18th September

Hello All
Fantastic weather today and yesterday, and the Callair is back again, although the powers that be seem to think it needs to have navigation lights - just in case we go towing at night!

Phil de Joux our new member from New Zealand has adapted to the Junior very successfully, so much so that we are thinking of throwing him into the Jantar Standard! Denis Stacey has had his towing permit revalidated by Phil, but has been helping me with instructing while I have been flying the tug since it came back on Tuesday evening. On Monday and Tuesday we winch launched, and good soaring flights were had. Robin did about 350km yesterday in his Ventus.

Hartmut Lautenschlager can come out to fly for a week or so, and passed his AFR today no problem after a year not flying! Well done Hartmut. Good to see you back in the air.

This afternoon Phil landed the Junior at the end of the runway, but decided not to fly again - what could I do but fly it back to the hangar! Dennis obliged with a tow, and I climbed out to about 4000ft, then made my way to the north toward Rangarai where the clouds were better. 6 kt thermals, and max height of 5500ft. Felt a bit guilty being up there in work time, so flew back to the field and made the hangar landing.

The bugs on the wings of all the aircraft are terrible. Really have to wash them off in the evening before they set hard.

The plan is to drive home this weekend and pick up the LS7 from Temora, so then all our fleet will be flying except for the LS6, which I can't get back to working on because everyone keeps flying!

The weather has been beautiful this week - no better place to be than here! So all of you had better get those AFRs done and out of the way, because you are already missing great soaring weather!