“The more you fly, the more you understand how
little you know about the sky.”
This was Bert Persson’s sage observation about
the relatively low level cloud street running SE
to NW across Caboolture, with wave-like lift apparently unrelated to wind or
terrain (running in the blue between and
parallel to the cloud streets), which
provided an enjoyable but mysterious soaring
playground today.
And what has all that got to
do with refueling a Mustang fighter?
CAC engineer Dave Kingshott, seen here between
fuel consumption trial flights, was on hand
because of those flights to meet Lindsay
Mitchell, Steve Bowtell and me first thing
this morning. He checked out our Pawnee and
declared it fit for towing. So you could say
today was a Mustang-powered flying day.
Steve had to get back to work, and with Alan
Graham, Speedy Gonsalves, Kevin Rodda and Tony
Sorensen the only members who responded to
this morning’s notice of the good news (Bert
was coming out to self-launch anyway) it was
never going to be a huge day. So the IS-30 was
the only club glider we towed out to RWY12.
From there, after duty pilot David Guzzwell
and tuggie Mark Thompson launched AEI Lindsay
Mitchell on a 25 minute passenger flight, the
Kookaburra joined us for a total of five
aero tows (three for GQA and two for GLM) while Bert and Kevin launched their
TSTs on RWY06.
We won’t say much about the Kooka’s flight
times, except to mention that for close to 15
magic minutes Speedy and friend Danny
Vandermalle gaggled in that
cloud-street-cum-wave lift with Bert and
an IS-30 crew.
That crew was Alan Graham in his first flight
on type, scoring club-launched flight of the day at 51
minutes, despite the weight of the duty
instructor behind him, and finding a new love
in his life to fill the gap left by the IS-28:
Kevin just beat us with 52 minutes. Bert came
back after 2 hours 15 and a trip as far as
Woodford. But I still think Alan deserves the
overall gong, gained in a sky which Bert also
described as “intriguing” and
“difficult”.
By early afternoon the cloud street was
dragging a lot of misty rain towards the
airfield, so we wrapped up by launching Alan
and Tony for a short tie down flight. Then,
while some warmed up in the Golden Wings club,
the rest went home with extra jumpers and
jackets on, leaving the airfield to a convoy
of fire trucks on practice drills.
Club results for the day: GQA 3 flights 1:26
What are your chances of encountering
cloud-street-cum-wave-lift on YOUR next outing
to YCAB?
