Welcome to Gympie on Australia Day 2015.  Hot sticky and humid – And that was at 08:00             

 

We had been disturbed much earlier by the sound of a drifter shattering the silence of a foggy morning.

 

Wayne Burgess, Mick Moloney and myself were the only Caboolture members still at Gympie.  Wayne departed early as his wife was complaining of de-hydration, so Mick and I packed our things and waited for the Gympie people to appear.  This they duly did and the winch and ASK21 were DI’d and the Team Briefing completed.  I then had two instructional winch launches in the ASK21, on the second of which the rope mysteriously parted from the glider and a right hand circuit brought us home.  Mick then had two launches with the same mysterious rope separation on the second one.  At this point our training ceased as Luke, who the previous night had refused the offer to go solo for the last flight of the day, did his check flight and solo.  It would be churlish to suggest that his desire to delay the solo for a day had anything to do with the fact that his young lady accompanied him and photographed the occasion.

 

Mick then departed for the long journey home, hoping to avoid the worst of the traffic but in that he was not successful, spending some time in the Bruce Highway Car Park.  I then climbed into the ASK21 for my first ever solo winch launch which proceeded according to plan until the power seemed to be reduced part way up.  I levelled out and released the rope to find myself at 1000’ (700’agl).  The ASK21 had no problem with a normal circuit from that altitude and it led me round to a fairly smooth landing.  When I asked “What happened” I was told that the rope had broken about 100’ from the winch which would have left me with 1000’of rope hanging from the nose.  As I released it it drifted under the parachute to entangle a large part of the surrounding countryside.  I retired to have a shower and change in the ¾ hour it took to sort out the problem before I got my log book signed and left for Bribie Island.  I was pleased that I was able to use Pumicestone Road to avoid the jam at the Caboolture turn.  I reckon that the chances of having a rope break on one’s first solo winch launch must be about the same as the chances of scoring a century in one’s maiden test match.

 

I believe that everyone who made the trip north enjoyed themselves, certainly the Gympie people made us welcome and we owe them a big ‘Thank you’ and also a big ‘Thank you’ to the Caboolture members who organised the visit.  May there be many more of them and hopefully we will see more Gympie members at Caboolture even though their consensus was that they did not like all the GA activity around us.

 

Best regards,