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!

Family fun!

If you've been following along you'll know that last week I passed my exam for the FAI "C" Certificate.  One of the benefits this bestows upon a sailplane pilot is the authorisation to carry family/friend passengers.  When I was explaining this to my daughters, you can imagine what the immediate response was - "Take us gliding!!"  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!

New Toy, Part 2

Welcome to part two of my test and review of the AEE Magicam SD-21.  Part One can be viewed here.

As previously noted, I was quite impressed with the contents of the camera package - you get an awful lot for the SD-21's going price.  I made the comment that this was a cheap Chinese knockoff of the GoPro2 - I retract that statement.  While the heritage is obviously similar, there are sufficient differences between the cameras that it would be better to label this as an alternative rather than a copy.  Of course, the contents of the package mean little if the camera can't produce decent footage.  I'm happy to say that I was equally impressed with quality of the video produced.  Read on for my impressions and some tests.

New Toy!

Hmmm, a new toy arrived at my desk this afternoon...

A shiny new AEE Magicam SD-21, a Chinese actioncam that is a direct knockoff of the ubiquitous GoPro.  Reviews for these things have been very good but they've been hard to get hold of in Australia to date.  I got mine from Kogan, who at the time of writing have them on sale for AUD $149.00, they're basically a steal at that price.

I decided on the SD-21 after much searching and reading of reviews, much umm'ing and ahh'ing and general indecision.  Many visits to pages like Techmoan and other reviewers of cheap electronics, and many many Youtube videos.  I decided early on that while I'd love to get a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition, I just can't justify spending the approximate $475.00 that they retail for here in Oz.  I just couldn't see the bang-for-the-buck.  Actioncam purists may shudder, but from what I've already seen, this little cam is pretty much identical in performance to the last generation GoPro2 and the lesser specced GoPro3 White.  In some ways, it exceeds them.

So, what does $149.00 net you in the Chinese knockoff actioncam game.  Quite a lot, it turns out.  Read on for the details.

Wind, Important Lessons; and a Surprise...

G'day all, and I hope my fellow Aussies are having a great Australia Day weekend!  After being dragged by the kids out to Crawley to watch the annual Australia Day Skyshow over the Swan River - which was actually better than it's been in years! - and dealing with all the crowds, I was ready for some quiet time up in the air.  So, after a relatively late start for me, I got into the car with plenty of cold water and a packed lunch and headed out to Cunderdin for the day.  I arrived just in time for the 9:30am briefing, it looked a bit quiet today - not a whole lot of activity around the place.  That changed pretty quickly!  Read on after the jump for more...

Higher and higher

Talk about missed opportunities!  I was supposed to head out to the club last Saturday, December 29th, but had my Dad come down from Karratha to stay with us for a couple of days.  I declined to head out gliding in favour of hanging out with him - I should have taken him out there with me!!  The day was shaping up very nicely in the morning and I was kicking myself that I wasn't up in the air, by lunchtime it looked like thermals would be heading upwards of 10,000'.  Oh well, I don't get to see my Dad much so I guess that's fair.  But just to rub it in, Vic called me late in the afternoon to report that I had missed a boomer of a day and that he had topped out at 12,500' in the Jantar.  Good thing that by that point I had a nice cold beer to cry into :,(

Anyway, back on track.  It's been hot here in the west.  Bloody Hot.  The past couple of weeks including Christmas and New Year has seen Perth in the grip of a heat wave, with most days going northwards of 36C, and many of them well over 40C.  Today was no different as I was driving out to Cunderdin, at 0800 it already felt well over 30.  Arriving at the airfield I was greeted by a hot and humid Nor'Easter that was ominously promising a hot day with potential thunderstorm activity.  The morning briefing met report confirmed this, with a forecast of isolated thunderstorms penetrating from the north by 1400 or so.  Good thermal activity though, with expected tops of 10 - 11,000' by the mid afternoon.  There were a lot of members at the club today, many of them still on holidays and taking every opportunity to fly.  Several of them decided on a task to fly and headed out to prepare their machines.  They're all practising for the State Championships, which the club is hosting next week.  More after the jump...

Cross Country!

I was eagerly anticipating today's lessons as I was rostered to fly lessons with John Orton again, and I had so much fun with him last time... learned a lot too!  I did not anticipate just how awesome today's flying would be though :D  Continue after the break for more!

Back behind the stick

Well now, after 6 weeks away from the club I was keen as mustard to get back up in the air again and learn something new.  Driving out to Cunderdin it was apparent that Summer was coming... I was no longer leaving home in the dark and the landscape was beginning to show more yellow than green once I was past the hills.  Arriving at the club I found I would have a new instructor for the day - John Orton.  I had met John early on in my membership, having assisted him with rigging gliders and doing a weight and balance assessment on a Nimbus, but this would be my first opportunity to fly with him.  Everyone speaks highly of John as an instructor, especially when it comes to learning cross-country flight, and while I'm not even flying solo yet - let alone cross-country - I was sure I would learn plenty today.  I was not disappointed.  Not by a long shot :)

I left my camera at home gin this trip so couldn't take any photos beyond a couple of awful shots taken on my phone - which got promptly deleted.  The morning briefing was held, and it was good to see more members there today - the warmer weather and improving conditions had all the regulars getting their gliders out for some cross country work.  I was the only student, and there was only a single AEF booked for the day, so it was looking like I would get some good flying in.  Thermals were expected to go to about 7,000' today with a moderate breeze from the SW later in the afternoon.  Start of flying was fairly late, as there was a fair bit of maintenance to be done that John was involved with, so I spent a good chunk of the morning cleaning down the PW-6U and helping with its DI.

Before heading out to the lineup, John sat down with me in the clubhouse and quizzed me on my progress.  After checking my logbook and verifying that I knew what I was talking about, he decided it was time to start working on the mechanics of staying up in the air rather than basic flight skills.  So, it was out with the whiteboard and I got a nice lesson in thermal entry theory, and also on thermalling in the presence of other gliders.  John also had me sketch out and narrate a full landing circuit and approach, identifying all the key points and checks that needed to be done.  Satisfied that I was up to the task, it was out to the lineup and into the Peewee for the first flight of the day.  By the time we got airborne there were already a few other gliders up, so I had plenty of opportunity to exercise good lookout practice - good thing I have good eyes!

After a 2,000' tow John checked out my handling skills then it was off to find some lift.  Picked up a solid 4kt thermal, and John demonstrated how to correctly enter the thermal and when to tighten or loosen the turn to stay with the thermal core.  He had me practice steeper turns than I had done before, with attention on maintaining bank angle and constant speed in the circle.  After a bit of practice with this it was back down to pattern height and time to land.  I messed up the landing badly, completely failing to control my approach speed and glidepath... I was focussing way too much on the aiming point and what I was doing with the spoilers.  John had to take over and get us down safely, I was pretty disappointed with myself as I had been getting better at landings.

After a short break and some discussion about what I needed to watch on landings, John elected to get me up for a short flight to just do the circuit and landing, so we towed up to 1,000' and released right into downwind.  I was pretty tense after the last landing, but managed to get down safely, if not gracefully.  Speed control was still wavering, but I didn't get too slow and my round out and flare were better.

I didn't even get out of the seat this time, we were hooked straight back up to the towplane and heading for 2,000' before I knew it.  I'm finding flying a safe Aerotow to be pretty easy now, and John started coaching a bit to make my tows better from an efficiency perspective... staying right below the wake of the towplane and following it in turns more skillfully.  Anyway, immediately after release we were into a decent thermal and climbing at a decent rate.  There were half a dozen other gliders in the air around the airfield, and close by was a lovely ASK-21mi self launcher that had launched ahead of us.  The K-21 was circling in what looked to be a pretty nice thermal only a few hundred metres away, and John directed me to leave our thermal and go join the K-21 so I could demonstrate what I'd learned earlier about joining other gliders in thermals.  The other glider was thermalling in a left circle so I aimed for his tail as he headed away, then entered the thermal in the same circle, but on the opposite side... in the few seconds it took to get into the thermal, the K-21 had flown half a turn.  Being a heavier glider he was flying quite fast and a bit wider circle than we could do in the Peewee, so I had to speed up a bit and broaden the turn to stay safely ahead of him.  We were outclimbing the K-21 so John had me tighten the circle and slow a little, getting closer to the core and maximising the climb.  It felt fantastic to be zooming around in the thermal only a few hundred feet away from another glider, and outclimbing it to boot!

At 6,000' we headed out to the West, while the K-21 departed North.  With plenty of height and good thermals to play with, John had me fly from thermal to thermal, keeping our altitude up towards the top end of the thermal range.  He began to quiz me on the landmarks that we could see from the air.  My familiarity with the area paid off here as I could easily spot and name the nearest towns, point out the highway and some other more visible landmarks.  We drifted slowly SW with the thermals and crossed GE H'way heading for a large rocky outcrop.  Near the outcrop we experienced some really heavy sink but no corresponding lift, it was getting down to around 12kt down at some points.  John advised I accelerate up to about 80kt and head back to the North, and began to explain the theory behind Speed-to-fly for cross country soaring - flying faster the heavier the sink and slower in lift or still air.  Back over the town of Cunderdin we picked up a bit of a boomer (relatively speaking from my experience!!) with 6-7kt up indicated.  This took us to 6,500' close to the airfield.  Just as we were heading North we got a call over the radio to land back at the airfield, as an AEF customer had arrived for his flight.

We were high up with a lot of altitude to lose before circuit entry so John announced it was time to learn how to do spins - entry and recovery so I could get myself out of trouble if it ever happened to me.  After doing the mandatory pre-aerobatic HASLL check, John demonstrated the first spin - very exciting!  The rapid nose drop and entry into the spin was surprising.  After recovery, John commented on my resilience - he reckons most new pilots would have lost their lunch after the amount of circling we'd done in the thermals, let alone the spin!  All those years of sailing must have something to do with that ;)  Anyway, now it was my turn.  Ease back the stick as for a stall... kick in left rudder as the stick comes fully back and give it some opposing aileron and WHAM!  The nose drops sharply to the left and we're falling nose down, stalled and spinning left.  Apply right rudder to slow the spin and ease the stick forward to increase the nose down attitude and we're flying again, albeit downwards, so time to level out.  My first recovery I hauled back on the stick way too hard and really felt the G's pile on as we levelled out... have to be much more gentle next time.  John had me do another one for good measure then we were down to less than 3,000' so John showed me another way to lose altitude quickly without using the spoilers - he demonstrated a side slip.  I followed this with one of my own and it was time to land... for good measure John showed how to use the sideslip on approach as a means of controlling descent rate, then we were down for the day.  My last landing was passable, certainly better than the other two.

I feel I learned a huge amount today, and have a lot to digest between now and my next lesson.  While I learned a lot about the mechanics of soaring flight - good thermalling, spins, stalls, etc - perhaps what I found most interesting was the reasons for staying up.  John had given me a lot of info and advice which pertains to flying cross country... areas likely to produce good lift, landmarks in the area, which fields looked landable and which looked dangerous.  I'm now feeling the desire to get away from the airfield and see what I can do in a cross country flight.  First things first tough - I have to get to solo!

The day wrapped up nicely with a quiet beer and sitting around chatting until it was time to drive home.  I'd had my longest flight to date today - 1 hour 52 min, with my previous flights all being less than half an hour, and had climbed higher than ever before as well, so I felt pretty content driving home.

Can't wait till next time.

2012 Ride to Conquer Cancer

Well, today I'm very sore and very tired!  I spent the greater part of the weekend in the saddle taking part in the 2012 Ride to Conquer Cancer, Perth - a two day, 209km cycling event organised to raise funds for Cancer research in Western Australia. Each of the 1,200+ participants was tasked with raising a minimum of $2,500 for WAIMR, the Western Australian Institute for Medical Research, located at the University of Western Australia.

I have to say, we did very well.  The total raised was just over $4.7million, far exceeding the minimum contribution of $3million.  And, as a bonus, we had a great time too.  I rode with two of my work colleagues, and frequently also with Peter Klinken, the head of WAIMR.  We didn't press too hard, but still managed good times.

My GPS log from The Ride

Day one was a 96km leg from Perth to Pinjarra along the base of the Darling Range.  It was warm and there was very little wind, a most pleasant ride in fact.  There were frequent rest stops, wonderfully managed by the Ride organisers.  Saturday night was spent at the campsite in Pinjarra, and was a pretty big party, with great food and music.  My companions and I opted not to partake of the free beer though... Day two still lay ahead!

Our Ride team: Jessica Midjaja, myself and Don Frost

Day two saw us returning to Perth via the coast.  From Pinjarra we headed NW until we hit Safety Bay, and from there it was all the way up along the coast to Fremantle.  This proved to be a bit of a slog, as a 16kt Nor'wester was blowing in and never swung around to the usual Sou'wester.  So we had to punch into a pretty vicious headwind all the way.  Turning Freo though was a joy, with the wind largely at our back all the way back to the finish line.  Crossing the finish line was a joyous occasion, and I celebrated with a nice cold beer and a delicious steak sandwich with my family.

Finished!!

Looking forward to doing it again next year, better organised and with my wife Amy in tow as well!!

Now, back to the regular programming of Glider talk...