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From: Garrett Russell
Date: Sun, May 6, 2012
Subject: Three cheers for the passengers at YCAB today
To: cgcnews@groupspaces.com
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There’s
nothing like a passenger to get a soaring pilot in the air
on a non-soaring day.
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One
look at this picture tells the story of why passengers and
member friends were the making of today:
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See
the inversion layer in an otherwise calm and extremely
tranquil sky?
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It’s
the reason why only two of today’s ten flights were solos,
and why the day could have been a dead flat non-event except
for the presence of two AEF passengers and four family or
friend pax.
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There
were no pre-solo members, so it looked as if there would be
nothing for Duty Instructor John Clayton to do until Alex
Horvath arrived looking for a check flight or two. Meanwhile
AEI Neil Muspratt was joined by Chris Weir and Steve Bowtell
in keeping CQC and QGA fairly busy with all those visiting
faces in the front seats.
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We
also had a visit from the Queensland Police Service
investigating the theft of our Falcon wheels, which made for
an interesting mix of vehicles around the Pie Cart for a
short while.
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The
two solo flights were by Kevin Rodda, catching up on flying
time lost through his superb efforts yesterday to replace
said stolen wheels (much appreciated, Kev) and Alex after JC
decided he didn’t want to fly with him anymore.
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The
two solo flights were by Kevin Rodda, catching up on flying
time lost through his superb efforts yesterday to replace
said stolen wheels (much appreciated, Kev) and Alex after JC
decided he didn’t want to fly with him anymore.
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Best
flight was 51 minutes for Chris and one of his friends – a
very good effort in the inverse circumstances. CQC notched
up a total of 7 flights for 3:34 and QGA 3 flights for 1:34.
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Steve
Bowtell also relieved Tony Sorensen for a bit of the tug
flying, while Simon Descovich ran a friendly but tight ship
as Duty Pilot in charge of all those pilots and their pax.
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That
just leaves the assistant instructor – me – unaccounted
for.
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I
didn’t fly at all today, but I did have
my head in the cockpit for much of it, working with Bert
Persson to rid a certain wooden glider of some unwanted
passengers. Quite a number of them, which we persuaded to
bail out with the aid of insecticide and a vacuum cleaner.
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With
any luck tomorrow’s soaring and pre-solo pilots will enjoy
an equally brilliant day with less inversion, more lift and
the prospect of seeing one of the gliders in this picture
take off with just one living creature aboard:
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Garrett
Russell
for the Sunday duty crew, pilots and passengers
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Webmaster's
Note:
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The
visit from QLD Police was not just in relation to the stolen
Falcon wheels, it
was
mainly part of giving police the big picture on
recent criminal activity around the airfield (which includes
an axe attack on a twin engine aircraft that was parked in
front of the chopper hangars last Thursday night and a
break-in to the Aero Club's meeting rooms last weekend)
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Above
photos courtesy of Kevin Rodda.
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