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.