More instructors than you could poke a stick at at briefing this morning. Allan Buttenshaw, Gerhard Stuck, Nick Singer, Garry Speight, Wendy Medlicott and me. It was like herding cats trying to organise them!
Garry kindly came along to be the intrepid test pilot for the E-tug - which hasn't flown for a while. We gave it a very thorough DI and removed several wasps nests. The phone rang hot with truckies trying to deliver stuff for the new hangar.
An AAT task was called - Barraba 40km, Narrabri 30km, Spring Ridge (40 km) and back to Lake Keepit - about 320 km nominal. 3 hours.
Ian Sawell want to do an AFR, but I persuaded him that we should do the task in the Grob in the process. Garry did a circuit in E-tug and it seemed to go OK, then he launched Harry Medlicott full of water. Then Nick self launched in the PIK, and then Wendy in her LS8. Allan Buttenshaw in the Cirrus and finally Ian and I in the Grob. Bob Emery kindly did the wing running for most of the gliders. Rod Loder was last in the DG 400, but he took off a long time after us as he had some problem with his vario. The tug appeared to be OK, it did five launches without incident.
Harry did over 300 km in three hours and would have had easily the best time round the course. Wendy turned back after Barraba. So I guess its one all now.
Ian and I climbed out sort of OK at Lake Keepit and set off for Mt Borah. Had a very long glide along the ridge, and encountered quite a few paragliders. None of them seemed to be in anything much, and in fact we saw a number of them landing. Eventually connected with a screamer at just over 8kts on the average back up to cloudbase at about 7500 ft. Off to Barraba, but just turned short of the airstrip as it looked a bit dead further north. It looked very dead toward Narrabri, so we went only to the southernmost extremity of the circle. Got up again near Boggabri, and headed off toward Gunnedah. It was looking tempting to head straight back to Keepit, but I thought we would be able to just nick the edge of the Springridge circle and then head back. This involved a long glide under a very grey area of cloud, but there was a fire which attracted gliders like a magnet. We found good lift under it, and also met up with Allan Buttenshaw. A quick sortie to the south to get in the circle then back to the fire to top up again. The glide computer said we had 2000ft above final glide when we left - but it just didn't quite look that good. In the end we got back at about 2000 above ground for a distance on 211 km.
We were happy that we had just made the task, especially as we were late leaving, and the sky overdeveloped later on.
Gerhard did the task, so did Allan. Rod and Nick had technical outlandings both having to start their engines.
A good day, followed by dinner and grocery shopping in Gunnedah. As it was Nick's birthday, we had birthday cake on our return to the club house.
Lots more people turned up this afternoon. We are hoping to do training and checks in the morning so that the instructors can go XC in the afternoon.
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