witches go flying on Saturday

club witch in the kitchen

We got the photographs for security check taken this morning and headed to the airport where we met Peter. We filled out the paperwork to join the RAA (Recreational Aviation Australia) which is necessary for me to get the sport aircraft licence and for Zig to start the training for such. After that we grabbed the big Jabiru and went up.

gas alias petrol station

I was the first one in line and had to refuel the bird first. When I called for taxi to let everybody know I was about to taxi from the gas station Peter laughed and said: "Gas station, gas station ... you've spent to much time in the US". I corrected myself and started taxing from the petrol station ;-)

job done

The Aussies also fly circuits instead of patterns. So there we were, flying circuits, with and without flaps, with and without engine power, slipping here and there and so on. All in all 4 circuits and then we headed for the practice area where I discovered that the Jabiru doesn't really like to stall. It spins straight away rather than stalling first. Fair enough though ... it still flies at 45 kts. 

An off-field landing has been a challenge ;-) You can basically keep flying straight till you hit the ground and you would be safe. Huge paddocks as far as you can see. Peter wanted me to pick one paddock and fly a regular pattern, checking it for power lines and stuff, which we did.

We came back and all I have left to get the licence is a few x-wind landings. Too bad the new RWY is not finished yet - we could have done it today then.

YHSM

And then it was Ziggy's turn ...

wonder if he will still be smiling after flying

Since Ziggy doesn't have a powered licence yet he had to start flying regular patterns. They've been doing this for an hour and the last one was already a power off approach. He must have done pretty well ...

in front of the "terminal"

well done Zig, keep it up this way

It turned out the Jabiru is up for an oil change. Phil was in the hangar playing with his toy and we decided to let him do the "serious job" on the club airplane. With Ziggy's help of course. Phil didn't wanna believe Ziggy can do anything with any kind of tools except his doctor stuff but it proved to be wrong. Well, I didn't wanna believe the fact he's actually built a boat few years back either. He seems to be a kind of multi talented guy I guess ... that's what he claims as well actually.

Phil, Zig and Max changing oil

So there they were bullshitting each other all the time. The three guys on the pic are a pretty good match. The bullshit factor for all of them lies very high. It's bad enough if you have just two of them in any configuration. All three can get too much sometimes.

almost done

Job done. As they say: " There seems to be something wrong with this plane. Why don't you take it for a flight?"

We have a club meeting this evening so the fun will continue.

initial preparations for the Womens World Championships

This is going to be my 2nd Worlds. This time in Arboga Sweden. There are only two of us flying for Poland this year: Asia Biedermann (standard class) and myself (club class). Asia's partner Ogonek agreed to be our Team Captain which I think is awesome. I will also have a very professional and experienced crew member ;-) We already registered for the comp and managed to book accommodation in a nice motel fairly close to the airport (ca. 7 km). There is still the ferry trip over the creek left to organize.

I'm flying the good old Mike November (Jantar Std 3 "MN") and had a small issue with my Cambridge 302 mounted in the glider. It's been sent back to the US for a warranty repair. The thing returned to Germany (after 3 months) and is now in the customs office ... hopefully they can see the instrument has been to Europe before and won't make me pay the customs toll again.

It is going to be a challenging competition since there are almost only lakes and forests in Sweden and not really many safe landout options. This scares me a bit but I keep myself calm repeating that everybody will be in the same s... My first Worlds were in Szeged, Hungary in 2009 - nice flat land with unlimited options. I will not have too much time to practice in Sweden cause I'm flying the polish standard class nationals shortly before the main event.

I just found these few impressions from the last World Champs.

part of our team logo in 2009

MN in Szeged

it was really hot there

Polish Team at the opening ceremony

and the Aussie Team from 2009

forms, forms, forms

I've been trying to avoid or delay this procedure as long as I could. I guess I'm not really into filling out forms and stuff. The time has come and I really have to get a proper conversion of my commercial powered licence. Renewing the Certificate of Validation every 3 months is not the way to go. I've been searching the CASA website for over an hour now and I'm well informed what to do and in what sequence. They have a great website will all the information you can think of. All well organized and easy to find. Very nice.
There are quite a few forms to be filled out and I will have to pass written tests on flight rules & procedures and air law and also a flight test for each endorsement. I will also have to undergo a background security check and obtain an Australian medical certificate. The first step though is to go and get my funny face photographed. The pics go then with all the forms and I'm not quite sure if the one underneath would do. Someone from CASA could then call the doc and let him know that I'm not really eligible for Class I medical ;-)

So I better head to the photo place and let them do the job properly.

Check out the activities in the background. We were having a barbecue at Minden Airport last summer and the Civil Air Patrol kids had to practice their routines.

"noshi noshi" and competition flying in Australia vs. Europe

As I mentioned before I’ve flown my first Australian gliding comp not so long ago. There are quite a few differences to the European flying and one has to be aware of them not to have the day cancelled because of some rule breaks.

on the road again

Discus a

Starting from the beginning there is no Grid Time as such (in terms of a deadline to grid). You have to grid within a timeframe (usually around 1 hour or so) and you cannot do it earlier even if the row marks have already been set. You have your allocated row number that stays the same during the whole comp. The rows rotate and it’s not obvious that for example row 5 will be behind row 4 and so on. The rotation continues even if the previous day hasn’t been a flying day or has for any reason been cancelled.

marshaling

on the Grid

Another thing I wasn’t aware of before is the use of alternate start points. Every pilot has 3 different start points he can use every day. You get the list of yours at the beginning of the comp and have to make sure you don’t mix them up and use the wrong ones for the day. People over here got well used to it but for me it’s been another very important thing to consider before starting my task. You don’t have to declare the start points and can decide in the air which one to use. They are usually just a few kms apart. It’s pretty handy if the conditions are unstable (OD on one of them or a start point in a huge blue hole) but you have to use a nav software supporting this feature … and not all of them do. I’ve been flying with WinPilot for years, got well used to it and can basically do anything with it with my eyes closed. WinPilot doesn’t give you the option of putting 3 different (alternate) start points in your task (you can go max for 2 different start points). So I had to program 3 separate tasks with the different start points. The disadvantage is: you just don’t see them all on the screen at the same time. I don’t have the newest version of WP so maybe this option is already available … but if not, and Jerry P. is reading this by chance, he could consider including this in the next one. I used a second iPaq as my back up and ran XC Soar on that one. This gave me the option of alternate start points and was very helpful. It doesn’t make much sense though to use two different programs at once. Too much of a trouble. Looking at the results from previous Australian comps I was always wondering why people have different distances scored in a completed racing task. Now I know, they were just starting from different points. This is supposed to prevent gaggles and followers. You don’t have to tell anyone what your start points for the day are.

tie down spot

Because of the very wide range of gliders and therefore indexes the only task form was an AAT. I personally prefer racing tasks. That way everybody is in the same s…. ;-) and you can always set a task manageable even for the worst performance glider. Since too much of anything is usually not good a mix of both task types (like we have in Europe) seems to be a good solution.

One more thing that got me a bit confused is the handicap. It is applied on the achieved speed in the daily score tables. You cannot see the actual average speed somebody has flown but the handicapped one. In my opinion it is a bit clearer to apply the handicap on the points for the day. In the end it doesn’t change anything except giving everybody a better picture of the actual average speeds achieved.

on the run

All the gliders (even in the clubclass) were weight and got additional handicap for being under or over the reference weight. As far as I can remember it’s been 0.5% for every 12 kg weight difference. I was, I guess, 27 kg under my reference weight and therefore got additionally 1% . 0.5% of that gain was taken back for having winglets but I still kept the remaining 0.5%. It’s handy because you don’t have to try to load up your glider will all kinds of weird stuff just to be closer to the limit. Since water is not permitted in the club class I was happy to get the handicap – there was no way for me to put this additional 27 kg in any form. Maybe I should have thought about it earlier and have more beer to put some additional kilos on my ribs. Who knows … ;-)

under the wind sock

Oh, almost forgot about another two issues. Radio chat for tactical reasons is not allowed. Even our fun "noshi noshi, dushi dushi, sushi sushi" chat caused a huge discussion on the pilots mailing list. Somebody really seem to think it's a sort of code to communicate for tactical reasons. BTW, it would be quite an achievement to develop a code that works and includes just these 3 funny "polglish" words. In the competition spirit some just forget that it's all also (if not mainly) about fun :-)


The last difference I can think of at the moment is FLARM. It's mandatory but this is a subject for a separate post.

YHSM

Public holiday in VIC today. Beautiful weather with skies as blue as they can be. Nice and warm. We drove down to the airport to see the progress on runway construction. It is really nice to watch airports being built and modernized instead of closed down. In the end they are part of infrastructure like any road or bridge and the local government is smart enough to recognize that. Why not everywhere else?

view from the taxiway down the runway (N)

smoke hitting the inversion

guys from the paint shop don't have holidays

Horsham Fishing Comp

What can you do if you cannot fly? Go fishing! We went for a walk down the river and Ziggy thought people how to catch the big fish. The yearly fishing competition is now on and most of the competitors needed his advice ...

fishing comp

Wimmera River

bite lecture

nature along the river

one more red back spider

a deserved cool down in the afternoon

Happy B-Day Zig!

Years are passing by and everyone has his own special day once a year. Ziggy's wish was to celebrate his Birthday in a nice homey atmosphere ... which we did.

getting ready for the guests

Winter is coming and Zig got the boots he's been dreaming of for ages.

sheepskin boots

Krysia and Heinz baked a special cake.

Krysia and The Cake

flying cake

We heard something about food shortage in Australia and sent Bianca (The Hunting Dog) on a backyard tour. She came back with two green snakes. The decision was to put them on the BBQ as well.

snakes ;-)

The BBQ turned out to be a bit too hot for the snake ... it tried to escape

zucchini snake trying to escape

cutting the big cake ... who's gonna eat it all?

The guests are gone and it's time to clean up.

cleaning up the mess

almost done with cleaning

And again, Happy Birthday Zig!