Day Four task took pilots over some of the most spectacular scenery in the South Island.
The First Turnpoint Near Glenorchy was so scenic that our Australian Trans Tasman pilot just had to land near Paradise.(I kid you not thats what its called). The area that Peter Jackson used to shoot some spectacular footage for Lord of the Rings. SPOT proved its worth as we knew he landed before he got to a phone to report in. Oh forgot to mention that EE landed on a strip with 600 sheep. No worries says Brian, bought up on a sheep farm. Just herded them down the other end of the cross strip. Well done that man, all without a trusty sheep dog!
Our Airspace Guru Trevor, had negotiated some extra airspace access for airspace controlled by Queenstown Tower which allowed Gliders to fly up to 11,000ft on task rather than the normal airspace restriction of 8,500 and 9,500. Thank you airways Queenstown. Thank you Trevor and Lex for putting the information out to Pilots and in to the scoring program.
Lex had a day off yesterday as he went parting in Christchurch-OK it was a god child but hey-lashings of ice cream and soda pop. Matt took the helm and we still got raw scores out in a timely manner-well done Matt.
A number of landouts gave retrieve aircraft a busy evening with one tug having to refuel at Wanaka to complete his assignment.
We discovered a small glitch with SEEYOU scoring program. TD switched of his GPS 30 seconds after landing and then some time later took an aerotow the short distance back to Omarama. A cunning strategy that fooled SEEYOU in to scoring him as a finisher......But the intrepid operations team easily picked up on that :-)).
The Search and rescue fund got a bit of a boost at briefing this morning(Sunday) as coin contributions were "frowned" upon in favour of something that would buy more than a bootlace for the volunteers. Last time the Nationals were held in Omarama in 2009 the movement raised more than $2,000 for the local volunteers to help fund Sat phones and other equipment to make their job easier.
Today Lemmy has forecast that the task area will be light winds, sunny(mainly blue) with not so high temperatures. With that in mind Tasks for Day 5 Head west to the head of Lake Wanaka then north to a point to the East of Mount Cook and then home.
A task B has been published which is more of a cats cradle to keep the course closer to home.
The word from the wise is that we probably wont launch until after 1pm altho we will need to be ready to launch as soon as the fleet can stay up. So gridding at 12:30 on the runway in front of the Gliding Centre Buildings. With 4 towplanes it shouldnt take long to launch the 26 contestants.(one short today as WC has a day off).
Check the North webcam at http://www.glideomarama.com/conditions/web-cams
for current temperature and what I can see out my window. The grid is slightly to the right of this picture.
Keep it up
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