Garrett has asked me to pass on his report of last weekend's airfield activities.

 

Now that our email system is snugly bedded down, and with script and photos courtesy of our Grumpy Old (camera) Man ....

 

 

 

... here it is ...

 

 

Garrett's Weekend Report

Yes, there were gliding operations at Caboolture last weekend, as advertised by Mike McCluskey’s photo from the field on Saturday morning. But consistent with the club’s run of luck lately, the weather turned out to be not quite as advertised.



Kevin Rodda shot the counterpoint to this scene an hour or two later as we huddled in the Pie Cart from a heavy shower of rain with just one launch registered on the flight sheet. The between showers total for the day was about six flights including what turned out to be both first launch and tie-down flight for Kevin in GQA. Tuggie Mike Maddocks ran out of clear sky to tow him into at 1,500 feet!

Among the other handful of short flights, Theo Mus logged his first experience of releasing above some clouds and flying above a rainbow, which he thought was très cool:



The final result for Saturday was an early shower (pardon the pun) for the crew, but not without a day of activity and achievement. Look back at Mike’s publicity shot and you’ll see Lindsay Mitchell and Speedy busily evicting a tribe of ants from CQC’s plumbing while John Ashford and Bert Persson help Chris Guy assemble his newly acquired TST self-launcher in the background.

Sunday was better for weather but the better day was wasted on just the duty crew and two AEF passengers. We doubled the flight sheet to four launches with a couple of check flights for Alan Graham, one of which involved an early release by David Higgs. Alan handled the emergency very well, especially as he appeared to be the only person on the entire airfield who did not see it coming!

The Sunday crew ended another short day by putting covers on the three gliders which had been too wet to cover on Saturday. So they had the honour of being the guinea pigs who had to work out how GQA’s brand new covers go on:





So now we have all gliders covered, our standby tug in the hangar and a much better forecast for this weekend's weather. Make the most of them all this Saturday and Sunday!

Garrett Russell
for last weekend's crews