G'day and Happy New Year to Martin and Adrian in Argentina - I am told you are regular readers of my ramblings on this blog!
A great soaring day today. Cumulus all over the sky, some with 6 to 8 kt thermals below! Actually the winter vario in the Grob was reading 10kt at times, but I think it may have been a bit optimistic.
Matthew Minter took Kate Esler for a flight in the Garry's Twin Astir in the morning. We told him to launch on runway 32, and then changed ends on him while he was in the air, so he landed back at the wrong end! Sorry Matthew.
Garry flew the concrete swan to Split Rock, Baan Baa, Nea Silo and back to Split Rock again before coming home. He was in the air for more than five hours.
Greg De Vries had a late start in the LS7, 1400, and flew for just on four hours.
A former member, Alan Pilkington, turned up today. As he is not all that current in gliders, although current in powered aeroplanes, a check flight was in order. I inspected his log book, and thought he might be a bit rusty on aerotow so I arranged for Boris to give him the works on the tow. I only expected to be in the air for about 10 minutes, so didn't bother to cover up much against the sun or take any food. We flew in the Grob Twin II and Alan had no problems at all!
Three hours and quite a distance later, he consented to bring me back to the airfield! Luckily I did have water with me, and even more luckily, I didn't drink so much of it that another problem arose! I didn't touch the controls for the whole flight! Can I still log that?
Alan flew out to the Kelvins, and then over almost to Split Rock where we encountered Garry on his travels, then back to Mt Borah, where we saw about 6 paragliders and 2 hangliders heading for the bomb out. They must have launched into a sink cycle. Then over to the Kelvins again and along the Carrols. The conditions became better and better as the day got on, but cloudbase was only about 6800 ft. I think it got higher later in the afternoon. Much airbrake was required to get down!
Not quite a 750 day I don't think, but 500 km would have been on had one been prepared!
Only four launches today - where was everyone?
1 comment:
This is a comment Garry Speight wrote on the club's yahoo group about the day's flying
My take on 2/1/08 is a bit different to Jenny's.
I spent more time studying the Blipmaps than I have before. They have a wealth of information, which is hard to digest. They showed that the day would not be very good, and would be good only in some places. The very small area between Manilla, Boggabri and Curlewis would be better than anywhere else, and would have scattered Cu. Still the day would start late and start to die early, at about 5 pm. The easterly would weaken in the middle of the day and strengthen in the evening.
My task was Split Rock Dam - Baan Baa Airstrip - Nea Silo - Lake Keepit (221 km) and I planned to do it twice if I went fast.
I did not go fast at all. The thermals were mostly hard to find, weak and broken. Most were about 3 knots and a very few 6 knots.
When I got back to Keepit there were only a few big clouds left. I succeeded, after a lot of hard work, in getting back to Split Rock, 6 km out in the blue, with height to get home. It was 293 km in 5 hours.
Harry Medlicott was flying with others from Narromine to the Tooraweenah area. I gather they had similar conditions, but blue near Narromine.
Garry Speight
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