Recent News. November 3rd 2013

 
Julie Woods reports -
 
Had a brief flight with a winch launch a couple of weeks previous to Sunday 3rd. enough to convince me I was definitely going to restart my gliding ‘career’.
Arrived at airfield about 10:45ish. Tim was there of course, Peter Williams to drive winch & a young glider pilot named Marc Toho visiting New Zealand from Switzerland & me.
 
He had first tow. Wasn’t good, 4 minutes.  Try again, 3 minutes, again, 4 minutes.  Ok Julie you have a go. Cloud was coming in from south, sou’-west. As we strapped up Tim observed that the hawks in the paddock were flapping wings hard so not looking good. How wrong can you be......?
Released from tow, Tim went hunting over a group of cut paddocks & ploughed fields. A thermal?... yeah.
 
Slowly worked up to about 3500ft. For the first time I had control in a rising thermal. Awesome. Sat around up there for a while, and then started to lose height. Power station, no, paddocks, no.
Tim turned & headed toward mountain & the black clouds coming in. Sniffed around & found some lift under them. I took control again & we headed to the mountain gaining height to 4000ft.
 
By this time I was starting to feel a bit guilty for leaving Marc on the ground after his two short flights. At the park boundary we turned back for airfield. I am still flying, 4000ft, 70 knots.  What a flight, (for me anyway).  We were losing a bit of height, but Tim used the air brakes to slow us down & lose height to the airfield. Awesome flying.  Came in to land after 63 minutes in the air, yes.......I am really chuffed with what I achieved that day.
 
Anyway.  Marc’s turn again. 3 minute flight then 2 minutes.  At that stage we gave up for the day. That’s the way gliding goes, isn’t it!
 
Thanks to Tim for organising a toilet in the hangar area of the airfield. Much better for us ladies, than trudging over to the aero club.
 
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Good one Julie.  Now to get some of the other erudite pilots to describe their flying exploits.

With the Pawnee now u/s, we have a bit of a hiatus in our flying.  Looks like the Hawera aero Club Technam can help with the aerotows and there is a pressing need to get more instructors current in winch launching.  A matter of time, really, to get the winch thing organised.

Peter Cook had a good flight of 232km in one of the Central Plateau days and at the moment, Glyn Jackson and Tim Hardwick-Smith are down in Omarama, Glyn for a course and then the Southern Regionals and Tim to defend his status as last years Club Class winner.

Papa Mike.