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
