Thursday, December 26, 2013

Christmas visit

We had a very excited visitor over Christmas. My mom flew in from Poland - her very first time in Australia and first summer Christmas. We've done some driving around and I took her up for a flight in a Cessna. In fact this was her first time up with me ... never happened before although I've been flying for over 14 years now.

She asked: "Are you reading a manual?" I replied: "Yes mom, trying to figure out how to fly this damn thing..."

she was too excited to take photos - this is one of a very few

We stayed in Melbourne for a couple of days before heading into the deep country side.



The standard program was on:





She desperately wanted to taste kangaroo, which became her favorite meat:

here you go: crocodile, kangaroo and emu - have a taste

And a quiet Christmas at home followed:




Mom is leaving soon and we'll be rushing to South Australia for two weeks of flying. It's gonna be hot! We are both flying the Australian Nationals. Ziggy is flying his 55 in the club class and I'm competing in 18-m ASG29E. We are looking forward to it and hitting the road on Monday morning to beat the heat.

I'm going via Adelaide and Gawler to pick up the 29, Ziggy is driving Griffo's truck loaded with fuel for the Wilga and Griffo is flying Wilga over the big scrub. There is not much on the way and certainly no place to stop for fuel so he will land somewhere and they will give Wilga a drink from Griffos truck. How extreme is that?

We'll be in Waikerie for the big New Years party!

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

PR

Great news to report. It's all done and completed. I have received:


The news came on Friday, we celebrated all weekend long and everybody was saying:


Yes, I do feel home :)

back home

We are back home in Horsham and both back at work. It takes a while to switch from the flying holiday back to working mode but we're doing all right. It's not for long though cause we'll be back in Waikerie in 4 weeks for the Nationals.


Waikerie airfield

Murray River

the Capital City

not the irrigated and green glider launch pads

the surrounding landscape

We had a great weekend in Adelaide, where we caught up with friends and picked up the hangar keys to get my old friend ASG29E TF and take her to Waikerie. We'll be going there end of December just in time for the big New Years Eve party. Can't wait.

selfie ... well at least it's not in a dirty bathroom mirror

Waikerie airfield again

where the big scrub starts and never ends

Waikerie is always fun, even if there is no flying:

Banrock winery lunch










Thursday, November 28, 2013

good flying

We hit 43 degrees yesterday and the cloudbase reached 14000 ft. It wasn't all straight forward though and some pilots were struggling big time once they got too low. Ziggy had a great 350 km run in the dry SZD-55 averaging 100 km/h.

I was running wings, then shifting cars to the landing runway and then ... got unwell. I think I'm not used to the extreme heat as yet.

I came good in the afternoon and managed to get few landing shots:

Keith in his PW-5

Rolf in his LS8-18

Zigster



Hugh, who's flying very big planes on a daily basis and just started flying gliders, had a good one yesterday. Two days ago he flew his very first solo XC flight, then he landed out in a remote area with no phone coverage and flew his gold distance (300 km triangle) and gold height (3000 m altitude gain) yesterday. He had to ring the bell last night. Congrats Hugh!

Today the temperature is down to 20 degrees and the sky is full of grey, low stuff. It looks like a winery lunch to me :)

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

hot hot hot

9:30 this morning we had 35 degC, around 2 pm during launching the thermometer was showing 42 and it was still rising, but ... there is clouds! And they are ridiculously high. I'm following the race on the computer and it's crazy how fast the boys are moving around the task. Some will say it was under-set. The thing was that it was either gonna be great or crap - nothing in between.

Here are some photos from the last two days:


Yesterday was a very funny and tricky day. There were some thermals and also shear wave. Great lift but also huge patches of horrible sink. I managed to contact a wavelet and got up to 9000 ft. As soon as I left it I got down to 3000 ft in no time. Whole day was like this. Very annoying when you were down low and someone on the radio shouted that they just got up to 11.000 ft. It was fun though.





If someone tells you that carbon doesn't crack - tell them it's not the case:







Pawnee tires not just a car crap

we made it into the newspaper again

doughnut this morning

it's 42 degrees out there with 7% humidity

Zig getting serious

the winch-Pawnee

Colin in the EXPERIMENTAL ;)

no performance decrease with temperature ...