Yes I know it’s been a while. I don’t have any good excuses so I won’t give you a bad one.

The weather hasn’t been that great lately so flying has been limited to the odd patch of brilliance. In case you don’t know we do have a group of high school students flying on Thursdays & by all accounts this is proving successful. I haven’t managed much flying myself lately although a few weeks ago a westerly forecast looked promising. A few of us were at the hangar getting the day under way & we were greeted by the sight of 5 or 6 Auckland club members in convoy. Gliders were rigged & various tasks were mentioned. I will cut the story short there & say that I really have no idea what the others did for the day as I spent a good part of the day in a paddock between Paeroa and Hikutaia watching gliders go back & forth! Keith Irvine did a great job of the retrieve & we arrived back at the clubhouse around 5pm. Most frustrating.

 The land out story I just mentioned was an attempt at the Care 200 task however it was not to be & Dave Dennison is now the trophy holder for the task as awarded at the awards dinner. The dinner was a great night with Peter Stockwell sharing a few memories of his RNZAF career as well as giving us an overview of CTC operations. Other trophy recipients were as follows. Presidents Pot for most meritorious flight – Neil Raymond, De Renzy Pot for Most Improved new Pilot – Nigel Brinkworth,  Tom Martin trophy for the club member who has provided outstanding friendship & service to the club - Joan Wine I was awarded the Ken Bartlett trophy for most outstanding personal best. The only disappointment from the awards is the fact that three trophies were not contested. Let’s get out there & give all these trophies a crack this coming season as we try & improve our cross country skills.

On more of a housekeeping note do have a message to pass on from Iggy...

From the President - Thank you to all of those club members who have paid their annual subscription.  Over half of last year’s members have not yet either paid or resigned.  If you are in the group which has not yet paid or resigned, please settle up promptly so that the treasurer and secretary can do all of the other actions which are flow on from this.  We have to make sure that the Gliding New Zealand dues are paid and that only financial members fly or use club aircraft.  The committee volunteers are busy people and should not have to take on the extra task of raising invoices or chasing you up individually.  According to the Club rules, this year’s subscriptions were due by 21 July 2014.  I do not like grizzling but, if you have not yet paid, this is a grizzle.

I hope I get to see you out at the field soon, even better in a decent westerly. Remember to keep up with our Kiwi team at the world gliding champs on at the moment.

Cheers,

DM

Brett Hunter, Steve Wallace and John Coutts are all flying for New Zealand this year at the world champs in Leszno, Poland.

Here's where you can keep up to date with the news:

Results on Soaring Spot
http://www.soaringspot.com/leszno2014/results/

The official facebook page (half in Polish, half English. Note there is an auto translate button on the Polish posts).
https://www.facebook.com/wgc2014leszno

Lisa Wallace is updating the Gliding New Zealand facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gliding-New-Zealand-NZ-/106056376128462

And probably the best source is the blog written by Lisa, Steve and Brett. It has lots of good photos too.
http://lesznowgc.blogspot.co.nz/

In other news, we now have a working weather station again, after replacing the broken down computer. You can now click on the image on the homepage to see far more information too, including wind and rain history.
http://glidingmatamata.co.nz/about/weather/

The weather cam seems to be working too, and we're looking at adding another sometime soon.

Cheers,
Tim 

Queen Birthday Weekend Precision Landing Contest report.

Saturday got off to a brisk start with a keen bunch showing up to prove their paddock landing skills.  Bill & Julian took turns in the back seat for those needing the reassurance of an instructor. Dave Dennison put himself to work between launches creating a formula in Xcel to decide the winner based on how far short or long, left or right of the mark the main wheel touched down. We observed a number of different approach techniques from high & steep to somewhat lower & faster. With a wide variety of results on display as well. Some took the opportunity to see if Bill had brought his longest tape measure with one landing reported to have been nearly 50m short of the mark. Others took a more conservative approach & cleared the imaginary fence by a wide margin with the resulting touchdown in the vicinity of 20m beyond the mark. Other results were scattered around the mark. The winch rope needed repairs at around 3:30, by the time repairs were complete the rest of the toys were back in the hangar and there was a small huddle around the computer all trying to see where they stood amongst the results. After the banter & trash talk had died down it was announced that Ben Helyer had won. Well done Ben. Ben has been a member of the club for 8 months so this is a huge result.

Sunday started with light rain on the field so the time in the hangar was not wasted as the winch crew had a few minor modifications to do. These completed and with the weather not quite cleared it was time for lunch in the clubrooms. With lunch & tall stories out of the way it was time to go flying.  It seemed like PK had learnt from the previous days lessons as the results were generally much closer to the mark. We were also joined by a couple of powered aircraft later in the day. Case in RVC touched down around 15m long and Rainer in PFL had two attempts the first at about 18m & 8.5m on the second. With the last glider launch at around 1650 and everything packed away a similar huddle gathered around Dave’s computer to put an end to the speculation. It turned out that yours truly had taken the honours by a small margin.

A big thanks needs to go to Bill for instructing both days assisted by Julian on Saturday, Kent Muckle for retrieving gliders both days. The winch driving was shared between Neil, Jamie & myself. 

Attached as a pdf or click on the image to see details abotu the Tauranga Gliding Club Diamond anniversary.  This is the weekend after the Gliding NZ AGM, the 14th-15th of June.

poster.pdf

Another weekend is behind us & there are a few things I need to let you know about. You may or may not be aware that we played host to 7ATC Sqn Hamilton over the weekend. They camped at the field & enjoyed two glorious days of flying. 

Here are some statistics from the weekend:

1 Quad Bike in use retrieving gliders

2 club members took aero tows

8am start time for Club Members

9am first launch Saturday & Sunday

14 Club Members involved over the weekend to make it happen

38 ATC Cadets & Leaders

74 winch launches without incident

So you get the idea that there was a lot of activity & a lot of people giving up a lot of their weekend to make it all happen. Special thanks needs to go to Kent Muckle for his help in retrieving gliders on the quad & to Hamilton Honda for the Loan of the Quad without which the turnaround time would not have been anywhere near as quick. There was a lot of interest from the cadets in continuing their flying so we will endeavour to keep in touch with them & encourage them back out for more. 

As already mentioned in the statisics the winch performed faultlessly over the whole weekend, no rope breaks, no broken weak links. So it would appear that we have a pretty reliable operation.

Thanks to all involved is really was a very successful weekend.

DM

Well we have still been having some good soaring conditions as summer hangs around. Saturday, however didn’t eventuate as good as the forecast predicted. Most plans were shelved by 2pm and some local soaring was about all that was possible. Steve & Dave launched in YL and found a thermal but were reluctant to share it. They were gone for around an hour & requested that airspace be opened for them. Returning member had the next best flight of the day in SN, while Tony & I managed a couple of circuits in PK. I didn’t fly on Sunday, nor did I hear how the day turned out but I suspect it was a good one if my observations were correct.

As well as Keith returning to flying we have Sam McLaughlan, Noel Bailey and Duncan Webb joining us as flying members and Barrie Crab as an associate member. Look out for these new faces and make them feel welcome. We recently had resignations from Gina Pirrit and Scott Jeanes although Im sure we will still see them at the airfield from time to time.

In other news PK is in Auckland getting her main wheel suspension repaired and the next time XP has an inspection it will have a nose hook fitted to make it a little more user friendly.

Coming up we have a busy weekend with ATC cadets this weekend & then in the school holidays we are being joined by Youth Glide. If you are able to help out with either of these groups you will be more than welcome. Get in touch with Bill if you can help.

Thats about it from me this time.

Remember to keep logging your flights to OLC & keep checking there to see who is doing what. I’m not going to tell you, jump on the site & take a look around for yourselves.

 http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightsOfClub.html?cc=807&st=olcp&rt=olc&c=C0&sc=&sp=2014

Cheers

DM

As we had been using PNE for the last few weeks Iggy has been busy briefing tow pilots on the differences between PNE and BZA, following is part of the pre & post flight exchange between Iggy & new tow pilot Dion Manktelow.

PNE is a 180hp Pawnee 150.  Differences are two fewer cylinders plus (do I recall correctly?) lower flap speeds.  A tangle of mic/tel leads and the fuselage tank as CEB.  I think that it starts with both mags ON.  Alternator rather than a generator.  Please note the normal bits and pieces such as hobbs time, tow heights and the like.

Cheers,

Iggy

After towing on Sunday, Dion replied:

Morning Iggy,
Looked everywhere for the missing cylinders, deduced they had been removed for C of G reasons. 
Climb attitude remains too low, reccommend removing a further 2 cylinders to allow nose to point higher.
 
Mistook the mirror for a 52" TV, it's huge.
 
Bit worried about effects of heat on the wingtips, appears the've been heated sufficiently to enable gravity assisted
droop groundwards. Likely a couple of days inverted in the sun would correct the defect. 
Suspect root cause to be exposure to the sun, but can't rule out transonic descents as a contributor.
 
She might be due a hip replacement as taxying in straight lines requires more than the full right rudder available. 
Was going to fit a ground adjustable trim tab to the rudder but couldn't find a coke can or cellotape.
 
I did get caught up in her garters dangling from the panel, no problem, i'm rated on garters and the removal thereof.
 
She's my 3rd Pawnee and as with the others she's very different but just the same. Dating sisters concurrently can be enormous fun but not without it's dangers.
 
Mate, you've got a great bunch of guys down there, it's always a pleasure.
Cheers
Dion

We've had some great flying the past week or so. I've heard rumours of some OOs being needed for some badge flights of some sort today in the westerlies.

Last weekend was a good one, with Alan flying down to Tongariro on Saturday, and myself down to Western Bays of Lake Taupo on Sunday.

Sunday also saw an ATC group spending the day winching with great success, over 40 flights done. The Wednesday before that our backup towplane PNE was not available, so winching was the only option. Despite this Ralph was busy all day in the twins, while Fin, Bob and myself went for an afternoon flying off the winch. It's great to see it's getting so much use.

We do need to get more people trained up on both driving and flying the winch, so the same people aren't stuck driving it all the time. I know Steve and Iggy in particular have spent many long hours on it recently, many thanks to them and the others. We'll try and put a note on the booking calendar when winching is happening, so people can get out and get trained up on it.

If you want to see what kind of flights people have been doing, check out the online competition. The latest day of flying for NZ can be seen here:

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/daily.html?df=&sp=2014&rt=olc&st=olc&c=NZ&sc=

Patrick Driesson in particular has been doing some remarkable flights of 400km+ recently from Drury. 6 flights over 400km in the past few months, and 4 over 300. See them here, and click the 'i' info button to see the track. Many have been down the west coast and around Hamilton's airspace.

On Sunday I met up with Patrick down at the Western Bays, in the same time I took to get down there from Matamata and back, he did the same but from Auckland. Inspiring stuff! The goal was to get to National Park, but was hampered by a very slow start around Matamata due to high cloud. By about 2pm the day actually got going properly. We will try again soon.

Tim

Neil helping out with the ATC cadets winch day

Down at the Western Bays

Didn't quite make it to National Park, another day...