We had a great day winching yesterday, thanks to everyone who came along and made it happen. We'll be aiming to make more use of the winch over the coming season. Here are some pics from Keith and Tim.

We're looking for beginners for the next Learn to Fly training course is coming up, starting Saturday 22nd August and running 6 consecutive Saturdays.

The course aims to teach the fundamentals on how to fly, and know to safely take off and land. You'll be flying with experienced gliding instructors in our 2 seat training gliders.

More details and information can be found here, otherwise contact AnnaDoerr on 07 888 8782, or email training@glidingmatamata.co.nz

Instructor Steve care with 2 recent students

Flying over the Waikato

Here are the award winners for 2008/09 - these have been updated on the club awards page.

Club Trophies

DeRenzy Pot - Neil Raymond - Most improved new pilot

Ken Bartlett Trophy - Tim Bromhead - Most outstanding Personal Best for winning Sports Class Nationals 

President’s Pot - Robin Britton -  For an outstanding flight during Sports Class Nationals

Tom Martin Trophy - Joan Wine - for providing outstanding friendship and service to the club in the past year. Joan doesn't fly, but puts a huge amount of work and effort into the club as committee member and secretary of the club.

Wooden C - Not awarded this year. Almost awarded to Jamie for setting his altimeter to 1182 feet instead of 182 feet, and wondering why releasing at 2000' AGL felt 'a little low'. Well done for dealing with the situation properly.

Club Task Trophies

Care 200 Trophy - Bill Mace - fastest time around the Care 200 course

Catlin Trophy - Unawarded!

Les Riesterer Short Course Trophy - Unawarded!

Dave McPherson 1 Diamond Trophy - Unawarded!

Well done Bill for being the only person to complete a club trophy task this year!

This is an open challenge to all Piako pilots to compete for these trophies this year. 

The Les Riestererer short course in particular is great for newer pilots, and is great practice for using GPS's and preparing for a task.

The task details are available on the website here.

Other Achievements

Tim Bromhead - C Cat Instructors Ratings
Dom Stevens - C Cat Instructors Ratings

Brian OBrien Regionals Contest 1st Club Class
Bob Gray Regionals Contest 2nd Club Class
Tim Bromhead 3rd Sports Class

Carl Henderson – first solo and A cert
Neil Raymond - first solo and A cert
Josh Money - first solo and A cert
Aimee Dawson - first solo and A cert
Manda Connor - first solo and A cert
John Krukerink - first solo and A cert
Robb Munn – first solo

Well done everyone!

The Care 200 Trophy

The webcam is back! We had a chance to play with it in the weekend, and it's been working since. Fingers crossed it will keep going happily.

Some pics from today

The reason it's a bit temperamental is because we're using a standard digital camera, which is not really designed to be running constantly, but does provide wonderful quality images. Sometimes it turns itself off, and then it has to be turned back on manually.

Also it's computer controlled and unfortunately there's no special software to do what we want, so it's hacked together with some trickery (Automator on the Mac for those interested).

Anyway, we'll try to keep it going as reliably as possible, and perhaps set up another lower quality, more reliable camera as a backup.

Another year, another prize giving, and this year's was a cracker. Thanks to everyone who came along, the clubhouse was full to capacity.

Notable events:

• An amazing 4 course feast, with nibble starters, chicken soup entré, beef and veg main course, followed by fly cemetery puddings, custard, fruit and icecream.
• Guest speaker for the evening was ex club member and budding water-colour artist Tom Shanks, who brought along a gallery of work for his first ever public showing. He also gave an interesting talk on how to get into water-colour painting. Thanks heaps Tom, and congrats to the lucky owners of new paintings. View Tom's work online at tomshanks.co.nz.
• Tim gave a presentation of his recently developed project, WentFlying.com pilot logbook system, that lets us glider pilots record our flying history. Check it out at wentflying.com!

Thanks again Jan for a wonderful feast. More details on the award winners coming soon.

Prize winners, Neil Raymoond, Tim Bromhead, Robin Briton and Bill Mace. Absent: Joan Wine,

Jan & Kate cooking up a storm

One of the awards not awarded this year!

Much chatting went on. Grant was pleased.

Jan receiving a bouquet for all her efforts

Saturday, 23rd May at Matamata started with fog and a -1 degree temperature. The fog lifted suddenly about 12.30 and as I had some maintenance to attend to on our self launching glider, GUL, I headed out to the airfield.

On arrival, the windsock was showing a light southerly and the Club were in the process of changing ends from 28 to 10. After changing the spark plug caps on the Rotax, naturally I decided that the developing convection needed investigation.

By the time I was set for take off, there was a light SW wind on the ground and so I decided to head for the ridge to join with Nelson in IY, who was reporting he had no problem maintaining 4000 feet in the ridge assisted thermals. After arriving at the ridge at 2500 feet, I shut down the iron thermal and did find that the hazy cu’s above the ridge were giving 4~6 knot climbs.

After climbing to 4000 feet, I headed north from the high point across Thompson’s Track towards Te Aroha, as I have done hundreds of times before. However, the prospects did not look particularly encouraging, with the next line of convection north of Te Aroha and no support from the ridge, I turned back to head south at about 3500 feet.

As I approached the high point side of Thompson’s track, I ran into some of the worst turbulence I have ever experienced, coupled with 19 knots of sink. My only option was to increase my airspeed to Vra, 86 knots, and turn away from the rapidly approaching side of the ridge. There was a brief respite as the sink reduced to 4 knots and then heavier sink coupled with an uncommanded roll to the left towards the valley side. Despite full opposite control deflections against the roll, UL got to about 70 degrees of bank before responding to my control inputs. By this time, I was about half way out of the Thompson’s track valley in strong sink, struggling to maintain approximately 70 knots in the turbulence and with the very strong illusion of descending rapidly without making any forward progress. At this stage, I was down to about 2000 feet and very seriously looking for somewhere to land close to the foot of the ridge. Erecting the motor was considered, but rejected as it would have cost me even more height and would not have had enough power to overcome the ongoing 10~12 knot sink.

At 1600 feet things quietened down a bit and I had sufficient terrain clearance to turn left onto the slopes on the southern side of the high point, hoping that I would get some assistance from the ridge. I was hugely relieved to find that the ridge was working at 2~4 knots and I climbed back up while getting my heart rate under control and the seat extracted from my nether regions!

So, what happened? I can only make some semi-educated guesses. There were two reports on the radio chatter of the wind being 27 knots at 180 at 3000 feet and there were also a number of lenticulars on the Waikato side of the Kamais, nothing I could see on the Tauranga side, though. So, I think what I ran into was a combination of a southerly curl-over from the side of the high point, coupled with a rotor from one of the wave systems.

What did I learn from this “adventure?” 1. Not to take the ridge for granted. This is the second time in 30 odd years and 2500 hours of gliding that I have been shot down by wave interaction with the ridge. The previous incident, I ended up in the Te Aroha race course in GIY after solid ridge lift on Mt Te Aroha turned into 10 knots down, right down to the ground. 2. Always have an escape path in mind: It’s hard to make a mental gear change to accept that an area which has always provided lift in the past is now doing something completely different. 3. Don’t fly too close to the ridge. The uncommanded turn to the left may well have resulted in contact with the terrain if I had been a bit closer to the side of the ridge. 4. Safe airspeed near the ground! Even at max rough air speed, I was making very little progress into the wind and just sinking like a stone. At lower airspeeds, the control response is slower and with turbulence, high angles of bank and large control inputs, it may well have resulted in a stall/spin situation. Additionally of course is the classic “fly faster in sink” response, which contributed to the extraordinary feeling of just descending, highlighted by being in close proximity to the ridge and of almost standing still over the ground.

Finally, I will pay more attention to the possibility of an out of phase wave system dumping on the windward side of the ridge, especially when there are lenticulars on the upwind side of the valley.

Julian Mason

PGC

Early evening that day

Here's a flyer about the Classic Flyers D-Day weekend in Tauranga. Click the image to view larger.

Keep an eye out for the Escape circular in your Waikato Times tonight - there's a lovely ad for the gliding club.