Friday 3 January

No flying yesterday and it was cold and rainy! Got the glider weighed - looks as if I can only carry 30 lt of water ballast.

Today was cold and grey in the morning with a strong wind. People were busying themselves around their gliders, convinced there would be a task, but it looked unlikely to me.

Gridding Time

After a comprehensive weather briefing, we were given the tasks - A and B tasks, both AATs. The sports class was launched after the club class. Being the only self launcher here, I was put away from all the other gliders on the grid, and perilously close to the tow ropes where the tugs were landing. Not only that, I got to launch last :(

Launching Time

Although the clouds look good here, they had
all disappeared by the time I got to launch!

We are using a start line which is 10km long, but of course, everyone crosses it at the same point, being where the best thermal is! Our task was a 2 hour AAT Armstrong 10km, Copeville 20km, Pata 30km and back to Waikerie. There was a strong South Westerly wind which made things a bit difficult. When we launched it was blue, but there were clouds to the west, and they gradually came over the task area, but the lift under them wasn't very good.  The max height above ground that I got was about 4500ft, but got down to 2000 AGL a few times. Waikerie is suprisingly low lying, only 150ft AMSL.

I had a bit of a mix up with the AAT time at the last turnpoint, thinking I was going to come in early, dithered about a bit and ended up coming in 20 min late. Something to improve upon!

The locals here are all used to flying in the blue - they call clouds "umbrellas"!

Looks as if tomorrow will be a similar sort of day. The wind is raging outside, and it's cold! Reminds me of the safari.

Waikerie Sports Class Nationals

Thought I'd let people know my impressions of Waikerie - it's my first visit here, and its a place I have always wanted to fly from. Oh, and there's a competition on too!

Left Keepit on 30th December with ASH26E in tow in the trailer :( It would have been nice to fly it down, but too impractical. 1200 km later arrived at Waikerie at about 4.30 pm the next day in searing heat. Some gliders were flying, but by all accounts it was rather stable despite the heat. Much too hot to rig the glider.

Very good facilities here, including a glider workshop, large briefing/dining area, and good members kitchen. Heaps of tie down space and lots of runway space - but rather a lack of water compared to Keepit.

The weather today has been hot, but overcast, and no task was called for the practice day. Gave me a chance to get the glider rigged, washed and taped. Bernie Sizer, whom I met at West Wyalong, and his mate Phil put the wings on for me for which I am very grateful, as they are very heavy. Still have to do scrutineering weighing tomorrow.

Tomorrow's weather is not expected to be good either, with strong winds expected. Looks from the OLC as if the weather was better at Keepit. Plenty of people here have remarked about the good flights we have been putting on the OLC lately, and I'm sure it will encourage more people to visit.

Cath Conway is here, flying Harry Medlicot's former glider KRJ, and David Pietch, flying Todd Clark's former glider. Another of Todd's former gliders is here too - IID, the LS4. Robert Smits is here flying Astir - comes to Keepit every year to fly the Duo in the regatta.

There has already been a glider collision - fortunately it happened on the ground, not in the air. Both gliders were damaged quite severely, but the innocent one, which was tied down at the time, is able to be repaired in time.

There appear to be 46 gliders registered - which is manageable I think.  However there are a lot of seriously good pilots flying, so I hope I can learn something from them.

Thursday 4 November - by Jacque Graells

Today was a bit more stressful, lots of clouds and some pretty ones not working at all.

I planned to go to Bingara and cut across Terry Hai Hai to the plains but in Barraba there was almost no sun and I could see rain in the distance. I headed towards Kaputar but it was a struggle. As I was going to cut to the plains, Ian in the ASH radioed that there was 7kts 10km north of Kaputar, I climbed to 8000 and went through. New goal was Moree but again many dead clouds and I got lowish at 4000ft. The clouds were rather large and I was wasting lots of height to get there and explore to find them dead. I decided to go to that huge one and it paid. 12.5 on the averager the vario needle bent on the stop for most of the climb, in a few minutes I was at 8000ft again.

I thought I'd try Moree and that cloud should still be there on the way back, 2 more dead clouds and I turned back 20km from Moree.

The big thermal was still there but much weaker, then it was just a matter of staying high to get back home. All in all 328 Km.
        
Ian and Miro flew in the ASH I think they also didn't reach Moree The Newcastle gang progressed in their training and flew Grob around Gunnedah.

Cheers

Jacques

2nd & 3rd November - Jacques Graells

Jacques did his first couple of flights in the club's LS7, and I persuaded him to tell us about them:-

"I first did little bit of soaring around to get used to the LS7 and landed, I thought doing an outlanding on my 1st landing would not be very wise. After a little rest I was planning to go to Boggabri Mullaley and return. All was good in Boggabri so I pushed a bit to Banbaa and I wanted to go down on the edge of the pilliga scrub, but there were only small and sparse clouds so I went down to Mullaley. Since all was still good I headed to Tambar Springs. The west was over-developing a bit so I headed to Premer and just after I turned it started to slow down. I had a down wind leg so I took weak thermals drifting home and waiting till it cycled. Then it became bombastic and I came back.

Since the conditions forecast was similar for today I planed a 300km for the gold distance. LK-Narrabri-Premer-LK.

Andrew Samson from the UK in the LS6 decided to fly the same task and we took off at the same time.

We got split just before the Kelvins, his thermaling was more efficient than mine but I was doing longer legs so I got ahead.

He caught up in Narrabri and I wasted some time to make sure my turn point got registered then we split and joined several times in the end he arrived a minute before me but much higher than me. I was aiming for 85km/h but I only achieved 79.5Km/h maybe tomorrow  :)

Looking at the forecasts we could get close to 10'000 ft tomorrow but high probablility of thunderstorms, we will see in the morning.

You can see it live here http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0sKN7Qb6Yyecoi6GOpICCMukzxeeXlXp5

Cheers

Jacques"

Sunday 31st October

My partner John is back in Aus for 6 months :-) and we travelled up to Lake Keepit on Saturday afternoon by car, towing the Mosquito trailer. Arrived at about 10 pm and found I had left my gate pass in the other car in the hangar at Keepit! However a phone call to the Park Manager sorted things out and he came to the gate to let us in. The emergency code wouldn't work for some reason.

On Sunday morning I was duty instructor but after consulting the weather forecast no one thought it would be much of a day. We were supposed to get 20 - 25 kt north westerlys followed by thunderstorms at 1600. Jay and Mary elected to fly back to Bankstown while they still could. Tomas towed. There was no one who required instruction, so I rigged the Mozzie assisted by numerous club members (thanks very much) taped up the joins and went flying.

Jacques flew the Junior,  Attila flew his recently acquired Cirrus, I flew the Mosquito and that was about it I think. However there was activity over at Kentucky and the duo flew back from there, and the Grob was aerotowed most of the way back. I think I heard Harry Medlicott on the radio, Ian Downes was in the Grob and Todd Clark was in something!

Despite the sky being mostly overcast, there was good lift about though I found it a little hard to centre. Probably out of practice. Cloudbase was about 6000ft, though it went up to 6500 later.

There was a nice line of cu going down the Melville ranges and I considered gettng a clearance to fly along it, but with the forecast 20kt winds in mind I thought I'd go upwind first. Headed along the clouds up to Mt Kaputar, no trouble making progress against the wind - looking at my stats afterward the wind was no stronger than 11 kts even at cloudbase. Met Attila going the same way, but much more efficiently than I!!

Not much clearance between the aerials and the ground, and on my second attempt to get around them I got flushed down the gully behind in some of the worst sink I have ever experienced. I thought I would not make it out from the trees. However I got to a landing paddock at about 1000ft AGL and found some zeros, which eventually turned into about 4-6 kts so I was out of trouble.

Back to Keepit, mooched about over Carrol but was getting lower so back to the airfield. It started working again as  I got to the Caravan Park and there was still a nice line of clouds over the Melville ranges so I called up the Tower. Got an automated response "Tamworth Aerodrome 119.4". Apparently the tower is closed on Sunday afternoons now. Called Brisbane centre and they confirmed that it was allowed to go gliding in the control zone but asked me to make a broadcast call on 119.4, so I did!

I didn't go far down the ranges - in hindsight I wish I had gone further, but the outlanding scare made me a bit cautious.

Turned back and flew to Keepit again all in a straight line climbing at 6 kts without turning all the way back to Mt Surprise. It was apparently raining at Keepit. Started worrying about weather at aerodrome so came back and landed. Needn't have worried at all, because Attila stayed up for about another couple of hours!!

All in all a much better day than the forecast would have led one to believe and a much needed fix for me!!

Spent a very convivial evening with the Newcastle contingent and UK visitor Andy - an excellent break! 

Sunday 29 August 2010 - by Nick Singer, Duty Instructor

Sunday was the first day I have been at Keepit for a while which was good enough for a real X-country. The Puchatek rudder was re-installed by Bob DIrks, thanks are due but lack of paper work stopped it from flying. All present helped rig the DG after its form 2.

 

Having no students I flew the Pik.

 

I went with Trevor west, Jay Anderson and John Stewart off to Manilla , then along the range to Rangori area then north. I checked to see if I had any passenger flights and spoke to David Tan on the radio who wished to have three circuits in the Grob. I turned back with final glide from 6800 ft 47 km out.

 

Mary and Bob Emery shared the Junior; both had over an hour's soaring. Ray Tilly flew I know not where, but I saw him land. Trevor I believe did over 300km and was last home.

 

Weekend of 7th & 8th August 2010

I was supposed to be standing in for Vic on Saturday, and had intended to arrive at the club on Friday evening. However my RAA instructor rating test at Narromine happened to fall on Friday, and as I had another chap with me that had to go back to Cowra on Friday afternoon, I had to delay my departure until Saturday morning.

BIG MISTAKE!! Arrived at Cowra aerodrome at 7.15 am to find the plane covered in a thick layer of ice, and the runway invisible with fog. Paul Goard was also there waiting to get away to Temora to fly one of the Museum planes at 10.00 am. The fog hadn't lifted by 10.30 am, but around 11.00 am there was a hole in it, and both of us shot through it trying to get to our respective destinations as quickly as possible.

Once airborne, we saw that the fog was just sitting over the airport, and that everywhere else was in brilliant sunshine. Paul got to Temora 5 minutes to late to fly his display aircraft - another pilot did it. I got to Lake Keepit to find that Little Petunia had taken matters in hand, and the winching operation was underway.

The central coast pilots flew off the winch, Dave Goldsmith getting 2100 ft off his launch in the Ka6e in very light winds. He stayed up for ages and then his partner Jenny flew it - she only got 1900 ft on her launch.

Bruce Paulson was training in the twin astir with Garry, who had really come to fly the tug, and had about 5 flights. Matthew Minter turned up and did a couple of launches with me in the Puchatek to get current, then a solo flight. Bob Dircks gained his winch driver's endorsement, and did two flights with me in the twin astir. The second one he did the launch all himself and he did very well, especially considering he hasn't done any winch launching for about 20 years! Garry's twin really is a lovely glider to winch launch.

Chris Carr disappeared for a long time in the Nimbus 2, WP. Trevor flew an air experience flight for a person who had a voucher, and got away and soared for the required half hour.

David Tam did a couple of winch checks with Trevor before I got there, and later did a couple of solos. He worked very hard all day retrieving the rope.

Harry Medlicott spent most of the day on the winch, but he was training others to drive it. He says he'll only drive the winch if there is someone else to train - everyone needs to learn.

Flying went on all day and we only stopped when the sun went down - so once again a successful and enjoyable winching day.

On Sunday Jenny and Dave Goldsmith and Arie and Phil Endecott all left, leaving just Bruce Paulson and David Tam, Trevor Harry and I. We did some winching in the morning - Bruce had three flights with me in the Twin Astir, and Trevor got endorsed on driving the new winch. David Tam did another solo in the Puchatek, but then the wind changed direction and rather than change ends with the winch, we packed up. Harry wanted to fly his glider, so I aerotow launched him and he had a reasonable soaring flight to Manilla and back but he said it was hard work.

Michael and Bronwyn Shirley arrived in their Grob 103 just as we were putting everything away. I was hoping to be able to get away back to Cowra but found I had left the master switch on in the plane and the battery was flat so I had to stay till the morning. Another lesson learned.

Keep an eye on the chat group http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lksc/ for the next winching weekend.

Jenny