Mañana

Arriving back at Lake Keepit on Monday morning I peeked into the tug hangar expecting to see the new Callair there - but no. Thunderstorms had prevented its arrival. However Ron Cameron said that perhaps it would be here tomorrow.

So out with the winch. After a frustrating day of broken leaders and not working very well radios, we did get a few gliders launched, and some soaring was achieved before the thunderstorms set in for the afternoon.

A call to Casino on Tuesday revealed that the Callair had been put away on Sunday afternoon with flat batteries, and it was too far for anyone to travel 20km from Lismore to Casino to put the battery charger on it. However someone might be able to go there and put a charger on it on Wednesday morning. The plan was that Ron Cameron would fly over on Wednesday morning in his Cutlass with a mate who would fly the Cutlass back and he would fly the Callair back - mañana. Tuesday was not much of a gliding day, so no one was too worried about not flying. We got lots of jobs done around the place. Harry and Harry planted some more grass seed.

On Wednesday we heard that Ron had made it to Casino and that his Cutlass was back at Inverell - maybe he would be able to get through the storms back to Inverell that afternoon. Then we heard that he couldn't get through and that he had got the tug to Tyagarah - maybe mañana. Another ordinary sort of day at Lake Keepit and no one was interested in winch launching.

Thursday the weather on the coast was terrible, but the time at Tyagarah was well spent, and Ron and Macca were able to make adjustments to the rigging to make the aircraft fly nicely. Ron set off in the evening, and Boris and I planned to fly to Inverell first thing on Friday morning to fetch it. But Ron was unable to get through the weather and ended up at an airstrip on a property near Grafton, miles from anywhere, and had to sleep under the wing wrapped up in a tarp he found in the hopper. Well we knew that would be pretty uncomfortable, so we were sure he would make and early start mañana en la mañana! (tomorrow in the morning).

Friday dawned and Ron made it to Inverell in the tug. But we still couldn't have it because it had a couple of serious oil leaks onto the exhaust manifold which the owner had not been told about by the users at Casino. We had to wait for Paul Mitrega at Inverell to fix them. I flew Boris to Inverell anyway, and left him there as I had to get going with the twin astir trailer to get the Grob fuselage back from Temora.

By about 3 pm Boris finally arrived back with the aircraft - so we hooked the tow rope on straight away. Harry Potts, Harry Medlicott and Dave Shorter launched. It looked like a very good day. I left with the trailer before they came down.