Tuesday was a really good cross country day. Garry was not available to fly with John Trezise, so I stood in. Steve Hedley flew with John Hoye in the Nimbus. We called a task to Manilla (20km) Gurley (40 km) Mullaley (40 km) - about 380 km point to point. Flynn flew the Junior again, but just local - he hasn't done outlanding cheques yet.
The day was quite good, but not all that easy. Not all the clouds were working, there was a north westerly wind about 10 kts, and cirrus came over to the north. John and I in the Grob twin 2 had a close shave near Mt Borah, came very close to landing in a paddock, but managed to climb away over some chicken sheds eventually. At this point, Steve and John in the nimbus 3 overtook us - not exactly unexpected! We continued to the north to the west of Mt Kaputar, and just clipped the 40km circle around Gurley and turned back. Then we had another struggle in the valleys in front of Kaputar but eventually managed to climb back up near cloud base, and worked out that we had final glide. We did consider going back via Gunneday to complete the task - the clouds were still working in that area, but we decided to call it a day and go home while we still could. 257 km, in five hours!
Meanwhile Steve and John did the same as us, just clipping the circle around Gurley, but then they headed for Mullaley. Conditions were good in that area, so they continued on to Spring ridge before turning for home. They had a bit of a struggle on the way back, but returned to Keepit OK. They did about 450km for the day - a really good effort. The flights are posted on the OLC.
No comments:
Post a Comment