For a day that registered only six flights, the last Friday of July had plenty of action, drama, tension and cliff hanging suspense – and it wasn’t all in the genuine Mayday emergency landing that punctuated the middle of our day on RWY 30. Read on.

The action started in and around Hangar 22, where an assembled throng of about seven Friday regulars helped Kevin Rodda rearrange the furniture in preparation for the upcoming week of airworthiness training at Warwick. 

Lindsay, Kevin, Speedy Gonsalves and David Guzzwell are all going to the course and Kevin is providing his ES-KA6 as a sample airframe for the wood and fabric component. Consequently, GRS had to come out of the hangar, the Grob 109 had to partly emerge, and GRV had to come down from the ceiling and out into Speedy’s trailer. There are no photographs of this activity because it was, well, too active to allow any snapping time. 

Suffice to say that Barry McCarthy, John Clayton, Tony Sorensen, Arthur Mailey, Charles Hoch and Bob Hainsworth all felt the need of a cup of tea by about 10:30

There was plenty of time for a beverage because in a parallel activity Karl Bodi was busy having Sandora do an instant job of fitting new brake pads to SPA, with the result that it was after 11:00 before we were ready to commit CQC and GRS to the sky along with some heavy power traffic.



That sky tells you all you need to know about the morning lift. There wasn’t any. A mutual for Arthur and Charles, check flights for Simon Descovich and me and Ka-6 solos for Barry and me were all under 18 minutes. It was pleasant rather than exciting – all the way until the Mayday.



This RV called in with engine failure and all runways were quickly cleared for him to land where he could. We watched him approach 30 with plenty of height and a windmilling or idling prop. Too much height, so we watched him divert towards 24 and eventually around onto 12 with very little runway between him and the trees. By this time he was headed for a totally dead stick landing – which he handled like a glider pilot!

Note the sky in the photo above, which was taken at 12:18, because just when you’d think a Mayday is enough excitement for one day, the weather had more action to deliver, and it delivered faster than a pizza franchise.



13:14 Lindsay and I take off for his annual check flight and ten minutes later we find ourselves facing a dramatic change in the weather. A sinister front coming fast from the south west. But it’s not all bad news. Notice the vario? And that’s flying straight and level.



13:28 Lindsay is struggling to stay in air space and he hasn’t done one full 360 turn! It’s about this time we get a call from base to come back to the tie downs. They’re packing up while the packing is good.

After 31 minutes of trying to avoid lift all over the sky we eventually land with the flight of the day in our logbooks and whimsical smiles on our faces. It’s not often you hear the excited chirping of a vario at four knots and a heartfelt “Bugger” within the same few seconds.



13:55 Within twenty minutes of landing CQC the glider is tied down and covered, SPA and GRS are back in the hangars, all vehicles are parked and locked tight and we hunker down for the front to dump its worst on us.



But by 14:18 we’re wondering what all the rush was about! 
The front swung south east and we had the surreal experience of driving home off a dry airfield on to surrounding roads which were drenched.

Oh well, there’s always tomorrow and Sunday, and the early shower delivered at least one silver lining that I can report.



I was home in time for a walk on the beach, something that does not often happen after a winter day’s flying. And I saw a whale, just beyond that furthest break. But like the hangar action there is no photographic evidence, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Honest.

Garrett Russell
For the Friday Action Heroes