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Mysterious
Day at YCAB
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22-Jul-12
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From: Garrett
Russell
Date: Mon, Jul 23, 2012
Subject: Mysterious Sunday @ YCAB
To: CGC Members <members@glidingcaboolture.org.au>
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There has been plenty of
mystery in the air around Caboolture lately.
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First there was the mystery
of the missing tail dolly, which was finally solved on
Friday with CQC being returned to full manageability on
the ground.
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That was Friday morning. By
Friday night the mystery of the Barina keys began to
unfold. This one lasted all through Saturday, with the car
immobile where it was found and photographed by correspondent
David Higgs, but was solved before most of the crew
arrived on Sunday morning.
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Chris Weir did some early
sleuthing around the scene of the mystery and found a
clue:
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Good
to know that they are around!
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This led him to where the
airfield security patrol had hidden the keys in the boot
as a precaution after they found the car unsecured and out
in the open on Friday night.
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So it was with a full
complement of vehicles and gliders (well, CQC and GQA)
that Sunday flying got underway. A more than full
complement of instructors of all ranks, too, with a total
of nine around
the pie cart at one point in the day, all available to
pass on their wisdom to sole pre-solo pilot Tim Williams.
Is there another flight training facility anywhere in the
world that can boast such a level of service?
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Spot the instructors in
these happy groups:
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Tim
Williams (trainee), Lindsay Mitchell (AEI), John Clayton
(L3) and Kevin Rodda (AEI).
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Mick
Moloney (L1), John Ashford (Tug Pilot/L2), Chris Weir
(AEI) and Garrett Russell (L2).
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The only faces missing are
Barry McCarthy (L2), the day’s duty instructor, and another
AEI who shall remain anonymous for the moment due to his
role in yet another airfield mystery:
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The
Strange Disappearance of the Tug
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Who
stole the tug ... a dejected John "Scrubby"
Ashford heads for home!
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John Ashford
took a brief leave of absence from towing to do a BFR
check flight in a Cessna, and returned to find SPA had
disappeared from where he parked it. The culprit was
another of our multi-tasking tuggies who had come out to
see if any passengers needed flying only to find himself
press ganged into the Pawnee. Can you identify him?
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Winners
are grinners ... Karl "Car-bull-ture" Bodi
(Tug Pilot/AEI) between afternoon aero-tows.
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With so many instructors,
only one student, a couple of passengers and it being
July, quite a few annual check flights featured in the
day’s tally of nine launches. They kept the average
flight time down, but there was plenty of lift around in
the afternoon, with Tim Williams achieving two thousand
foot climbs on one hangar flight and Kevin Rodda scoring
flight of the day at 1:02 on the other.
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View
to the north west from QA as the late afternoon clouds closed in on Kevin Rodda's hangar flight.
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The statistics:
CQC 7 flights 1:35
GQA 2 flights 1:55
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There was also plenty of
powered activity including bulk joy flights:
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AN2 (VH-CCE) manufactured in Poland under license to the Russian Antanov company ... is this the biggest single engine biplane in the world?
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And to maintain the air of
mystery, we’ll leave you with a pictorial puzzle to
solve. One of the members present was accompanied by his
sister, who flatly refuses to ever fly with him because of
how he treated her in the swimming pool when they were
young. He used to put her on the bottom and stand on her
to see how long it took for the bubbles to stop .
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Garret Russell with today's mystery guest ...
all will be revealed!
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A suitable prize for the
first to identify the mystery member from his sister’s
photograph (and a clue: it’s not the member photographed
with her).
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Cheers,
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Garrett Russell
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[Photography: Kevin Rodda and Garrett Russell]
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