Mid-week 19-22 October

Juho Rossi arrived over the weekend, but had picked up a nasty virus on the plane, so wasn't feeling very flash for most of the week. So I flew the tug :(

Brilliant weather for most of the week. Our visitor from Caboulture David Austin, having flown with Gerhard on the weekend, took to the air in the Jantar on Monday. He is an experienced pilot who had not had much opportunity to go cross country, and had somehow managed to avoid getting his silver C (like some others I could mention!). So he came to us with the intention of rectifying this problem.

He achieved it in style on Monday with distance, height and time in the one flight.

John Clark and Ross Edwards also flew on the day. Since both of these pilots are good boys and put their flights on the OLC, you can see what they did!

Rod Harris (Mount Beauty club) arrived by DG 400 on Monday, but had a problem with his tailwheel, so was unable to fly on Tuesday. However the amazing Bob Dircks effected a brilliant repair and Rod was airborne again on Wednesday.

On Tuesday John Mcleod (Gympie Club) arrived by school bus intent on achieving his silver duration. As he hadn't flown here for a little while, although very current at other sites, he flew the Junior for a couple of hours on Tuesday just to get used to things again. Dave Austin and Garry Speight flew together in the Twin Astir, but got a bug in their pitot (painful) and had to land. It took quite some time to extract it, but they launched again at about 4 pm and flew until 6. Once again Ross Edwards and John Clark flew their respective self launchers. Not as many cus as the day before but still good.

On Wednesday we set a 300 km task - the blip maps promised good lift all day. Chris and Errol Carr flew together in the Grob, Dave Austin flew the LS7, John McLeod flew the Junior Ken Flower flew the Pik 20E UMC and Rod Harris flew the DG400. Rod had mentioned that he had never done a 500km task and claimed the diamond distance, so we picked one out of the book - the one that zig-zags back and forth between Edgeroi Weris Creek Narrabri etc for him to try and programmed his logger.

David Austin did his Gold distance and diamond goal, and thinking that he had to do five hours again for the gold badge, did five hours! Chris and Errol didn't quite make 300km in the Grob, but not far short (see OLC, I grabbed their logger!) as they were a bit pushed for time. John McLeod finally achieved his five hour flight and height gain - but I thought he cut it a bit fine - five hours and 4 minutes. Rod didn't quite get his 500 as he had to start his motor just short of the Kelvins (near the mine). A pity because as soon as it was going he flew into a boomer. Still thems the breaks with motorised gliders. A good effort nevertheless.

On Thursday the weather was very unstable with storms and over development around. John McLeod elected not to fly, applied to join the club, and departed for Gympie once again. He has also volunteered to help out at the comps, so he'll be back soon.

Garry and Dave Austin planned their cross country flight to Kentucky, Rod Harris took off in his DG 4oo south bound on his way back home. He has been doing a solo "safari". Todd Clark came out to fly to Kentucky also, but got involved with runway works and was late starting. The sky looked ominous but both Garry and Todd made it to Kentucky easily, with climbs to 12000ft! Rod made it to Parkes. Allan Buttenshaw and I loaded our gliders into trailers and drove to Kentucky.