Another weekend of contrasts except this time Saturday was the good day.  We had many members turn up to fly and the two 2-seaters were fully utilised.  We flew almost up to last light, with an aerobatics demonstration done as late as possible to avoid the turbulence of the thermals.  Dave Pickles flew 332km, according to the OLC evaluation of his flight.  David Stuart, a student from Newcastle, came out for the whole weekend and joined up as a club member. 

On Sunday, several private owners came out to the airfield, washed their plane and put it back in the hangar.  It was a good day for training flights, with Michael Laurent having his first flight in the Junior.  He’s under 18 and doesn’t even have a driving licence yet, so you can’t ask him to shout you a beer in celebration.

Saturday and Sunday were not two sides of the same coin.  They were surprisingly different.  We had a lot of pilots turn up to fly on Saturday, including several students.  The annual inspection on the second 2-seater was completed in the morning by Jeff Hunt and it was fully utilised on training flights throughout the day. 

However the soaring conditions weren’t very good for those pilots who wanted longer flights.  There was a very strong inversion at 3000ft and absolutely nothing was going to break through it.  The visible colour of the inversion was very strong.  Normally it is a yellowy-brown but it went beyond brown on this day.

There was some more work done on the Jantar.  Brian loaned his boreoscope to inspect inside the wings.  Here are club members Damien Hamilton, Ian Steventon and Mark Rowe polishing the wings.

Late in the day, Rohan Hall (facing the camera) and Nick Wills took a flight in the Dimona.

Sunday started out shrouded in fog.  Only the keenest pilots ventured out to the club.  David Pickles had been keeping a close eye on the weather chart and said that today’s chart (below) looked similar to other good days.  Well, it had to be better than yesterday but Dave was trying to say that it was going to be a REALLY GOOD DAY!

Dave was absolutely right.  It was a fantastic day.  We got to 10,000ft easily and flew hundreds of kilometers.  Even with a dead battery in the club Puchacz, Phil Eldridge was able to go further into the hills than he had ever been before.  Click on the online contest link on the right to see all flights for the club, or click here for today’s scores only.  See how Jeff, Dave and Mick used the conditions to go to different destinations.

At the beginning of October, I took the mighty Duo up to the Queensland State Competition.  None of the syndicate members wanted to come, so I invited volunteers from the HVGC club members.  Manfred Laub put his hand up, so he got a week’s flying in the back of the Duo, learning how to fly competitions. We came fourth in Open Class, if you were wondering.

Many glider pilots will know Ian MacPhee.  You probably don’t know how he ties his glider down at night though…

Yes, Macca really has parked his car on the wingtip, with an old tyre to soften the blow.

The DDSC club has extended the class system for the gliders into the showers…

(I coudn’t find the Open Class shower, but I’m still looking.)

This weekend saw a big turnout on Saturday.  Many pilots stayed for the radio breifing even though most of them already had the endorsement in their log book.

There were a couple of check flights - Akko (James) had a spin check…

There was also a lot of work to do preparing the club planes for the upcoming season.  Several club members helped polish the Puchacz wing, but only Seph stayed around to get his photo taken…