Early July!

Been a bit quite on the blog lately as I have been quite busy. It has been freezing cold here.
On Thursday Friday Saturday and Sunday and attended a theory course with Judy McKenzie at Gunnedah Aero club for a private IFR (instrument flight rules) rating. Learning something new with the power flying - its all a challenge. On Thursday I thought I might as well give up, but by the time Sunday came around I was getting to grips with it, and managed to pass the exam. Now I will have to find time to do the flying in the Gunnedah Aero Club's Piper Archer.

Meanwhile Vic ran the day on Thursday, and Tony Esler (club member) and friend Barry McCarthy were at the club. Tony flew the tug, Barry flew the Junior, and Vic supervised. Many thanks to Vic for covering for me. They had a good day, and Barry managed to soar for about an hour. I think he will come back later on to do his silver C badge with us here. Tony and Barry left on Friday, because the weather at Caboulture (where they came from) was looking dodgy for Saturday. Tony has a private IFR rating.

On Saturday Garry flew the tug, Vic took up a couple of air experience people and Christian and Ray Tilley flew their gliders. From the flight sheet it seems they had soaring flights.

On Sunday Phil Anderton flew 8 launches, including some very high ones in which Matthew Minter was doing some filming. Ray Tilley, Gabriel Kalkbrenner, John Steward, Peter Sheils all flew, and Peter took up a passenger flight.

On Monday we had 10 flights in cold windy conditions. I have two youngsters Scott and Mark Robinson here on a course, and Gabriel and Matthew did some flying together - Gabriel getting used to flying in the back seat of the Grob. John Hoye did the honours with the tug!

On Tuesday John Hoye towing again, and I had a flight each with Scott and Mark. However the cloudbase was so low that John waved us off at about 1200 feet to avoid going into the cloud. Good opportunity for the boys to see the wave off signal. Some people came along wanting Air Experience flights, but we couldn't do it because the cloud was too low - a real pity. We put the glider and tug away, and warmed up a bit. By the afternoon the weather cleared and we were able to start flying again, however the wind was strong, and very crossed on the runway. We ended up taking off on runway 32 and landing on 27. A difficult introduction to take offs and landings for the boys, but they are coping quite well.

On Wednesday we got the glider out, and were sitting in it waiting for the tug , but it started raining, so we decided to give it a miss for a while. We ended up not flying and had quite a bit of rain, low cloud and strong wind. It was very very cold!

Some hang gliding friends who have crossed over, Mike Rose and Mike Zupanc turned up having driven through snow to get here. We rigged Mike Rose's Pik 20E in one of the new hangars out of the rain. He offered me a flight in it but unfortuneately I have not had chance to accept!



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