Are you under 25 in 2015? Are you aware that the Junior World Gliding Championships are to be held in Narromine NSW in 2015? Did you even know that there is a Junior World Champ’s? Did you know that there are gliding competitions?
The 2015 JWGC website is a little blank at the moment as its a little far out, but here it is none the less…

http://jwgc2015.com/

The worlds are held every two years, like the senior comps, and this year they are being flown in Leszno Poland. We have four pilots going to the Poland worlds this year to represent Australia, the website for the competition can be found here: http://www.jwgc2013.eu/

So to all those new young scholarships students and junior (under 25) members of HVGC, or anyone interested for that matter, come and find me (David Stuart) around the club if you want to know more or check out the websites above. YOU could be flying for Australia at Narromine in two years time!

What a great day Monday 5th November was in the Hunter Valley with 5 x 500km flights flown from the club’s airfield at Warkworth. Check out the OLC link below for full details of the flights, however a summary of the flights is;

• Mick Webster flew 588km at 99km/h in his LS3
• Paul Mander flew 576km at 98km/hr in his ASH-25
• Jeff Hunt flew 520km at 96kmhr in his Ventus
• Richard Frawley flew 506km at 96km/h in his Mosquito
• David Pickles flew 485km in his PIK (OK, I know this isn’t 500km but it is close enough that it deserves a mention)

There were also another couple of flights and the total OLC distance flown for the day from Warkworth was 3,174km.

These 500km flights were also backing up another 2 x 500km flights by Paul & Mick on Sunday. The flying will continue all week and I expect that there will be a few more notable flights before the week is out.

Congratulations to Jamie Antonuccio who was sent solo for the first time on Saturday 27th October by instructor David Pickles.

Jamie ready for his first solo                                                         Last minute instruction from David Pickles

Jamie is one of the Club’s scholarship students and started his instruction on 6/11/11. Jamie went solo on his 44th flight and there is a rumour that he has beaten his dad to solo and won a bet.

Jamie has also asked me to express his thanks to all of the instructors who worked with him and to the club and to Coal & Allied for the scholarship.

Jamie after his flight.

Well Done Jamie!

What and absolutely fantastic, fun filled flying weekend it was.

Saturday produced 14 launches and Sunday was absolutely awesome with 28 launches of which 4 were club launches and the remainder Cadets.

Many, many thanks to all who made the weekend a success including Damian, Lawrie, David, Scott Robinson and Wally all who made that extras bit of effort when called upon.  Plenty of activity in the new club house also, and many thanks to those who are helping out.  We really need the club house for our November week so good job from all.

From a sporting perspective both days were magnificent.
This season has opened with exceptional weather. It is only October and already we are logging 300 and 500k flights as though it was an every day occurrence (which it is ) Check out the OLC.

Saturday = 1332k (including Morgans effort at the nationals (well done Morgan keep it up)).  Also Arie and Peter Rundle launched from Central Coast had lots of fun then landed at Warkworth.  An intrepid flight to say the least and a nice 330k from Arie.
An excellent 500k from David the 1st for the season but not the last.

Sunday = 2000k including a very nice 400k from Paul Jacobsohn (and Dad).  This was Paul’s 1st excursion across the Liverpool ranges.
My 1st 500 for the season and a nice bit of practice for the 750k which will probably happen next weekend )

Welcome to our newest member, Peter Jacobsohn (Paul’s dad).  Peter has now joined and experienced his 1st training flights with Damien last Saturday.  I reckon he only comes to keep an eye on Paul ) and one of them needs a name change as when the Duo launches it is crewed by P Jacobsohn x 2.

Next weekend is going to be very busy with cadets on both Saturday and Sunday.  Please make an effort to be there and help out.
To get though all the flights without stress we need to be ready to start flying at 09:00 or earlier.

Don’t forget it’s flying Friday and the long range forecast is looking excellent.

Mick Webster

The Bunyan Wave Camp is on again this year. There is a large collection of the usual suspects plus a few HVGC members. On Monday the 24th, we found some excellent wave up to 16,000ft. The photo below is not actually in wave but it shows the Snowy Mountains.

Mount Kosiusco is somewhere in the middle. It’s not actually obvious which mountain is the highest.

No matter which airport you go to there always seems to be the plane spotters at the end of the runway. Here at Gloucester the cows cross the end of the runway on their way to & from milking. I had just pushed to the end of the strip to launch as the cows were crossing and they all stopped to look at the Jantar. This caused a bit of traffic jam as all those at the back kept on comming & pushed up to look as well. Can you blame them as it is a lovely glider!

I flew for an hour on the ridge this afternoon for a very relaxing flight after the trip from Warkworth and rigging the Jantar. It really is a very beautiful place to fly and visit. Checkout the flight on the OLC link below.

The autumn has not been kind with rain causing progress to be slow. However the bulk of the earthworks are just about done, with the retaining wall underway and minor landscaping to complete around the outside. Inside the painting of the ceilings and walls in the main area are complete, you can see Paul Disckson installing power points and light switches. The meeting room and the office still need another coat on the walls. Very soon we will take delivery of the amenities building and we are planning the installation of the incoming power cable on the weekend of the 23^rd and 24^th

I will admit, today’s weather forecast looked gloomy. Even the weather at briefing spelt out lots of cloud and some rain from about 1000. Right on cue, the cloud rolled in from the South East and shadowed the valley. However this was short lived, by about 1100 the cloud evaporated and left an entirely blue sky. Tom, a visitor from the Grampians Gliding Club turned up requesting a mutual flight. I motivated Paul into tugging and we quickly prepared the Puchach for flight. The flight was a blissful 24 minutes. Afterwards, Wally was brave enough to take a launch with some small CUs developing over Redbank. With no other members or visitors wanting a launch I returned to the new clubhouse and continued some minor work around the outside. Paul Dickson was doing some electrical work inside the clubhouse when at about 1330 we looked up to see this beautiful sky of CUs. Our tuggie, Paul Thompson had gone home, however Jeff arrived just in time to get roped into a launch, Paul and I enjoyed an acrobatic training flight and after an hour with 7 loops, 8 wing overs and several good strong climbs back up to cloud base, Paul was feeling off with all the aeros, so we made tracks back to solid ground. Wally finally returned after 3¼ hours of good quality winter soaring.

No rain or showers in sight. Don’t always trust the forecast  !

Congratulations to James Mahoney , who was sent solo on 22nd April by instructor Graham Rock.

James, who is a high school student from Lake Macquarie, is one of the Coal and Allied scholarship students and he started his training in October 2011. His flying has progressed very quickly because of his application to flying and regular visits to Warkworth. James soloed on his 31st flight.

I’m sure that if James continues his training in the same way as he has to date that he will be gaining his “Silver C” in no time at all.

Congratulations again James, from everyone at the HVGC.

James ready for take off. Just look at the size of that grin!

James at the controls on his 1st solo

The Easter weekend was very well attended by the Vintage group and we did get one 13.5m glider here to fly some silver-C tasks. The best flight of the weekend was Dave’s 260pt/223km effort. However most people elected to go home on Monday.

Tuesday was the best day. David Goldsmith did 120km in the Ka6e and then Jenne took the same glider up for a short flight and did 150km!

Wednesday was declared a rest day.

Thursday was absolutely epic! We started out with the idea to fly to Lake Keepit (300km O/R) but took a look at the Liverpool Range (below) and decided that the higher layer of cloud on top was going to make it difficult. Not to mention the clouds touching the peaks. The south-westerly was blowing up the face of the range, encouraging good thermals along the line of hills for 100km. Dave actually outlanded at the Denman ultralight strip and got a re-light to continue soaring. Then Mick called ops-normal from Wellington! The race was on to go west!

Before takeoff, we had looked at the meteorological predictions for the day and each formed an opinion that the thermals would stop around 4pm. Well, we were partly right and partly wrong. The good thermals stopped at 3:30. This left all of us stranded some 50-80km from home. But there were enough poor thermals to stay airborne. A reasonable headwind was blowing so, to gain 1000ft on the final glide, we needed to thermal up 2000ft as we were drifting away from home so quickly. Mick pushed forward in a show of bravery but ended up too close to the hills to actually utilise any thermals. He landed at Jerry’s Plains/Arrowfield and managed to get permission for two aerotow retrieves from there. This gave the rest of us the confidence to push away from our last stepping-stone and head in for a squeaky final glide to Jerry’s. Some somewhat more useful thermals were found and everyone made it home, nearly two hours after the thermals had ’stopped’. Mick achieved 408km, up to the outlanding and I only did 354km but I had a ‘closed’ triangle so my OLC score was significantly higher than Mick’s.

Friday’s flying was influenced by the experiences of late Thursday, so we all turned for home early - about 1:15pm. The SparrowHawk was best able to use the gusty thermals of the day, so just squeaked in ahead of Mick on OLC points. The photo below is an unusual mine blast, spotted while on the homeward leg from Broke.

Check out the OLC scores for Warkworth takeoff: OLC Flightbook Warkworth (Note that the permanent link on the right-hand side of this Blog only shows HVGC pilots.)

Check out the ranking for HVGC in the worldwide list of clubs. Statistic Club OLC Before Easter, we were 26th in the world. Now we are 25th! That’s a pretty good effort for the 13 pilots who uploaded flights to the OLC. We are beating much larger clubs. [The ranking for Warkworth as a takeoff point is much lower - around 56.]