Feb 9, 2013 ... replace the cable in. ZK-GBD .... Mary and Jen jumped into 'The Slug' (Trace's
Nissan Terrano) as opposed to Glider Rescue .... Phone, radio or.
The Taupo Gliding Club’s Newsletter January- February 2013 Welcome to the first edition of Outlanding for 2013. It has been a great start to the year and as we know summer is here! And what spectacular summer weather we are enjoying. Flying conditions have been outstanding and there is more to come. With such fantastic conditions, we have experienced a good number of Trial Flights over the last month and the members, who have flown, have enjoyed lengthy flights. So everyone, WHY NOT come on out and make the most of these fantastic conditions before winter arrives. In the meantime please enjoy the following...........................cheers, Trace.
What’s inside? CFI Report Christmas Camp Vintage Kiwi at Centennial Park Central District Championships - Waipukurau The Adventures of Super Bill and Glider Rescue One Article – ‘The Ground Found Me’ by Murray Wardell Article- ‘Outlanding’ by Trev Terry Rope Break Final Glide – Tom Tombleson Jantar Standard 2- Back Online Upcoming Events Achievements New Members Humour
CFI Report – by CFI Bill Kendall Well, what a great period of flying we have had in the last month. We have a good troop of new students, both local and one from Germany. This has kept our Instructors very much on demand and we are very grateful to have Sid Gilmore back with us; he has been of great assistance doing most of the flight training with Martin (our German student) bringing him up to solo standard. All students are progressing towards solo standard so we should see a few “A” certificates being issued in the near future. The instructors’ panel have put Joe Ward forward to be trained as an instructor so he is doing some back seat time with instructors. As he builds up his hours he will be groomed to become our youngest instructor. We will be encouraging him to attend an instructors course later in the year so should see him on the Instructors Roster soon after. Please give him your support We have just had an interesting week with the Vintage Kiwi and a good assortment of gliders present along with awesome weather and a lot of blue thermals. The week was mostly incident free with one serious close call on Mt Tauhara and that was caused by a powered aircraft out of Taupo doing a low level pull-up around the eastern side of Tauhara in front of three gliders. This incident has been reported. Centennial Park is a Common Frequency Zone (CFZ); the areas are shown on Visual Navigation charts in blue diamond shaped lines. When operating within the zone pilots should transmit position and intentions on the published frequency (in our case 134.45) at regular intervals and switch on aircraft lights (where applicable). CFZ’s differ from MBZ’s in that the procedures prescribed are not mandatory; note also that the CFZ is not in the Special Use airspace category. An over-riding reason for the CFZ is the desirability to have all aircraft within the zone, IFR and VFR, on the same frequency. At Centennial it is from the surface (SFC) to 4,500 feet; please check the Visual Navigation Charts in the lecture room or ask an Instructor. Just a reminder about putting your arm through the window of gliders; not only can you damage the canopy you can also damage the tow release cable. Putting your hand through the canopy window to release the rope after an auto tow will put stress on the canopy and you pull the release knob at an angle thus putting stress on the cable in the area. We had to NO! Please OPEN the Canopy replace the cable in ZK-GBD last week because the cable had broken a number of strands. Also, leaving the canopy up when unattended is a recipe for disaster and can end up being a very costly experience. Safe Flying – Bill Kendall CFI
NO! Please CLOSE the canopy
Christmas Camp Our traditional Christmas camp was held between 26th of December through to the 6th of January. Everyone who came and stayed had a great time.
The Christmas camp is a great time to come and play for all the family. Lionel Page from Whenuapai had nine members of his family here and we had visitors from Taranaki as well as local and distant members.
Vintage Kiwi at Centennial Park If you looked around the club during the week of the 26th of January through to the 2nd of February you would have thought that you had stepped back in time. Vintage kiwi descended upon the club with a number of gliders in tow. The oldest glider (about 60 years old) at the regatta was the EoN Baby GAF owned by John Currie and Don Grigg. During the week there were a total of 46 flights conducted with about 80 gliding hours flown. Some repair and inspection work was required to a couple of the old girls but nothing major. Besides gliding with perfect weather, Tom Anderson and Tim Norman provided our guests with an evening cruise out on the lake and all there enjoyed a very pleasant evening. As you can imagine, with a group of glider pilots, the main topic of conversation was about gliding.
Central Districts Championship – Waipukurau The Central Districts Championship was held at Waipukurau during 19th to 26th of January. Trev Terry and Trace Austin entered in Open and Club class respectively. Trev flying his well known Duo Discus - GTT and Trace entered with the club’s Jantar Standard 2 - GML. Trev and Trace decided to drive over on the Friday afternoon rather than the Saturday morning so that they could relax before flying in the afternoon. After dropping off the trailers at the club the boys headed to the pub to have a coldie. While they were there, Trev told Trace that he had a scary moment in town a couple of minutes before arriving at the field. For those of you that do not know Waipukurau, there is a level crossing in town. As Trev came around the corner the traffic stopped and Trev was stationary across the train tracks. As he casually looked around he saw one huge train with one very bright light, his eyes became the size of dinner plates and thus a new pair of undies were in need. Luckily though, the train was also stationary. There were only seven contestants to start off, three in Open Class and four in Club Class, but it was an awesome week, flying tasks five out of the seven days. The other two days were great weather wise but not the conditions suited to go very far from the field. By week’s end, the four competitors in Club class ended up being just two. Jason Price unfortunately damaged his LS4 when the undercarriage collapsed during an outlanding and Ian Sheppard had to leave for compassionate reasons. This left Club class open to Trace and Jason Kelly. Jason won club class last year but this year the honours went to Trace. Trace also was awarded the title of most improved competition pilot, so he came away a very happy little vegemite. (Note: that was vegemite not marmite ) Trev had his granddaughters arriving in Napier on Monday evening so he had to break off the task set for that day early. He also had a prior commitment on the Wednesday and didn’t fly. So this then left the Open class challenge between Graham White and Tony van Dyke. Graham was the victor, winning Open class and the competition overall. There were some challenging days with only three outlandings, Jason Price, Trace and Tony. All outlandings were on the same day. Jason landed in a paddock that had a lot of bull...... which was partially the cause of his undercarriage collapse, Trace ended up in a dairy farm to the surprise of the farmer and his wife who were milking cows at the time and Tony landed out a couple of kms short of the field.
With Trace’s outlanding, he did not see any cows when he made his paddock selection as they were sheltering under the trees. They did however, come and visit as soon as the glider stopped. Thanks to the friendly farmer, the cows were removed to another paddock. Tony didn’t have the same luck as he had to deal with bulls and he had to continually walk around the glider to prevent any damage and as luck would have it, Tony managed to step straight into a nice fresh paddy Day six saw no flying, but unlike the day before, the day was cancelled early. This then left time to do other activities so the group went on a tiki-tiki tour down to the beach and surroundings. The Central Districts Championship is a laid back friendly week. It is a competition but everyone helps each other. The senior pilots offer a lot mentoring which is great for the new contest pilot or anyone who just wants to enter and fly the cross country tasks. With that in mind, anyone wishing to do some excellent cross country flying in a wonderful environment should consider going to the next Central Districts Championship. I’d like to thank the club committee for allowing me to use ML during this contest - Trace
The Adventures of “Super Bill & Glider Rescue One” In our previous edition of Outlanding, we heard how our superhero took to the skies and assisted competition pilots at the Central Plateau Soaring Competition. Not to be left out during the Central Districts Championship, Super Bill and Glider Rescue One visited Waipukurau. Super Bill, along with trusty side-kick Mary, flew over to see how Trace and Trev were going and it wasn’t long before Super Bill was required to leap into action. As luck would have it, Trace had landed out on a Dairy Farm in Dannevirke and had called in his position. As there were limited numbers for the retrievals, Super Bill, Mary and Jen jumped into ‘The Slug’ (Trace’s Nissan Terrano) as opposed to Glider Rescue One and went to the rescue. Thank you Super Bill A few hours later Super Bill, Mary and Glider Rescue One were heading off home to Taupo but (as luck would have it - again) the weather conditions deteriorated and they were all back at Waipukurau to spend the night. A pleasant evening was had at the club and the motel before our heroes were able to fly home the following day. What will our Super Hero and Glider Rescue One get up to before our next edition?
Article – “The Ground Found Me” by Murray Wardell Thursday 24th Jan, gave me an opportunity for a flight down the Western side of the North Island south of Drury. Surprisingly – I’d never flown down this part of the country and I was keen to explore some new terrain and get familiar with the area. The Pawnee was due to tow the Duo Discus to Whitianga, so I was able to squeeze in a tow before they left. I released at 2500ft to make sure I had a good chance of staying up – as there was not going to be the opportunity for a second flight. The lift was not as good as I was expecting – and I was unsure for awhile whether the day was promising me more than I was getting or whether I was just not flying very efficiently as my electric vario was on the blink and I was forced to fly on mechanical vario only. After floundering around for a bit – I decided to get on with my declared task which involved a remote start and then heading back to Drury. The flight could easily have ended back at Drury where I was down to 1200 ft before I could find a proper climb to 3500ft before heading off south. My first good glide took me 20Km on track to Onewhero and offered me a chance to look for paddocks until I found another climb from down low. If my plan was to check out the terrain, I was doing a pretty good job as I was well below 2500ft for a lot of the time as I clawed my way southward. Finally after 90 minutes I was able to spend some time looking up at clouds instead of down for landing paddocks as get close to cloud base for the first time and topped out at 4500ft which was the airspace ceiling for where I was. There was hardly any chance to enjoy being cool before I found myself looking at paddocks again and an inviting airstrip at Glen Afton was comforting as I hitched a ride on a light thermal out of the quarry. A hawk thought he knew more than me about thermalling – so I went over to join him and thanked him for the lesson. Meanwhile – I was having a bad day with electronics in the cockpit, my gps battery died and I had bumped on an experimental data file on to the PDA. Somewhere amongst changing batteries, resetting the PDA – monitoring the mechanical vario, trying to locate landable areas (it’s hilly in here), and watching I didn’t encroach airspace from the map, I realised I was overloading myself. Even my “Smart” phone had a “Dumb” moment – refusing to take another photo until it shook hands with ITunes! The best resolution I could find was to turn off everything that was working against me – and fly from first principles. Progress down country had been slow and I could see that it was time to abandon my big flight and modify the flight plan. Turning back wasn’t really an option – as the sky didn’t look too good back towards Drury. It looked worse in the direction I wanted to go (south towards Pirongia) and to continue on into the overdeveloped sky seemed like a certain land out. The Sky was blue out west towards Mt Karioi with a couple of light wispy cumulus clouds. This was well off track – but offered my best chance to stay in the air until the sky to the south looked better. So I did what every self respecting Kiwi does on a hot sunny day in the middle of summer – I skived off and I headed for the beach. I had some lunch while I cruised around Raglan taking in the view up and down the coast eventually getting up to 4000ft which gave me some options again and enabled me to get back inland to an improved sky.
A wind farm at Te Uku provided some entertainment as the blades were facing different directions and only half of them turning. There was no real lift here – but I couldn’t resist banking over towards them. After all – “I’m a Knight Errant – You Know” on my white winged horse – and it’s not every day in the modern world that I’m “Tilting At Windmills”. Lift eluded me again – and I was back down in the lower 2000ft height band unable to get up to the street running over the top of Mt Pirongia, so I was forced to fly around it at tree top height. I set a new goal of trying to make Tokoroa or Taupo, where I could land and think about getting retrieved the following day. Mother nature had a different plan for me and must have brushed up on the airspace area – as whenever I headed to an area with a lower Airspace ceiling – the lift obliged to make sure I wasn’t going to need to get Airspace clearance. Now the sky was flat and a paddock was looking for me. There was no detectable wind – so in order to make sure that I didn’t end up landing down wind and running out of paddock – I looked for my favourite option – an uphill landing. If you set yourself up properly for an uphill landing – it’s really hard to not land in that paddock. I set up a proper circuit which required a 50ft clearance over the top of a high tension power pylon at the end of the base leg. That might sound a bit radical – but it’s no worse than avoiding a tree. Flying over the top of or close to the pylon also means that you are going to miss the wires – it’s the power lines that you don’t see that will catch you out. A paddock in Otorohanga wasn’t part of the plan – but that’s why we go gliding – it’s the journey – not the destination. Thanks to David Ames for picking me up for a late night home. The final word – and my new quote (it was worth landing out just for this) came from the farmer... after I had explained where I had come from and how I got to be in his paddock. He said – so after all that – “The Ground Found Me!”
Article – “Outlanding” by Trev Terry Outlanding or Landing out, is a normal part of cross country soaring and contest flying. There is nothing surer than this. If you extend yourself, cross country flying, you will find yourself somewhere, low and requiring a safe place to land. Its normal and the skills you have learnt making precision landings at your home airfield will help you to make a safe landing away from home. Preparation and planning will help you to be ready to handle the extra pressure of landing out. At all times during your flight, you will have an area of safe landing within reach. This is the prime requirement for your safety and comfort. GPS data base of landout airfields etc is a very useful tool. Always stay hydrated during flight and prior to landing, have a drink and relax.
Paddock Selection. Size - Adequate for the conditions. Judgement of length, compare to known objects. Eg: power poles, buildings etc. Surface - Smooth enough. Check for furrows, and animal wallows. E.g. bull paddocks. Grain stubble or hay paddocks after cutting, show up as a bit more yellow and these generally are my preferred field. Generally the track of the mower/ harvester shows and long straight runs without any curves will indicate a fairly flat surface. Slope and contours are better seen from well to the side of the prospective field. Caution with long standing crops. These can sometimes be visible by their waving in the breeze. Bright green paddocks may be swamp or crop and are my least favourite. Ploughed paddocks are fine and should be landed along the furrows with wheel out and normal approach. Glider stops quickly. Slope - Difficult to pick slope unless steep and if it easily noticeable then it’s probably too steep. The glider should be landed up the slope and be prepared to have extra speed to enable safe round out up the slope. It is preferable to land uphill with a tailwind rather than downhill into wind. Beware, with a tailwind the effect of speed over the ground will indicate a fast approach. Always maintain safe speed near ground. The glider stops quickly landing uphill with little ground roll. Be careful the glider does not roll back down the slope. Stock - Avoid landing with stock. Cows and bulls have been known to consume large portions of sailplanes, and trample wings and knock off tail planes. Ask Ben Stimson. They are very inquisitive and you will have to fend them off your glider and may be unable to leave to get assistance. Deer and horses are temperamental and can take off through fences. You may end up owning a very expensive racehorse. Also all animals take fright and can run in all directions. Sheep are the least frightened and if there is enough room available use caution. After landing they will not cause any nuisance. AVOID STOCK IF POSSIBLE. Single – wire power lines Overhead power lines are almost invisible and can only be identified by power poles. Quite often they follow the farmer’s race or roads feeding power to homes and sheds and milking stations. They also provide power to the electric fences. Identify any buildings, follow the poles and whenever you’re landing over a race, road, or track expect a power or telephone wire. The allowance you will need to make to land over the wires may make your field too short. I personally avoid when possible landing over power wires, trees or hedges due to the higher approach. While we’re talking of wires, beware the electric fence. Very difficult to see but identified frequently by the colour of the grass or crop changing as the farmer moves his fence up the field away from the trough since the animal needs to drink. A field with lots of troughs can be divided by wires or plastic cable held up by curly tail rods at about 2 feet. Again the wire is hard to see so look hard for the curly tail rods. A single trough paddock is my favourite when it’s at one end. If in the middle, there may be one electric fence wire across the paddock and trough making 2 paddocks and sharing the trough. Have a plan Always have a safe area in front or behind. Relax and hydrate yourself. If necessary relieve yourself. Don’t let the pressure of needing to go affect your safety
Getting lower Select a safe area. Now you can carefully check around the area for lift while observing the paddocks and making your selection. Select a safe paddock with sufficient altitude. Don’t drift away from your safe paddock while searching for lift. Unless you know the altitude of your landing area, you will need to ignore your altimeter. Landing checks, remembering to dump any water ballast. Speed control and aiming point. Too fast means too much energy. Stick to your normal speed. Downwind, staying too close to the paddock means no base leg and losing sight of the field before turning. Follow your normal training and circuit. This allows time to make small changes on down wind and base leg so you’re final should be straight forward. Monitor speed, beware gradients and follow your aiming point to landing. Fly the glider till it stops moving. Stop the glider in the minimum distance. You don’t know if there are stumps, rabbit holes etc. Pull the glider to the side immediately to leave room for the next glider who may be coming to join you. A landed glider is a magnet to the next pilot who will more than likely be experiencing the same conditions that caused you to outland. Secure the glider, note the GPS position on your land out sheet. Phone, radio or communicate with base for retrieve. If there is no reception. Grab your jacket or jersey, drink, phone, pen, wallet etc and locate nearest farmhouse. Respectfully request permission to call base, and remove your glider. Your manner at this point is paramount to win the support of the people you are probably going to inconvenience. Offer children a sit in the glider. Explain why you have ended up on their property. You are an ambassador for our sport. You could invite them to the club for a trial flight. You may offer this at your cost. I have dropped wines off before and I know some pilots who keep some in the car for this reason. Make friends not enemies. Soaring is probably the most satisfying, demanding, exciting sport that you could have chosen. It’s not for everyone, but if you get hooked, lay back and enjoy it. I think we can run an evening or two on this subject and I am happy to assist with this. – Trev R. Terry GTT.
Rope Break The old saying goes “When the rope breaks, not - if the rope breaks”, so on every launch we weigh up our options when we go through Eventualities. The rope may not break when you are close to the ground or field, as Tom and Martin discovered. During a Descent on Tow exercise, excessive force was applied to the tow rope which broke. The glider had sufficient height to return to Centennial Park and as the pilots were unsure if the rope was still attached to the glider they flew down the centre of runway 22, activated the release knob and the remaining rope fell to the ground. The tow ropes in use at the club have a blue thread woven into one strand, if you see this blue thread sticking out anywhere along the rope when you are inspecting it for knots, report it to the Duty Instructor. A rope with damaged threading indicates that the rope has been stretched beyond normal parameters and should be removed from service.
Final Glide – Tom Tombleson Ted Tombleson was a member of the Taupo Gliding Club and also a B Cat Instructor for over 20 years. Unfortunately he had not been active for the last 5 years due to poor health and sadly Ted pasted away on the 21st November 2012. Ted was a very kind and generous person who had a great rapport with all members and lots of patience and time for new students, and as such he always turned up to do his duty. Ted also served on the committee for a number of years and was a valuable member to the club.
Jantar Standard 2 – 3000hrly GML has had its 3000 hourly maintenance routine completed. Lindsay Stevens renewed the spar pins doing an excellent job. Ben Stimson completed the 1000 hour routines and annual inspection so ML is back on line with another 3000 hours of life. The Jantar is a very enjoyable glider to fly, it has a high Vne of 154 knots, light controls and is a great cross country ship. The main reason people do not like to fly the Jantar after their first couple of flights is that they cannot get comfortable in it and the reason for this is that they are trying to sit upright.
To get comfortable you need to lie down more, as opposed to trying to sit up, and once you get set up you will be just as fresh after flying five hours as you would be after an hour flight. So why not convert and have some fun?
Upcoming Events Just a quick reminder for the following event: Club Class Nationals and Matamata Soaring Contest, 9-23 February 2013
Achievements: David Smith achieved his QGP status. Congratulations and well done David. We hope to see you here again soon. Martin Arndt from Germany has completed a Solo in a Week course and has achieved solo standard but has elected to wait until he gets back to Germany before going solo.
New Members We wish a very warm welcome to our Club’s newest members: John Hudson, and Rod Ball.
Humour Check In: A passenger piled his cases on the scale at an airline counter in New York and said to the clerk, "I'm flying to Los Angeles. I want the square case to go to Denver and the two round ones to go to Seattle. Clerk - "I'm sorry sir, but we can't do that." Passenger - "Why not? You did it last time?" Basic Flying Rules: 1. Try to stay in the middle of the air. 2. Do not go near the edges of the air. 3. The edges of the air can be recognised by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees, mountains and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.
