Why we should tie our trailers down...

A strong thermal swept through the trailer park at Omarama yesterday. I've seen similiar thermals sweep across the Piako Airfield from time to time...

Our Local Hero

Mark Arundel...winner of the Community Service award.

Late Evening Wave

Another Badge Flight...

This time it's Paul and GYR in a 300km/5 hour Gold C Badge flight on the Kaimai ridge.

Another Successful Day

Maurice in Piako's PW6. He had a good day to train a student in ridge flying. Much of the Thames leg was at 800ft or less.

X-Country Course

Keith looking happy (and tired) after his 50km silver C flight on the ridge. Tirohia to Te Papa road-crossing. A good effort especially at the Te Papa end as it had blued out and any thermals were dying.

Watch the Day blue out...

Approaching Front

Don't panic...it's approaching Sydney.

So you are going to land-out at the Racecourse...

It's highly likely because we no longer have many other options around the Barkes Corner end of town. If you not high enough to cross the city...don't. We have had people land at the Boys College...fair enough but you can't see the footy field until you arrive overhead and what do you do if there is a game of rugby on??? There is no where else to land other than try make the airport or land in the harbour... There is Aquinas college (I've landed there...) but you have similiar problems with people on the park. There is the very good Poripori strip...can you get there? Is there cows on the strip? Over the summer there will be every 20 days or so. So back to the racecourse...are the races on? Chances aren't high as they only have 5race meetings per year. What's more likely is a horse event in the center. Usually every Sunday. Can you land on the back straight (next to Cameron Rd)...yes - it's 25 meters wide (probably rules out an ASH25 but all the club gliders will fit...carefully). Photo shows back straight looking towards Greerton (looking North). But beware that if you turn and look to the South there is a very high TV filming tower...bugger, you'll have to fly round it. What about in the middle?? They is one smaller paddock (180 meters tops) which is totally fenced off so there is a chance there will be no horses/people in it. Good surface but you'll have to stop in a hurry. The best paddock, assuming no-one is about, is in the center, approaching from the North and is 250 meters long...plenty of room.

Someone should go gliding...

Cloud base...5500-6000ft inland. Maybe a sea breeze at the coast. Light-ish winds mostly W to SW. If it doesn't get above 20 degrees at might be blue, and if it gets above 24 degrees we might get some heavy showers. Luckily the forecast temp is 22 degrees. So one should go flying...I can't...got a cold.

So what do we want in the Future?

How many and what type of tow fleet do we want? There are lots of options...the current setup, one big beast that keeps out tow pilots safe as they cross the buidlings, a light weight Micro-light that can be used for recreational flying as well...you choose. What fleet of gliders do you want? Old ones or new ones. Only gliders suitable for training whereas any competition/X-country pilots can buy their own, self-launching, no PW5's...you choose. How many members do we want? Do we want to continue our slow decline in numbers or do we want to boost our numbers...you choose. These are the type of things Strategic Plans attempt to answer... Come and have your say...Sunday at 9am.

So what do we want in the Future?

A little bird told me...

That a past CFI is keen on promoting the club buy a self-launching training glider. An ASK21 Mi comes to mind...picture provided. Why would the club invest $250,000 in a glider with 34:1 performance (remember a PW5 is 32:1...on a good day, with a tail wind, on the ridge in a 20 knot westerly)??? Come and find out on sunday....

Club Strategic Plan.

Remember we have a club meeting on Sunday to discuss the strategic plan. Have your say or don't expect too much empathy if the club does things you didn't expect. Oh what's this?? The new Duo Discus X...better than the older Duo cos it has landing flaps...one pilot claims it's easier to land than a standard Discus.

Late afternoon wave

Click on the embedded video to watch 2 hours of wave condensed into 10 seconds. It's best to click on the play button, then pause while your computer downloads the video then play it. The blog site degrades the video but if you click the download option it should be better...I hope. By the way...I have a new camera so expect lots of experiments.

Tough Day.

Very hard work getting out of the Tauranga area. Very nearly got myself into a spot of trouble getting low over the city without a land-out option. This is not what we are suppose to do...we should always have options. Cows on both airstrips, the races were on for once at the Racecourse, people on all the parks etc. A 2 knot climb out of the Route K valley saved the day...thank Goodness... Cloud bases were as predicted (maybe a little lower than I thought they might be), wave on the Tauranga side and ridge/thermals on the Waikato side. Was blue to the south as the sqiggly lines had forecast...nice to get it right for a change... One low point on the Waikato side...950ft going into the low hills just north of Paeroa...but otherwise an uneventful 270 kms (if you exclude the first 15 minutes...).

Lets go gliding...I hope

NOAA's back online... So...todays forecast is for 20 degrees in Tauranga and about 17 degrees in Taupo. Light to moderate westerlies...15 knots at ground level and 20-25 knots above 6500ft. There is an inversion in place at about 5000ft above the Bay whereas its not quite as strong further south. However while thermals may go to 6-6500ft around Taupo it may stay blue or at least the thermal markers will be small and shallow. This shouldn't be a problem here in Tauranga. I think there will be wave influence. It should be enough to hold the sea breeze out. But we will need things to heat up past 18 degrees before we can get going. The top graph is for Tauranga at lunchtime and the other is Taupo mid-afternoon.

For he's a jolly good fellow...

Community Spirit Awards Supreme Award goes to...Ta ta... Mark Arundel. Our very own CFI. Well done. And 10 points for those who nominated him. Todays weather??? You'd be better off going to work... NOAA off line again...this could get quite frustrating as it's the best forecast tool we have...Metservice and MetVUW are aimed at a different audience and really only provide little bits of the picture. Metservice can give us expected surface temperatues for various towns and cities. MetVUW gives quite good wind forecasts at different levels. But if you want to forecast thermals, inversions, high cloud etc etc we need to refer to atmospheric soundings. While NOAA's soundings are only a forecast to give you a handle on where the value is...last night I constructed a sounding for the Rotorua area. It forecast high cloud, mid level cloud especially during the morning (4000-6000ft) and things turning to "poo" later in the day. It also forecast westerlies increasing with hieght (as did MetVUW). As I look out the window at 10.30am I see high level cloud, crud at 4-5000ft and some signs of wave. None of it's worth racing out to pull the covers off my glider. And the weekend doesn't look too good. Hopefully I can get some soundings tonight or early in the morning.

Thursday

Unfortunately the NOAA site is down this morning therefore I can't get a handle on stability and likely cloud bases. I'll try it again in a while...interestingly it was down last week as well, that's the first time I've struck problems accessing the data. So what else do we know? The rubbishy front went throuh last night so we would have to expect more unstable air behind the front, therefore reasonable thermal development. The general air flow (winds) is S to SW. It's currently (7.30am) 5-8 knots SSW at the Mount and a bit lighter further inland. I'm picking 5000ft bases with sea breezes starting up by mid-morning. Dew point is round 4-5 degrees and expected highs are 18-20 degrees so the old rough rule of thumb...400ft x the diff between temp and dew point (14) = 5600ft. Should be a good day to task to Taupo.

Tuesday...with the benefit of hindsight

I got it about right. There was a sea breeze although not very well marked at times. The cloud bases were 6000ft and probably higher further inland. It was a 500km thermal day yesterday. Thermals and streets as far as the eye could see...just a bugger no-one was out to use it.

Let's try again..

Tuesday...it'll be soar-able today. Sea breezes at the coast but light westerlies inland. Cloud bases at the coast will be 3500ft but inland and around Taupo should go upto 6000ft. Could overdevelop late in the day.

Well I got that wrong...

Sunday. The sea breeze was much stronger than expected...probably because the SW wind was non-existent. It had sea breezed out by noon at home. Lower cloud bases inland probably due to moist sea air as well as the approaching scrappy front heading up the country. Oh well...next time.

Wx Sunday - 8 November

Looks OK actually. Light West to South West winds and probably sea breezes along the coast. Upper winds are light-ish SW...I'm not sure any wave will set up unlike yesterday. Forcast temperatures are 19 degrees in Tauranga, 20 plus in the Waikato and about 18 in Taupo. Expect inland thermals to go upto 6000ft and maybe higher over higher ground/forestry areas. If it gets much hotter it may blue out...but that seems unlikely. There is some suggestions of a layer of high cloud especially south of Rotorua so watch out for any shading on the ground. Go go go...(I'm mowing the lawns today). Tga - Tokoroa - Bennydale - Tga or Tga - Tokoroa - Reperoa - Galatea - Tga. Have fun in the sun.

Today's wee effort...

About 300km's...not the fastest day. Had a few lucky breaks, low save just as I arrived over farmland coming out of the forest. I had dumped my water, was looking for a paddock and cursing the Landcorp shepards who had set stocked their ewes in every paddock, when I stumbled into a 4-5 knot climb. Earlier I had been saved by a fellow pilot who found a climb near Goudie's. He went off and landed out. Got lucky again over near Tihoi...struggling around at 3500ft (the ground is probably 2000ft) without a real plan when I managed to contact a convergence and climb up to 7000ft, enough to run into the circle and final glide home. 15 minutes later the big Duo Discus missed the same climb and landed out...

A sample of where we get to...

Mark's Wave flight

Mark clocks another 200 kms. So far this summer we have accumulated 4500 X-Country kms out of Tauranga. So well done team. Edging towards 10,000kms.

Photo evidence...

Just to prove it was a blue day...this shot was taken on final glide - 35 kms out from Taupo. Ruapehu looked superb all day...the fact we could see it all day didn't bode well... But it was all action before the launch...

Day One at Taupoooo

Well it looked blue in the morning and continued to be blue most of the day. The task was cancelled by 2pm so we went free flying. A number of pilots completed the task - Taupo - Kaiangaroa - Rangitaiki - Purora - Home. About 250kms. Climbs of about 2-4 knots...cloud base of 6000ft in most places. Tomorrow doesn't look as good...and Tuesday looks worse...we'll see.

Sunday's forecast

The squiggly line graph website is down so I'll have to guess. Forecast high in Tauranga is 22 degrees. Current winds are light Southerly on the upper kaimai/Pyes Pa websites. Low cloud should burn off to give a good soarable day. Expect sea breezes if it gets about 18 degrees...the sea is cold and the land will get warm...classic sea breeze stuff. So with light SW winds (forecast to increase later today) we should get good convergences and higher cloud bases inland. I'd guess it'll be a Taupo return day without a land-out at ataimuri...