practice day

Yesterday was the mandatory practice day - everybody had to fly. You didn't have to fly the set task if you didn't want to but you had to grid, launch etc. to practice the whole procedure. I did test all the instruments and the engine. There is still some fine tuning to be done on the LX. I've got too many warnings turned on and the lady keeps yelling on me constantly. I have to turn some of them down. I can't do it today though - it keeps pissing rain and the temperature is just above 10 degrees C ...

here we go for the very first one!

she's a good girl

they haven't started harvesting yet

We also set up the team "control center" in the tie down area. Putting up the antenna required 10 young French blokes and a huge drill.

One of our club class team members had an unfortunate outlanding and hit a rock with the wing tip. Luckily the damage wasn't too bad and one of Ziggy's many talents fixed the problem. They managed to get some glass fiber from the local hardware store and patch the hole. Ziggy is pretty good in laminating! Hours of sanding later the glider is like new and ready to go again.

We just finished all weighing procedures and are finalizing all little bits and pieces.

One more interesting story:

I was registering and my documents were checked. I have a valid European Class 2 medical certificate (valid till 2015) which turned out to be not "valid enough". There is a French requirement that your medical cannot be older than 12 months ... WTF? Luckily I packed my Australian licence and Class 1 medical JUST IN CASE. The Australian medical was done in November 2012 and is less than a year old. It turned out that the Australian medical is good and "valid enough". So now I'm legal flying a German glider with a Polish licence and Australian medical.