Saturday 29 December

At last a day off where I could go gliding!

It rained during the night and the ground was wet in the morning, so most at the briefing were full of doom and gloom. I wanted to do a 750, and tried to get organised to launch early, but couldn't get my act together soon enough. Besides which the weather didn't really comply.

That we could launch at all was only due to Miro Mikus doing a lot of tractor work after flying yesterday. Our visitor from Switzerland, Hans Hiltbrenner did a lot of tractoring too under Gerhard's supervision. The grass has really grown heaps.

I filled the glider with water and was the first to launch at 1210, but a near relight caused me to dump all the water - so much for that idea!. Eventually did get up again though. Joined up with Allan Buttenshaw in his Cirrus and Nick Singer in his Pik. The original idea was to fly to Bingara then Moree and back, but the clouds were better to start with over the Kelvins, so we headed off towards Kaputar first. Then we decided to go to Belatta rather than Moree, as there was a blue hole there.

Garry Speight in the twin astir decided to go to Bingara and was accompanied by Geoff Neely. Garry changed his destination to Warialda once he got to Bingara and then back home again.

Allan Nick and I lost each other near Kaputar, but met up again at Bellatta. Decided it was too blue to head to Bingara to meet up with Garry and Geoff so headed back to Keepit. I got left behind as usual, as I decided to go for some nice looking clouds that didn't work.

Allan got a bit dehydrated and landed back at Keepit, but Nick and I met up with Vic Hatfield. Nick and Vick went south to the gap and back to Keepit. I was too chicken for that and just flew to Manilla Silo and Split Rock Dam hoping to meet Garry and Geoff coming back.

All of us got back to Keepit - no outlandings.

Meanwhile back at the field Rob de Jarlais was duty instructor and checked Jim Thompson out again for solo, after which he did a couple more solos including a soaring flight of over an hour.
Rob also flew with Karen Sage in the Grob.

Boris did all the towing - 15 launches with the tug and two self launches.

A good day!