When
I arrived the cloud base would have been lucky
to be 1500' with only a slight breeze.
Peter John took Alan Graham through the finer
points of D.I'ing the IS-28 but that was the
only activity till after 0930 when the clouds
started to clear and the prospect of
committing aviation became a
possibility. There was more
activity meanwhile as the full duty crew of PJ,
Mick Moloney, Steve Bowtell, Alan Graham and
myself plus Speedy, Alex Horvarth and Dave
Cocker did some serious standing and talking
and talking and standing and watching the sky
slowly clear.
With
little possibility of more members interest PJ
took over the tug duties to let Steve go home
to domestic duties. That was after
Steve had recovered the missing fuel card from
the depths of SPA. As
the clouds cleared the wind started to
increase and we set off to 12 with the winds
increasing significantly.
I
took the first flight with our pax Ian
Ashbrook, an ex RAAF Group Captain with untold
hours in Winjeels, Caribou, Sabre jets,
Canberra bombers plus goodness knows what else
but to my relief never time in a glider.
With the wind speed rising it was quite
bumpy till about 1400' then there were big
thermal 'bubbles' and the usual bigger sink
holes. There was variation of 7-8k+ to
5-6- in a single full turn. Interesting
flight but still gave Ian a 27min flight.
Mick
then took Dave Crocker for a 15 min fight
followed by a 15 min with Bob Farrell and we
called it a day. 57min total for 3
flights. Conditions were becoming very
trying and as Alex and Alan had both had some
experience in strong wind conditions there was
not the desire to push the envelope to give
them the experience. Something for
low hours to be aware of is you need to gain
experience in adverse conditions in case you
need to land in them.
Take-off's are
optional. Landings compulsory. It
was a good day to gain wisdom that might help
us at another time.
Just
before we left PJ and I noticed the 06
windsock showed a solid 30k Southerly.
A
Happy New Year to Everyone.
See
you in 2013.
Cheers
Lindsay
Mitchell.
[Sorry
no photos today.]
PS.
I will be doing a hangar situation
update in the near future when the silly
season is over and my relatives have returned
interstate.
