Happy New Year from Benalla!

The last day of the old and first day of the new year turned out to be very busy. We arrived to Benalla yesterday afternoon, rigged the 55 and it was time for New Years party.

bit overdressed for airport party...

...but what the hell

live music

A good dinner, few glasses of wine or beer and a good laugh later we ended up in bed few minutes after midnight. Airport life can really make you tired.

New Year started with some work and maintenance on both gliders. Not easy in +38°C either. It was way over +40°C in a shaded hangar where we were working on the Discus.

Jarek hammering his tie downs

Zig checking out another 55's

Some people went flying today. The cloud base went up to 11000 ft. The rules here are that you are illegal going over 10000 ft without oxygen.

Tim informed me yesterday that the oxygen system in the Discus is in-op. The bottle mount took s... and he wasn't able to fix the bottle properly. We decided to fix the problem somehow and during that procedure also figured that the bottle started leaking. It turned out to be a rubber o-ring and luckily the club mechanic had a spare one to fit. So we managed to get rid of all the maintenance issues on time.

guys, are you following?

We also weighed both gliders today. Ziggy is spot on - 2 kg under his reference weight. I'm 17 kg under and will get another 0.5% handicap for that. 

ZXT on the scales

beautiful Cu's

world is turning

tug

on tow

Ziggy setting up Altair

A very hot day forced us to seek for some cool down in the motel pool.

I wouldn't believe he will get in

 How do you know we live next to the airfield?

Zig staring at landing gliders

fun day

There is someone out here who didn't believe we will really do it. Well, here it is ... now you are truly gon-ski!

It all will get serious at some point though. Tomorrow is the official practice day and we are starting racing on Tuesday. Weather is unbelievably good and we will for sure be able to fly the whole 2 weeks. Tim will be forced to choose an official rest day for us. So different from last year ... How exciting ...