A new way to get high...

The incentive to get over to Matamata today was the opportunity to get a tow behind Aviation Sports micro-light tow plane. A bright yellow one at that...
So how was it?
Almost as good as Piako's big Pawnee. Certainly nowhere near as loud.
Take off roll was a little slow to get going, but once we were up to speed everything else progressed like a normal tow. If I had had water on things would have been a little trickier...although the wing runner barely took 2 steps...
From the feel of things it performed better than our club's small Pawnee and similar to the Cub.
Have a look at the climb rate on tow - 5 knots.
It's worth noting that the little yellow tow-plane was also dragging a Twin Astir into the air every 30 minutes or so, all day long.
They towed the Twin down from Auckland on Friday on 23 liters of gas...whereas a Pawnee would have used 123 liters...perhaps.
The way of the future...

OK so what was the day like...fairly average. I over called it a bit. It got better and better but by 4pm bases were only 4000ft and climbs of 3-4 knots. 1 land-out that I heard of.
3 hours of practise...practising sitting still for 3 hours...

Finally...

After 24 years...I hope we don't have to wait another 24 years...I'll be 71 by then.
Well done...I wonder how many people were admitted to hospital with heart attacks last night...
(for those of you who live somewhere other than NZ, what am I talking about - the Rugby World Cup of course. Much more exciting than the world soccer contest who's results are picked by an octopus, or the world baseball series which is a competition between the US of A and and and no-one else)

AND...we will geta thermal afternoon.
Not an absolute stunner but not too shabby all the same.

Light westerlies, thermals to 5000ft by 1pm and going higher later in the afternoon.
Might be the odd blue patch.
Shouldn't be any overdevelopment except east of Rotorua.

Let's do it...

Today's Forecast

The RASP makes a good case to get all hot and flustered...
However the wind will be a problem...it's quite strong which will make the thermals quite hard to work.
A clue is the stipple on the RASP thermal strength forecast.
The squiggly lines suggest something quite similar.

We are on the edge of a really good day but i think the SE to S winds will which it tough.

Unfortunately there is a small wrinkle in tomorrows forecast...I had hoped it would be a ripper...especially as the wind was dropping and going more westerly...we'll see.

Saturday looks OK...maybe a few showers Sunday and be Monday things maybe deteriorating..

Weekend Weather...

It's looking better and better. Especially for the Sunday Speed Challenge. Tauranga has piked out assuming they will tow to the ridge and complete the task...so we can expect one flight rather than the opportunity for 4 or 5 pilots to compete and learn.
In fact the chances on even one trip seems remote...especially if it turns out to be a real busy time the airport, (with all those Rena rubberneckers, helicopters, TV crews etc), and Airways propensity to close upper airspace at the slightest challenge.

Never mind, those of us who are real glider pilots (in a real Discus) are determined to get out of the grasp of the babysitters in the tower and will put in the real kms.

The RASP seems to have stalled...hopefully itself sort itself out soon.

Let's get this Show on the road...

Kaimai Speed Challenge this Sunday.
Can you be the fastest pilot on the day?
The women's NZ 100km out and return record is still unclaimed...
The fastest 2 seater speed set so far is a pathetic 142 kph...should be beatable in a PW6...

I'm expecting a light ridge/thermal day so it'll require real skill not just "who's got the biggest pen@# - sorry most water on board"

And after the fun have a beer, maybe a hot sausage and a yarn at the Clubhouse.

Maybe I should have got motivated...

I looked at the forecast and the sky Sunday morning, and given the 1am finish to the party associated with the Welsh/French game, I decided to take a nap.
As the saying goes "You snooze, you loose"...

Maurice's high point for the day...about 250 kms.
I wonder what the low point was;
Was it in the first 5 seconds of the game when Cooper kicked the ball over the line...a sign of things to come.

Duty Day

DIFOTIS...otherwise known as Delivered In Full, On Time, In spec...

And so I was yesterday...opening the gates to the public at 9am. First on site...

We had one booked trial flight...who didn't show up.
In the end we did 4 training flights and 1 member headed upstairs for a private flight....

And for all this we had 2 instrustors rostered on...
All of this could happily have been handled by 1 instructor while the other got some work done...
Oh that's right we roster 2 instructors cos 1 might forget to turn up...does it follow that we should roster 3 because 2 mightn't turn up???

Why we continue doing what we have always done, despite the world changing around us, beats me...

The DG400 has been out and about despite the fairly average weather. 165 km track which wasn't too bad given the 4000ft cloud base.

Let slip the dogs of war...well maybe the cardigan crowd.

Part 115 made it's way into law this week.
The full transcript makes for interesting reading...and it's only 12 pages long...too bad for a Gov't document.

The two interesting tables I thought were these;
The first describes the cost of accidents by aviation type...note the huge cost from hang gliding/paragliding (I can see why I left those sports 20 years ago...if I hadn't I mightn't still be here) but also skydiving and micro-blighters.

Now lets look at the cost of implimenting this wonderful new regulation...

If you add up the 6 years worth of on-going audit fees for gliding it equals the accident costs...zero sum game. If only it was that easy...what the table doesn't disclose is the CAA costs of operating this scheme...another $120,000 per year...which they will recover elsewhere no doubt.

Also I'm not sure it encapulates the cost to gliding of up grading instructors and tow-pilots to CPL's???

So what can we conclude from the first glance at this regulation;
For gliding the costs will out wiegh the benefits to the public.
Gliding has suffered from the bad accident rate in other sectors.
Clubs will incur costs even if they don't register or carry-out "joy-rides".
The current Government has failed in its pledge to "cut red-tape.

Is your glider Organic???

It might be important...a farmer outside Palmerston north has managed to have a Golf course closed down because the miss directed golf balls were not organic and therefore compromised their Organic Farm status. (National Radio rural report)
Our friendly farmer claimed 20,000 balls were retrieved from his paddocks alongside the golf course over the last 12 months. This raises more questions than it answers;
1) Are there "non-organic" golf balls??
2) How totally myopic are their Organic certifiers??
3) How bad are the golfers from Palmerston North?? 20,000 balls in 12 months...that's 55 per day each and every day of the year...go figure.

This only illustrates the total nonsense that is "organic food"...because by default the rest is non-organic...yeah right.

So if you are considering landing out you might want to have a "fully organic" sticker on your glider...you could cut one off a package of over-priced, insect infested, grotty looking organic carrots from your local supermarket perhaps....

Testing times on the High Velt

Normally a test flight is carried out on grey day with marginal conditions...but not in South Africa.

Brett tests his new JS1 with a quick 150km out and return, cloud base 13,000ft.

Our Blackest Day...

With the drama associated with the grounding of the cargo ship "Rena" on a reef I almost forgot to remember NZ's worst day with 800 men killed in a morning and 2700 killed, wounded or lost over the course of the whole day.
No it wasn't Gallipoli but Passendale...12th October 1917.
What's almost unimaginable is large numbers of these ANZAC's had survived Winston Churchills failed campaign in the Dardanelles...just when they thought things couldn't get worse.
The Wellington Rifle Regiment...327 men went forward - 15 came back. The Otago's feared little better.
A mother just outside Woodville lost 4 sons in WW1...2 in this offensive.

Tyne Cot...200,000 names, Menin Gate another 50,000 plus...add to that Polygon Wood (Australian Cemetery), the Canadian Cemetery, and Langmark (the German Cemetery -225,000) as well as a large number of smaller grave sites scattered around the local area. And then after all that the Allied forces gave up all the gains in the spring of 1918 as the Germans overran the area.

The RASP has been saved...

Just like "Rena" the RASP was headed for the reef with it's valuable cargo in peril...(perhaps it might be a bit soon from this analogy).

The story so far, in case you may have forgotten;
The RASP is a neat piece computer modelling that helps us make sense the likely atmospheric conditions.
It uses computer processing power like a 180 hp Pawnee uses available runway length on a still day towing a fully laden Duo Discus with the airbrakes open...quite a lot.
We need to pay for this...free lunches come to mind.

Our Guru in Auckland has arranged a cheaper option, that along with our brethren in the hang gliding community (who must be closer to God...or at least be on better terms to keep those bits of alloy and fabric airborne), and this will be paid by the Matamata Soaring Center. Yipee...

I did receive an offer of help (dosh) from a Taranaki Club which I'd love to take up...but I've lost the contact...(Glyn I believe...but I don't know a Glyn). If you are listening could you forward the $100 to the Matamata Soaring Center...please don't be shy...

So we are set;
We have the technology...all we need is the enthusiasm...

Decision made.

The Real Discus (as opposed to those cheap Duo knock-offs) is now rigged and parked in the club hanger for the summer.
I had been contemplating basing myself over the hill for the summer.
However the club's committee, in it's infinite wisdom, lowered the hanger fees so much so that I decided to stay put for one more summer....(and before I here yells of "conflict of interest" cos I'm on said committee, I wasn't even present for the meeting)
Besides, the glider was starting to get in the way parked in the garage at home.

I was going to spend today giving the wings a polish but someones nicked the polisher...nothings safe around here.
As well as that 2 games of rugby end on end, large amounts of red wine to celebrate England's early exit, and a few other distractions, it means that I'm at home cleaning the pool.
Get the hint summer is coming....

And looking at this posting I'm also running out of things to say...roll on some gliding or at the very least some controversy...

Will it work today?

Quite hard to say...

I think it'll look real good for an hour or so about 11-ish then over-develop and rain later on.

It will really depend how far west the forecast shower/thunder storms will spread.

I suspect it will better to launch out of Matamata and go SW.

The ridge will work...albeit poorly given the southerly bias in the wind.

Saturday looks like a repeat...although hopefully with less likelihood of showers.

Sunday...if the SE winds drop off it could be a good afternoon.

Interestingly despite the southely airflow none of the next 3 days will have stunning cloud bases...more like 5-6000ft inland rather than the 6-7000ft you might expect at this time of the year.

Also...I'm under attack from the Russian's...some-one from that vast country, as well as the US, viewed the blog 239 times in 1 hour...I suspect something somewhat less than a deep interest in Gliding in Tauranga...it'll be interesting to see if Google can fend this off...

Upcoming Met Conditions...aka..the weekend weather

Friday might work...thermals (maybe upto 6 knots) from mid-morning, light southerly or southwesterly and bases around 5000ft. Some convergences...especially if the sky gets going...
The ghost in the machine is the forecast for overdevelopment in the East and how far west that will spread.

I think Saturday won't quite be as good and Sunday poorer still.

Of course we have another Kaimai Challange this Sunday...it's not looking very promising.

I'm hoping for a great Labour weekend...

A sign of things to come???

Bloody hell I hope not...The Queensland State Contest has just finished...flying just over 50% of the days...4/7.

Things must have been so dreary that no photo's have been published either...
We sent a couple of locals over to compete...looks like they ended up 8th...ish.
On a brighter note there is a great timelapse sequence of the launch of a contest fleet in Wurtsboro..where's that??? Not Germany but New York State in the US of A.
I especially enjoyed the final line-up and wave from the grid crew 4.11 minutes into the video.

http://soaringcafe.com/2011/10/time-lapse-video-of-wurtsboro-grid-and-launch-hd/

The problem of doing a similiar timelapse in Matamata is all it would show is a bunch of glider pilots lying around waiting for the sky to improve...even timelapsed it'd still be a dull 5 minute video clip...

Looks like no local flying until late this week.