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| Garrett's
report on yesterday's gliding operations at
Caboolture was headed "we could have flown
until sunset" ... well we almost did just
that today on a day of solos and sunburn! |
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| The
last landing was at 5:16 pm ... so after we had done
the end-of-day paperwork, bedded down the
tug and gliders, then enjoyed some pleasant conversation in the hangar ... I finally got the
chance to close up Hangar 22 in the dark at just
after 7:00pm. |
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the Savannah
(want-to-be-glider) at the RWY12 flight line |
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With very ordinary
looking skies and it seriously looking like rain
early, the Duty Crew (Tony Sorensen, Kevin Rodda and
Mark Thompson) were assisted by Garrett Russell, Jo
Wooler, Chris Weir and Jason Humrich in heading for
RWY12 with the pie-cart, the Twin Astir (IKW), the
Blanik (GYK) and the Libelle (GJY). We had been
joined by then by prospective new member Jessica
Bellamy and her father Dave. After a short delay
with Mark sorting out a minor issue with the tug's brake's we
had the first glider in the air at 10:38 am. Lindsay
Mitchell also assisted in the tie-down area ...
however he and Loki were here
for maintenance on the IS-30 with Bernard Gonsalves,
not flying! |
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From then it was
action-a-plenty all day with a group of four
arriving for AEF's (Amelia Jones, Andrew Watkinson,
Roderick Jones and Lindsay Betremieux). Garrett
and I enjoyed taking these first four flights in GYK
and IKW respectively and found patches of
narrow lift that peaked at 5 knots. With the line-up
of people waiting to utilise both GYK and IKW, we
were returning deliberately as opposed to riding out
the lift ... including on my first AEF a straight
line run at 80 knots from to the northwest at 4,000
ft back to the airfield and then orbiting in a big
arc down to circuit joining
height. |
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just two of our four
female flyers today - Jessica Bellamy and Jo Wooler |
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Chris Weir took full
advantage of the opportunity this had provided when he
recorded the flight of the day (1 hour 6 minutes)
with friend Lloyd Atkins in IKW from a 3200ft launch
at 12:39 pm. |
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Another visitor to
the pie-cart today was Neil Schaefer who at one
stage had been on
the radio calling me over to some lift where he was
thermaling nicely in the Savannah with motor idling
(he climbed in the thermal from around 1700ft to cloud base at
4000ft). Neil generously took Jessica (who is considering
joining CGC as a starting point for a career in
aviation) for a flight in the
Savannah. |
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"Juliet
Yankee" (the Libelle single-seater) ... Jo's
panoramic photo |
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Rod Elsworth called
in to say g'day and promptly had the sleeves rolled
up to help us cover Duty Pilot matters at the
pie-cart before joining Lindsay and Speedy to
"supervise" maintenance on the IS-30. Karl
Bodi turned up a bit later in the day to
"assist Tony" with Jo's transition from
the Blanik to the Libelle before taking over tug duties
(which allowed Mark to get away early). Garrett
returned later in the afternoon (after attending to
Aero Club business) to help us retrieve gliders and
bed them down in their pyjamas at the tie-down
area.
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