but couldn’t any sheep penned up. A radio call to Glyn back at the field for him to give Tim a call and tell him to look up, hoping to spoil his day! He did and Tim obliged but we’d gone on a rather long and thoughtful glide back to Stratford. Coming in over the field at 1600ft we found the front had hardly moved and the lift still going strong. Once again, flying straight and gaining, we flew well into the Park again. Glyn ranged up in his micro-light, taking photos of us as we took photos of him.

Time to go home and away we went at 80 knots, still in lift and a bit later still going up with the airbrakes out! Landing after such a flight was somewhat anti-climactic but John touched down expertly on vector 16 and we rolled to a stop not far from the hangar both exhilarated at the experience. We’d covered more than 170 km, had been challenged, broken the lack of flying drought for both of us and enjoyed a visual feast of cloud, sky and ground displayed in such a rich variety of colour and hue.

Peter Miller
October 2010.



Running the cloud street out to Toko.


The Twin on its way into Egmont National Park. (Glyn Jackson)



Looking down onto Tim & Sue’s farm from the south. The woolshed & yards just below the picture centre with their homestead slightly above & to the right. (Peter Miller)