This weekend is the first of 2 MSC task weekends. These days will be run much like a contest day, but in a more relaxed style suitable for anyone. We'll set an easy task and an advanced task. Scoring will be by the online contest. It's a great opportunity for those who haven't tried tasks before to give it a go.

The dates:

• Sat 7th March (This coming Saturday)
• Sun 8th March
• Sat 21st March
• Sun 22nd March

The plan:

• Before 10am - Gliders rigged
• 10am - Briefing & Task
• 10am-11am - Gridding
• 11am-6pm - Flying!
• 6:30pm - BBQ (Saturdays only)

There is a chance the weather won't be good for Saturday. Notifications will be made on the Piako Gliding Club's calendar on the homepage Friday evening. If flying is cancelled on Saturday, we won't be having the BBQ.

For the BBQ, bring a salad, some meat, or anything else for the BBQ. The bar will be open of course at the end of each day.

Accomodation can be sorted with Ralph Gore gore.family@xtra.co.nz

For Piako club members, we'd like to have both twins flying cross country, so we'll need to know who wants to fly each day. Contact piako@pear.co.nz with which day you'd like to fly with an instructor.

SN and NI can be booked like normal.

For anyone from any club interested in flying other gliders, please make a booking for a 'tow' on our booking system so we have rough idea of numbers for each day. Don't worry about the time of the tow, make it 12pm. You can cancel your booking if you decide not to come due to weather. Click "Book" beside the relevant day on the calendar on the home page:

http://glidingmatamata.co.nz

See you out there, it will be fun!

The South Island Regional Champs are away and we have some scores for the first day. The scores are at this website, not the normal SoaringSpot:

http://glidingcomps.42.net.nz/sireg2014/index.php

I had a lovely 2 day drive down to arrive a day or two before Jerry Oneill's mountain flying course. The first day I flew here was magnificent, with a big convergence heading south, and good thermal flying. For the week of Jerry's course we didn't really get any classic thermal days, primarily wave with wind and showers going through.

From the North Island this year we have Hadleigh Bognuda from Auckland, Mark Tingy & Adrian Cable from Tauranga in their club's Duo, myself in our club's Discus B, a whole bunch from Taranaki including Tim Hardwick-Smith, Glyn Jackson and Will, and of course the usual regulars from Wellington and other clubs.

Looks like a great day today. You can see where we are while we're flying on SPOT, which everyone in the contest has. Be sure to switch it to Omarama top left if it's not already:

http://tracking.gliding.co.nz

I'd like to say a number of big thanks:

• Piako Gliding Club, for letting me bring the glider down. XP is a very well setup glider, with a great trailer, and has been problem free the whole trip.
• Neil for helping us out get the glider and trailer ready to go.
• Bob Gray for the use of the oxygen system, it's working a treat.
• My work for letting me work remotely while I'm away.

Road tripping. Great weather on the way down.

XP in Omarama for the first time

Yes, it's just like Matamata. But with more snow.

The landout areas are easy and forgiving

Nice campsite. Perhaps we should do some planting at Matamata?

One of the many wave days.

Lake Tekapo while doing a height gain

The trusty BBQ with steaks. Don't worry we had lettuce with it too.

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