DAY TWO

A great attendance at morning briefing with 30 or 40 standing at the back and most of the 60 chairs full.  A crowd ov over 100.

The weather looked good even though a non "normal" easterly was blowing at 15plus knots.  Justin Wills arrived to announce that wind on the ground at Irishmans creek(NE of Lake Pukaki) was zero and that the Easterly only kicked in after passing Twizel.

Three Tasks were set to cater for any changes in high cloud sneaking down from the North or the Easterly changing.   A good launch started at 1:45pm with a high tow (4500QNH) directly towards Magic Mountain.
Only one glider landed back while the majority started and headed off to the first turnpoint of a triangle of 345kms.  Once again the SPOT messengers proved their worth in reducing stress and workload for the Operations team. A side benefit is the significant reduction in radio traffic.  A have included a photo of the Directors computer screen to show the spread of the "GREEN DOTS" each representing a glider.  WIth a simple mouse click I can get the track to that point with the time of the lastest "ping".    The radio ladies also have a screen so they can check whose SPOT is working and who they need "OPS normal" calls from. Of the 27 pilots only 8 are spotless.

We had a number of calls "probably landing out", but a number of gliders(13) abandoned the task and returned to Omararama with 7 actual landouts of which two were road retrieves. Including our intrepid Aussie whose retrive included winching the trailer across road washouts in the Ahuriri Valley.

One pilot reported flying in the snow with snow "bits" coming in the cockpit.  I have to say there were some cold pilots arriving home. They had not figured it would be so cold  around the top turnpoint.  This was not high high altitude flying but just plain old cold.

Its interesting the visitors we get wandering by, including Newspaper photographers, All Blacks, Civil Aviation Inspectors, Rodeo riders & heaps of Back Packers of all shades & sizes. 

Today is a rest(read raining) day and the forecast doesnt look good until FRiday. The good news about that is that the grass on the airfield is the greenest I have ever seen it in all my visits since 1995!

The Flarm team have requested that pilots use the latest version of Flarm to "test" it out. They had tried to test it at the Australian Nationals (washed out) and the South African event, but are running out of time to test it before their March time frame for an update.

So now its time for some revenue earning work from your scribe. So much better than doing it in the middle of the night:-))

Keep it up