David
Higgs' report on Saturday's gliding operations at YCAB covered weather conditions that
went from dust to flooding rain ...
Kevin Roden, John Ashford, Adam
Charrington and I were joined by Mike Brunt, Karl Bodi, Mike McClusky and Rod Elsworth for
some Saturday Soaring. Pawnee, Blanik, Blanik and Twin Astir were rolled out and
DI’ed.
Speedy cruised past, sneaking away to
an aero club breakfast and asked if anyone wanted to join. Actually, not sneaking this
time as Bert was in the van too! Sorry Speedy but with this much activity on a Saturday
nobody was about to take a break.
Our surprise visitor was Lindsay, keen
to finish off the Form 2 on the IS28. Helping hands popped the canopy on and washed down
the aircraft.
Evidence of the dust storms became
apparent when Karl only had a dusty wingtip to clean ....
We shuffled off to runway 30 in the
heat and humidity. Rod and I were first up with a check flight. After a very bumpy tow, it
was mainly sink from release to joining crosswind.
Next on tow was Kevin with Mike Brunt
in the Twin for a mutual 37 minutes soaring, our longest flight.
Karl was reminded, like all of us, just
how hot the metal aircraft and fittings can get as he carefully eased into GYK for a solo
launch.
Mike McClusky is keen to get his rear
seat endorsement so we took to the skies with me up front. Another very bumpy tow up but
on release at 2,500’ the lift was booming. We zoomed up to 3,500’ very quickly
and then scampered out to the step to keep it going. Mike again hit lift and it was
express elevator action to 4,500’. It’s one of the few times at YCAB I’ve
watched the altimeter moving around the dial. We then took full advantage of the height to
run through stalls, spins, tight turns, side slipping and anything else I could think of
to check Mike out and to help keep us under 4,500’. When we eventually overflew the
field we noticed the windsock was indicating 06 so Mike put us down there and the crew
soon joined us with pie cart and aircraft. All this in a very exciting 33 minutes. If you
have some bandwidth to burn (it’s a 13mb video), here’s 400 ft in 30 seconds
– 8 knots average - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5njeLl2-VQ
At this stage the IS28 was being towed
out so I invited myself along to the 3,500’ evaluation flight with Lindsay.
Everything checked out very well – it was good to get upside down again - and I
am sure Lindsay will have now completed the official paperwork. We hit a few raindrops on
crosswind, some pinging on the canopy on downwind - later confirmed as light hail - and
some rain on final. Here are some flight snippets (note - this is a much larger video at
80mb) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blo0lzzXKY4
By the time we rolled to a stop the
rain had set in and we waited 5 minutes in the aircraft until the heat and humidity became
the second best option to a soaking wing walk back to the hanger (for one of us !). We
were the fifth and last flight, landing at 12:41.
Back at the hanger we got
everything under cover except a Blanik, a tug, and a tuggie when the heavens opened up. It
was torrential for a couple of bursts and no-one could be heard in the hangar.
Caboolture Airfield River feeds
into the lake behind the tug ...
We currently have this ....
... but may need this .....
It wasn’t until 2 pm that
everything, and everyone, was in the hanger, squared away and wiped down. I headed off to
the city for what turned into a very late night fix-it job at work – hence the late
report – and I was surprised to see by the time I reached the service centre on the
highway everything was still bone dry. Guess we were just “lucky” –
cooperative club members up for Saturday soaring but uncooperative weather.
Thanks everyone for making the effort
and for your persistence in the sometimes marginal conditions.
Cheers,
Tired David |
