3 August - catch up

Its been fairly quiet at the club since I got back from UK.

My first week back, the weather was pretty cold and miserable. The committee decided to get some work done on the tug while things were quiet, so I flew it up to Armidale, met Todd there who drove me back to Keepit. Todd has been doing heaps of work on the aeroplane up there.

We brought back the Puchatek fuselage, and eventually managed to get it off the trailer. It's still sitting derigged in the tug hangar - thought we might as well do the Form 2 before we rig it again.

Transferred the Junior to the tug hangar too - it needs its form 2. Retrieved the fuselage cradle from Tamworth - it was in the "mobile sign" i.e the trailer.

There have been some quite nice looking days - Garry Speight took up a couple of joyflight people on the winch and managed to soar for 1/2 hour, despite the late start. Next day he flew with Lauren Goddard who needs to get a winch endorsement. Lauren had been having a few problems with landings in the Grob - I warned Garry about this, and she then proceeded to do 5 perfect ones!

We are still using the old winch, as Harry's had a problem with the lead in gear - which is now fixed, but not yet returned to Lake Keepit. I am hoping to become endorsed to fly and drive the new winch soon. I am getting very good at getting the old winch out and putting it away again. Winch launching is a sociable activity in winter, and heaps cheaper than aerotowing.

Gabrielle Kalkbrenner earned a heap of brownie points one day stamping over 1000 payment envelopes with the correct BSB and account number. John Clark earned some more by soldering the connector on to the battery lead in the Grob, which had come adrift. However he lost half of them again by complaining about the connector!

Al Giles helped me clean all the gunk off the winch so that we could try to see where the oil is leaking from, and also tied some rops to the tie down cable down near the yellow windsock on runway 14.

Lauren and Warren (dad) Goddard helped Garry and I to de-rig the Junior after flying last week.

I still need a gang of people to erect the new yellow windsock on runway 14 - will probably need about 4 people to do it.