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Weight
& Balance Saturday |
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27-Jun-15
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When
I arrived at the airfield this morning Lindsay
Mitchell and Speedy Gonsalves already had the Kookaburra
(GLM) in Hangar 105 with Robert Bradley and John Moore
on hand to complete the "weight and balance"
measurements for both GLM and the IS-30 (GQA). I
hadn't realised that Robert is a huge Kookaburra fan
.... and he was able to pass on several tips to Speedy
and me in relation to our much loved little piece of
gliding history.
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Robert Bradley with Kookaburra GLM -
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I had
volunteered to fill in as both Air Experience
Instructor and Duty Pilot today to free Lindsay for
the maintenance activities that had been arranged. So
it was a Duty Crew of myself, Dave Donald (Duty
Instructor) and Steve Chapman (Tug Pilot) that headed
for RWY06 with GYK and a group of friends that Dave's
daughter Natalie had brought with her.
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We were keen to
be active reasonably early as the forecasts were
suggesting that the weather
would deteriorate in the early afternoon and it looked
like there could possibly be some lift available to us before
then.
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Natalie Donald with her dad Dave -
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The
assembled maintenance guys looked very short-on for able-bodied people to lift IS-30 wings from the
containers to Hangar 105, and then to rig the IS-30. My aim
therefore was to hijack a couple of Nat's friends to
assist Lindsay and Speedy while Dave was in the air
... firstly with Nat's friend Ryan Walker and then
with Nat. There had however been a group of helpers
magically gathered from around the airfield before
we could get back to
assist.
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- Rigging IS-30 GQA in
readiness for her weight and balance -
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Our
"sort-of" optimism about the possibility of available lift turned
out to be nothing more than a "pipe-dream"
... Dave's flight with Ryan was 15 mins, his flight
with Natalie was 14 mins and my solo hangar flight was
20
minutes.
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It turned out to be a short day for gliding
operations with first launch at 10:10 am and last
landing at 11:35 am.
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Steve
and Dave took the opportunity to head for home while I
joined Lindsay, Speedy and Bert Person (who had
arrived mid-morning to again work on the IS-130's
canopy) for a short lunch break at the Sundowner
before we returned to more work on GQA, tying down GQA
and GYK as well as end-of-day gliding operations paperwork.
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- IS-30 GQA in the tie down
area ... close to flying again -
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As you
can see from the above photo, the weather wasn't conducive
to gliding in the afternoon.
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Isn't it great however to
see GQA refurbished, rigged and in the tie-down area
... very close to being at the flight line
again?
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Many
thanks to Robert Bradley and John Moore for giving up
their Saturday to
complete the weight and
balance measures on GLM and GQA.
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Many thanks also to
Bryan Carpenter for generously allowing us to use Hangar
105 to be out of the weather and wind which makes the
process so much easier.
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Regards,
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Kevin
Rodda
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AEI
& DUTY PILOT
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