Sunday, April 6, 2014

Zig getting engine time

Zigster is getting ready for the arrival of our beautiful ASG29E and for that, he needed an engine endorsment in his logbook. Peter wasn't scared to get Ziggy trained and they did it few weeks ago. Ziggy is now ready for his first flight in the 29. He doesn't know yet that once he'd tried it he will never want to fly any other glider again.

Having a hangar full of pressurized toys why would you still fly this? Tony practicing engine cut-off's. 

Ziggy trying to concentrate and listen to PW

before first take-off

off they are

Griffo's first landing after his achilles stich-up by JP ...

normal landing

engine out landing



Our glider will go on the boat soon but before that happens Graham will have the pleasure to fly it. Him and Mark are almost on their way to Europe and Graham will fly the Grand Prix in France in May. XM will be shipped as soon as practicable after that. We can't wait!

squad week in Narromine

It's been a long while since my last post here. Each day only has 24 hours and this seems to become more and more of an issue sometimes. Time flies and it's just 3 months left before we go for the big World Comps trip. I've known how much preparation it takes before I agreed to be the team captain but this time it all is times four (four pilots, four licences, four gliders, four cars, four ...).

Few weeks ago we attended the squad week in Narromine. The purpose of this event is to practice in "real" conditions. The team has a chance to bond, practice living and flying together but also solving in-built as well as real issues that can happen (flat tire or radio not working on the grid etc.). We were not the only team there. Team Finland, Team Juniors and Team Competition (this one was creating traffic and challenges in the air) and us - Team Poland.

To get to the squad week we had to drive 4 hours to Melbourne, fly to Sydney and the next morning fly to Dubbo where Peter picked us up from a gorgeous tiny country town airport.

on the bus in Sydney to board a little Dash-8 to Dubbo

racing the King Air into Dubbo - we won

joining left cross wind into Dubbo

on final

here we are ... four years later

Unfortunately we could only stay in Narromine for 3 days and had to go back to work. It was still well worth going. We caught up with the team and crews to find out that we can get along really well so there should be no surprises on the big trip. Our pilots practiced team flying and it worked well too. I had a chance to try my team captain skills. Ziggy did great in providing entertainment ... again. We also had theory and psychological sessions and a few real situations ;)


would you think that Ziggy can be considered as electronics guru? well, he seems to be handling the Altair pretty well but why would you put it into a brand new glider?

Ben's first flight in ASG29

Tom's first flight in JS1C ... and Kerrie

our ride back to Sydney

after 45 minutes flight - Sydney

it would be good to stay for a few days

We changed planes in Sydney and boarded a B767 to Melbourne (another 1 hour flight). We sat down and I almost alarmed the flight attendant that someone had left their iPad in the pocket. Before I did that though, I looked into Ziggy's pocket. S...! There is another one! Everybody had one because there was no entertainment system in the old 767 :) It's very nice but is it really necessary on 1 hour flight? They also have to have at least 2 sets of them for each plane since they need charging after each flight. Freaky.





saying good bye to Sydney

not bad for a very late summer

you can tell, we're getting closer to Melbourne

downtown Melbourne

this one will be our next ride to Frankfurt via Singapore - in fact this is exactly the flight we'll be going on from Melbourne

We are almost all set. All pilots have gliders. Tom is shipping the JS over and we'll have three rented gliders. Two of them (both 29's) will be waiting for the pilots in Leszno. Ziggy and myself are flying with Lufthansa a week before the official practice week and will do some tourist activities in Germany and Czech Republic before we arrive in Leszno on the 19th of July to meet our team there. We are truly looking forward to it.