Leigh Bunting wrote:
It sounded like conditions were somewhat different east of the Mt Lofty
ranges. Anyone from Barossa/AUGC/Waikerie like to fill us in?
The wind was about the same, but it didn't start to get badly dusty
until late afternoon.
I was dumb enough to spend the day instructing: circuits in 36 deg
temperatures. Wow. Awe-inspiring. Should do it more often. Not.
My longest flight was ten minutes when one of our recently solo pilots
in a checkflight found a weak thermal and stayed in it until we both
decided we'd drifted too far downwind.
Derek Spencer took an AEF in our Motorfalke for 40 minutes, exploring
some of the lift coming off the ranges (out of reach of a winch launch).
When he got back he decided to repeat the attempt with one of the club's
Boomerang syndicate owners, and by motoring over to Truro they managed
to catch the frontal lift from the cool change which they rode until they
were at 8000' over The Gums. Bastards.
By that time visibility had become pretty crap, and they had to follow
the Sturt Highway to find the airfield.
We gave up winch ops at about 5:15pm when the winch driver reported
that he wasn't prepared to perform any more launches because he couldn't
see the glider at the top of the launch well enough to discern speed
signals due to the layer of dust.
The dust intensified through the evening: Driving back to Adelaide
after dark was like driving through brown fog, with tumbleweeds jumping
chaotically across the road at 50km/h and the occasional drift of even
heavier dust that cut visibility to zero for a few seconds. I
definitely wasn't driving in VMC.
- mark
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I tried an internal modem, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
but it hurt when I walked. Mark Newton
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