On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 19:14 +1000, David & Justine Olsen wrote: > Is everyone flying?
Yup. Last week I spent running an ab initio course at Caboolture - 5 students and we have 2 very close to solo and one with about 4 solos under his belt. Took Saturday off to recover and then flew with an early XC pilot on Sunday at Darling Downs and he successfully gained his initial XC category rating (a club rating allowing a pilot to fly in a restricted area around DDSC that gives enough room for up to 300km flight). A couple of days last week the lift was all over the sky at Caboolture for most of the day - a rare event given our proximity to the sea - and we were able to give our ab initio students a real taste of what soaring is all about (always good early in someone's training). Sunday looked like it was going to be brilliant - but it took a long time to get going. There were great looking clouds along a conversion line about 50km east of us (along hte range), but blue on the Downs. We had a 700ft save over the airfield and had all but given up on the XC task and were concentrating on thermalling technique. After a couple of hours, we got to 5,000ft (just under 4,000 agl) and started tiptoeing towards Dalby. After taking an age to get there, things finally started to happen and we climbed to 7,000ft and headed for Jimbour House. >From there on, the day steadily improved, with occasional wispy Cu appearing away to the northwest. After getting final glide to DDSC, we found an embarassment of lift and arrived back with several thousand feet to spare - so we executed a couple of lazy eights and stall turns. We then conducted a highly satisfactory outlanding practice at a nearby ag strip and aerotowed back to DDSC. Alice is still in her trailer (safely inside a hangar I hasten to add) as I have not had a chance to rig her following my return from Horsham and Temora. I'll be up to DDSC next weekend to rig and fly her! -- Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED] +61 (0)438 385 533 Brisbane, Australia http://www.hart.wattle.id.au _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
