We had a little bit too much excitement this week.
After a brilliant week of flying during the comp, the weather became more unstable and we had quite a bit of storm activity.
On Tuesday, after Jim Thompson had done a few circuits, one of which involved hooking into a 6 kt thermal after releasing from the two at 1200 ft, I had two TIFs to take up. The first flight found nothing but 2 kts down everywhere, but the second had a good soaring flight. I offered the first chap another flight as we had been unable to soar and he accepted.
At about 900 ft AGL, the tug disappeared below us and I quickly released the rope. I was very worried about the tuggie, but he managed to do an excellent dead stick landing on the side of the lake. While I was thinking about where to land the glider, Boris radioed to say that he was OK, and as luck would have it I flew into a good thermal. We were obviously not going to get another launch, so I took the thermal and climbed out. My passenger enjoyed the rest of the TIF and was able to practice flying the glider.
We did not fly on Wednesday or Thursday because of poor weather. I did start to get the glider out on Thursday, but it needed the tyre inflating and this took a while. Meanwhile storms developed so we put it away again.
On Friday I planned to fly to Kempsey in the Jabiru with Geoff Neely in the Callair to ferry it to maintenance. However the weather prevented us - even though we planned to leave at about 6 am, there was too much cloud on the coast.
Garry came out to drive the winch and teach Boris how to do it. Al Giles wanted to get winch current again. On our first launch Al hooked into a thermal over the rock wall and climbed to cloudbase. He did another couple of launches in the Grob, then I thought I'd do one myself in the front seat. Big Mistake. Didn't fasten the back canopy and it flew open on launch and smashed. So I am sorry to say that due to my stupidity, the Grob is out of action once again. Luckily there is another canopy in the country and it is on its way to Tom Gilbert's. With any luck, it should only be two or three weeks before it is flying again.
I am hoping to fly home this weekend with the Jabiru, and return with the Bathurst tug PPC, which we are hiring for a week. With any luck we will have one of the other tugs back after that.
However winch launching is a pretty good option - you don't often need more than one launch if it is a good day.
Jenny
