The new clubhouse was opened in style on Saturday 25th November in style with our annual club dinner and awards presentation.

In recognition of the efforts by Damian Hamilton toward the construction of the clubhouse it has been christened “Hamilton House” in his honor. Damian was a driving force in the inception, planning, project management and construction of the clubhouse over a period of several years and he was thanked by our president, Mick Webster, during the dedication. Many others that also but in a large amount of work construction the clubhouse were also thanked including, Ian Boggard, Brian Giersch & Paul Dickson to name a few.

A large part of the funding for the clubhouse has come from Coal & Allied at the Hunter Valley Operations mine and the clubhouse was officially opened by the mine General Manager, Tom Lukeman. Also representing HVO at the dinner were Tom’s partner, Sarah, the Technical Services & Planning Manager, Brendan O’Brien & his partner Kerrie and the Land & Property Manager, Jennifer Anderson.

After the official opening and champagne to celebrate the members & guests moved into the brand new clubhouse where a fantastic meal was served by the caterers, Mottys Far Cuisine. During the dinner the awards were presented for the 2011/2012 flying season which were;

• Outstanding Flying Improvement - James Mahoney & Jamie Antonuccio
• Best OLC Flight from Warkworth - David Pickles with a flight of 477km at 89.8km/hr
• Most OLC km’s from Warkworth - Mick Webster with 8,754km flown
• Most Improved Cross Country Pilot - Mark Rowe
• HVGC Artist Award - Brian Giersch for his flight trace of a starfish on
• Outlanding Award - Andrew Sutton for his landing on the mine haul road at Mt Arthur North
• Best Chef Award - Aa Li Webster for continuing to feed the club members and visitors

After the awards & dessert the celebrations continued late on into the night with grand tales being told of past epic flights with booming thermals at every turn and cloud streets to the horizon in every direction. As the evening turned into the next morning the talk turned to the future flights that are going to be flown from Warkworth that would be even more epic than the old ones!

There are lots more photos of the event in the website photo gallery under the album People & Events. Click on the link to open the Clubhouse Opening Album.

http://www.hvgc.com.au/gallery/album10

With a few additional changes the clubhouse looks very different.

Aa Li started putting up the curtains on the weekend and Mark gave me a hand by touching up the skirting boards after they had been replaced. It won’t be long now until it is completed!

The new clubhouse is progressing well and the floor was completed by Ian on Sunday. Brian & I have patched and painted all of the skirting boards and these are now ready to be re-installed. Aa Li gave the whole clubhouse a spring clean and swept up all of the dust and dirt that the rest of us have made during the construction.

Over the next couple of weeks the deck to access the toilets will be installed along with the skirtings re-installed, the back filling of the retaining wall and the carpark and land scaping.

The Clubhouse & Toilet Block

Main room looking east toward the kitchen and looking west

The retaining wall at the rear and the veranda

The clubhouse is getting closer to completion. Ian has finished the kitchen and Andrew has started spray painting the ceilings.

Completed Kitchen. The tiling will be done around the window next and then the trim finished off.

Andrew in action. You can see from the amount of paint splashed on his clothes that he is very enthusiastic about his work!

The new ablutions block is due to be delivered at the end of the month so the opening party is not far away now.

This weekend started out with a lot of rain. The excavation for the new septic tank looks more like a puddle. (It’s 2.5m deep!)

Saturday was a good opportunity to do more work on the clubhouse, now that the basic gyprock is installed.

Sunday looked really promising for flying. The sky was blue, the cumulus clouds were popping and two students turned up to meet two instructors, ready with two 2-seater gliders. We also had a visitor from Germany who was escaping their harsh winter for a few weeks in Australia and Sunday was her only opportunity to get a glide in Australia.

The runway was inspected in great detail and we selected the best-packed gravel section to operate from. Unfortunately, just towing out, one Puchacz sunk into the mud until the fuselage was resting on the ground. This didn’t even look like a boggy patch. Six club members spent an hour cleaning the mud out of the undercarriage. We decided that it was too risky to operate with undetectable patches of quicksand on the runway.

Here, Ian has nearly finished cleaning the undercarriage.

Today the builders finally returned to the clubhouse and installed the doors, so the clubhouse is locked up. The internal wiring is almost complete and plans are in motion to install the gyprock and kitchen. Today the plumber visited the site and will install the water pipes to the kitchen this week. This week we will also order the septic tank and new water tank. I have also contacted the builders of the amenities and bunkhouse, once we dot the i’s and cross the t’s we will order the construction of the amenities building. Before too long we will also install the drainage and retaining wall around the outside of the clubhouse together with trenching the power cable from the old hanger and constructing the piers for the amenities block.

The clubhouse erection is almost complete with only the doors to be fitted before lock up is achieved by the builders. We have also started the fitout and the wiring rough-in is 90% complete. The wiring includes 200m of lighting cable, 300m of power cabling, 500m of cat. 6 comms cable, connection for wireless internet and TV outlets.

The wiring rough-in of the building should be completed by next weekend and then we need to start the trenching for the connection to the new main electrical switchboard which will be on the side of the old hanger.

Dave Pickles in action up the ladder!

The western wall of the clubhouse during the wiring installation

Day 5 of the clubhouse construction. The builders have been going hard all week with 40° temperaturers on the ground.

Monday 7th November was the beginning of the clubhouse construction, Photo after day 2 of erection

We have a slab…