Gold!!

In my last post I mentioned that I'd passed the requirements for the FAI Silver Badge, and that I'd also completed two of the three requirements for the Gold Badge.  Well, it seems that I may have made a small miscalculation - the GFA, upon scrutinising my submitted flight trace, contacted me to advise that I had actually made a large enough climb to qualify for my Gold height gain, and thus I was awarded my Gold Badge as well as the Silver!!  As a bonus, I've also been awarded the first of my three Diamonds, for completing a declared task flight exceeding 300km.  More soon!

Super thermals, badge flights and more!

Woohooo!!!

What an absolutely amazing weekend! The weather over here in WA put on some of the best soaring conditions in years over the past week. On Friday, my mate Swain put in a huge effort and notched up a 1,000km FAI Triangle XC flight - the first ever in WA - and then capped it off with a second 1,000km on Monday! Three other pilots from other clubs in WA also completed 1,000km flights on Saturday and Sunday. It was very, very hot over here with only mild winds, and although we usually soar in the blue here we were spoiled by thermals topped with Cu's by noon every day. Thermals were very strong and were maxing out at well over 16,000ft, sometimes as high as 18,000ft.

So, what did this mean for me? A novice XC pilot with only a single solo XC flight under my belt? I went up and hammered it of course!

A harsh lesson learned

So, after last week's XC flight I headed up to the club again today to get some more flying in.  I didn't get to make an attempt on my Silver C as I had planned otherwise I'd be here to brag... unfortunately now I'm coming back with my head hanging in shame.  Read on after the jump to find out what went wrong...

Off the Leash

G'day all!

Exciting news from me today, and you may be able to guess what it is from the topic title.  Read on after the jump for more!

Exams & Endorsements...

By rights, I should have been horribly hung over today, and given that the weather forecast was much less than spectacular I didn't really have much hope of it being a productive day.  I should know better.  Last night we celebrated the club Oktoberfest - there was much drinking of German beer, followed by much drinking of Schnapps, accompanied by a hearty meal of bratwurst, pretzels and sauerkraut.  We all had a great night that continued well into the morning - I quit at 1am and climbed into my sleeping bag dreading how my head would feel in the morning.  Read on for more...

A new ride

I had my first couple of flights in this slick little glider today. It's a Jantar Standard 2, one of two owned by the club, and is a late 70's to early 80's design from Poland. It's fibreglass and built for the Standard category, and handles a lot more responsively than the old ali Pilatus that I've been flying around in lately! This is what I'll be flying when I head out cross country and in any competition I'm silly enough to enter, for the foreseeable future (unless someone wants to donate me a sailplane? No?? Awww.) It's a slick little number and took me a bit to get used to with the severely pronate seating position (you're pretty much lying down in it) and the much improved glide ratio. The thing just wanted to stay up, and you need to be careful on the flare to make sure you don' end up floating down the runway. Lots of fun to fly, I'm looking forward to spending more time in it. Read on for more...

Landing out...

G'day all, it's been a while since I filed an update. Over the past couple of months I've been getting time up in the club Pilatus, gaining some more experience in single seat gliders in preparation for moving into something with a little higher performance. This week though, I had an opportunity to reach another milestone on my journey to cross country flight. Read on for more...

A Pilatus amongst the Cu's

At my previous visit to the club I was given the all clear to advance into a single seater, the first step for pilots at GCWA out of a two seat trainer is our old Pilatus B4-PC11.  I was looking forward to giving this a go this weekend and starting to challenge myself with better thermalling as I prepare myself for heading out cross country after winter.  Read on for more...

Steadily advancing; and a lesson learned

Well, after making steady progress since going solo I had to take and enforced break from flying for the past six weeks.  Due to work commitments I've been spending a lot of time shuttling back and forth between WA and QLD, and also managed to squeeze in a week's holiday in Melbourne with my lovely wife to treat her for her birthday :)  So, most of my flying for the past couple of months has been from the comfort of a window seat of an A340 heading across the country.  Despite having only returned from my latest trip over to Mackay at midnight on Friday, I was determined to get out to the club today and get some practice in.  Read more after the break...

Some more video

G'day all,

As promised, here's some footage taken from my most recent flight.  I managed to stay up for over an hour in fairly difficult conditions, which I'm happy with.  Launch was good, but I'm not as happy with the landing, which saw me let the nosewheel down to the runway a bit too early.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Derek

Onwards and Upwards. Well, onwards anyway...

Dragging myself out of bed this morning, getting out to Cunderdin was a 50/50 prospect at best.  After a day spent celebrating my father-in-law's birthday with maybe one too many bottles of wine and certainly way too much to eat, I was certainly feeling sluggish.  However, I wanted to play around with my action cam and get some footage, and probably won't have an opportunity to get out to the club again for a few weeks so I downed a coffee and packed my supplies, then psyched myself up for the drive.  I'm glad I did, as I had a most enjoyable day.  Read on for more...

Flyin' Solo

This morning I headed up to the club nice and early, away from home at 6am with a 2 hour drive out to Cunderdin.  I was rostered on to fill in for another member as the day's logkeeper, a duty I really need to take on a bit more often as I've just filled the committee position of Club Logkeeper and will be responsible for making sure all of the club's logs are kept accurate and up to date for the GFA.  I also hoped that I'd be able to secure a couple of flights to extend on my last trip where I managed to finally go solo.  It turned out to be a fairly busy day, and I certainly got my opportunity.  Read on for more, including my first flying video!