Who would have thought that you could soar 380km on a day like this?

This photo is from late on Sunday, when the whole sky had been completely overcast by cirrus clouds all day and the cumulus clouds had almost completely disappeared. We were stuck on the other side of Muswellbrook and had to take a 1 knot thermal to get up to final-glide height. Little did we know that there were still 6-knot thermals going to 7000ft!

Earlier in the day, this was the view crossing the Liverpool Range north of Scone: under 4000ft, overcast with cirrus and raining. But we snuck over the range and flew up to Breeza before returning.

Here’s the video of Mark’s landing after his successful Silver C flight on Saturday (30 seconds.)

The weekend started with Friday flying and recorded a total of almost 50 launches and 38 hours in club aircraft, also some personal bests. 24 launches on Saturday and 18 launches on Sunday with 8 students over the Saturday and Sunday. With the excellent weather on all three days brought out the best in everyone, from a packed house at the Saturday morning briefing to a Silver C claim by Mark Rowe (finally) and a Silver C height and 5 hours by Cameron Rowe. Dave Pickles test flew the PIC with new winglets and the first lessons for all 5 scholarship students. Thanks to all those who helped out to make this work so well, on the ground and in the air. More Happy Days to come.

D Hamilton.

“Hey Dave!”
“Yes, Jeff?”
“If we had one more feller, we could apply for the job!”
[Ask Mick to explain the joke to you, with his best Irish accent.]

The main topic of conversation at the club this weekend was the theory that the weather we have had this summer is exactly like the summer of 1984. This is a good thing because the late 80s had many great gliding days, with excellent soaring conditions. If the next few years are good, then you can trace it back to this prediction now.

We had an absolutely fantastic storm on Saturday evening. The rain was coming in horizontally. The small dinner party at the caravans had to relocate to the clubhouse to get enough table space under cover. The power was also knocked out for an hour over dinner but fortunately it came back on just in time to put the kettle on for coffee after dinner.

The weather is (un)fortunately very good for growing grass. The strip has now been mowed in its entirety, thanks to Mick and Dieter.

Of course, the weather is not so good for workshops, so it will take a bit longer for the workshop to grow back the cladding that it lost to the mower.

GZL has returned to Warkworth, after some much-needed maintenance. It has had its evaluation flight, thanks to Mark Rowe, and it’s ready for flying. One thing the external maintenance discovered: it had never been weighed since it left the factory. This has resulted in a significant change to the placarded weight limits for this airplane. Make sure you look at the placards the next time you fly GZL.

Over the recent weeks the club had some very enthusiastic candidates trying their best to win the HVGC - Coal & Allied Scholarship. 5 very talented potential students dazzled the instructors with their knowledge and ability. Selecting 2 from the 5 is proving to be difficult and will certainly be rewarding for the 2 successful new students. First to show their stuff was Brad, Mitchell and Alex. The following weekend was Clarissa and Jordon. 

Unfortunately my photographer was AWOL when ready to fly with Jordon. This by no means underestimates Jordon’s enthusiasm, knowledge and ability. 

If you were listening to NXFM this morning on 106.9, you woud have heard their daredevil segment about a glider flight at Warkworth.  They’ve even posted a copy of the video on YouTube, so we can watch it here.  (Remember that she’s acting for the radio and needs to add a few screams for dramatic effect.)

Thanks to Damian for being the instructor for the flight.

Well a little late, but better than never… some of you may know I spent a week in Narromine with the juniors for Joey Glide this month. Joey Glide is the Australian Junior nationals (under 25) and also runs a coaching week for juniors alongside the competition. I attended as a coachee this year and needless to say had a great time flying and mixing with the other juniors from around the country and overseas.

Just a short post, there Is going to be a bigger article in soaring Australia soon. I strongly suggest to our Junior members - get flying and come along next year. Great fun and you’ll learn a lot regardless of whether you’re being coached or competing.

It seems every year that “official” christmas parties like the office christmas party get organised earlier and earlier to ovoid the rush of christmas.  I predict we’ll be having the HVGC christmas party in October next year.  But that just leaves nothing to do on the last weekend before christmas.  Until Mick decided that he’d like to organise an evening barbeque. 

 Well! Nearly everybody turned up!

Aa Li and Mick were our chefs for the evening.

There was an enormous amount of food provided by Aa Li.  Have a look at the picture below.  This is how much food was left over after everyone had had enough! 

Some of the younger club members helped with the washing up.  The Vice President had to be shown that it was possible for men to survive the detergent without permanent scarring.

With the summer season well underway, attendance at Warkworth seemed unusually light.  I guess everyone had looked at the weather and decided that it wasn’t going to be superfantastic so they didn’t come.  Mark Rowe attempted his 5 hour flight on Saturday and came very close to success.  Next time he will try launching a bit earlier.

Sunday had a lot of visitors and some unexpectedly good thermals keeping everyone aloft.  The boys on the ground had to keep themselves amused by climbing trees.

We also had a drop-in from a hang glider who had flown in from the coast.  He was observed getting lower and lower untill it became ovbious that he intended to land on our airfield and wasn’t just passing through on a long cross country attempt.

This Sunday’s forecast on the Blipmap was showing reasonably high cloudbases.  It also showed that the day would shut down early due to sea-breezes.  So not a hugely promising day.  But exceptionally high cloudbases were forecast out west.  So it’s not a problem if the day shuts down early and you’re 120km from home if you’re at 12,000ft with a tail wind all the way home.

We didn’t see the forecast for wave though.  There were lenticular clouds all over the sky like a fleet of invading flying saucers from Mars.  Have a look at this one that’s beaming up an innocent cumulus cloud.

Here’s another one, pretending to be a cumulus…

 Check out the results of the flight on the OLC link on the right-hand side of this page.