I am, we are off to the beach...the weather looks like crap from now until the 12th. Maybe a few sunny days, but with N/NE winds cloud bases will be low. No 3-500km chances for a while.
Piako are at Raglan for the next 3 weeks. If a very good SW looks in the offering I'm off to fly up and down the west coast. I'll keep you posted...
A couple of things from yesterday that I had forgotten to mention...
Firstly, the journey back over the Kaimai's was somewhat delayed as an ambulance had hit a bridge...if the patient inside was already dead does that add to the holiday road toll??
Secondly, there were 4 Discus flying out of Matamata yesterday GNM, GXP, GPV and GCS...what is the plural of discus - discus's's, discusi, disused, discussed, disrupted???
Third, one even landed out...well done that man...one got very low at Tokoroa, but got away...well done indeed, one forgot his batteries and had to bludge some off another pilot...not very well done...
3 pilots from Drury managed to fly down to Tirau/Putaruru, but whether they got home we never heard. GZM, GNT, GOP. GNT got very low at Tirau...wheel down and paddock selected, before fighting for 30 minutes to get back onto the hills.
This exposes the challange of managing a turbo...if he had flamed up then his task/contest day would be over. And given the suggestion of doing this at 1500ft AGL then my day would have been done for twice...Yesterday the cloud base was only 3500-4000ft, the thermals were well marked but quite short lived (because of the low cloud base) and tended to fizzle 500ft short of cloud base, that would give you an operating range of 1-1500ft (allowing time to find a thermal). Given my propensity to fight it out all the way down to the ground (which is probably why I land out from time to frequent time) a turbo will prove a challange indeed...I suspect I'll require almost as many retrieves as usual...
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