Soaring Australia 2010-06

Print Post Approved – PP225277/00002

ISSN 1832-4849

June 2010 1 2010 Pribina Cup, Slovakia 3 Safety Management System Implementation – Incident/Accident Data 4 Two Weeks At Manilla...

Two Months After Finishing My Course 6 HGFA News 8 GFA Board Members Maximum Term of Office 9 Coaches’ Corner – Coaching Activities in SA and NT 10 49th Multi-class Nationals – Dalby, October 2010 11 Women In Gliding 12 The Concise Revised History of Hang Gliding 1963-1973 – Part 2 17 Soaring Calendar 18 Density Altitude 20 Glider Display at Moonee Valley Festival 21 Thoughts on the Glider Pilot Certificate 22 Gliding Queensland Easter Competition 2010 24 The Paragliding State of Origin 2010 28 Vintage Gliding Corner 32 Review of ‘Soaring Australia’ Magazine From a HGFA Perspective 36 Gliding in Australia – Quo Vadis 37 Happened Recently on an Airfield 37 Chairman of GFA Sports Committee to Retire

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CREDITS Cover: Spiralling up the ENE side of the Eiger, Swiss Alps June/July 2009 Photo: Adam Osten Design: Suzy Gneist, Gneist Design Printing: Bluestar Print, Canberra ACT Mailing: Bluestar Print, Canberra ACT NOTICE TO READERS AND CONTRIBUTORS This magazine is a joint publication by the GFA and the HGFA and each association contributes 50% to the production cost and is allocated 50% of the content pages of each issue.

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2010 Pribina Cup, Slovakia Brendan English “The four classes have been given separate start lines starting in four different directions for safety reasons,” says Vladimir Foltin (competition director) in the briefing on the third day of the Pribina Cup gliding competition in Nitra, Slovakia over Easter.

H 38 A Dusty Day and a DG1000 39 GFA FAI News 40 HGFA General Manager's Report 41 Letters to the Editors 42 Contact Addresses 44 GFA Business Manager's Report 45 Classifieds

Grant Johnson flying his Kestral out of Temora, heading back to his other club at Lockhart Photo: Nine-year-old Mathew Lennon from the back seat of a Janus on his 5th flight

HGFA EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTIONS The three contact points for HGFA members sub­mitting to Soaring Australia are the HGFA Sub-editor, the HGFA Office, and the Graphic Designer. These contacts should be used accord­ ing to the directions below.

GFA EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTIONS The three contact points for GFA members sub­ mitting to Soaring Australia are the GFA Subeditor, the GFA Office, and the GFA Advertising Representative. These contacts should be used according to the directions below.

HGFA SUB-EDITOR HGFA OFFICE & SALES Suzy Gneist Ph: 03 9336 7155 Ph: 07 5445 7796 Fax: 03 9336 7177 <soaring.australia@hgfa.asn.au> <office@hgfa.asn.au> Post to: 57 Alice Dixon Drive, [www.hgfa.asn.au] Flaxton QLD 4560 4a-60 Keilor Park Drive,

Keilor Park VIC 3042 GRAPHIC DESIGNER/PRODUCTION EDITOR Suzy Gneist, Ph: 07 5445 7796, <soaring.australia@hgfa.asn.au>, Post to: 57 Alice Dixon Drive, Flaxton QLD 4560.

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Narromine NSW 2821 Level 1/34 Somerton Road,

Somerton VIC 3062

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e goes on the explain the weather – 4000ft maximum expected, showers expected later in the day, and an early finish with a small chance of over development – and the tasks: 280km cat’s cradle for Club Class. Whilst explaining the Open Class task he says, “You should meet the Club Class coming the other way about here.” (‘Here’ is a narrow area of landable terrain between two forested mountain areas). There are two other classes tasked at 180-degrees to each other on the same day. Obviously the start is seen as more of a safety issue than the routes along track.

After the launch on the same day I have the, thankfully, rare experience of seeing my AUSFLARM have every single possible warning LED glow red at the same time with both it and the Butterfly screaming out loud. I am in THE gaggle over Zobor (the house ridge) at about 3000ft with at least half of the total field of 135 gliders all trying to stay airborne.

I want to turn away immediately and hang the chances of landing out. Every man has his limit, and I have no shame at having reached mine, but there is no way out for another three-quarters of a turn and the Flarm units don’t let up for the whole time. Of course when I do leave, several other gliders leave with me but fortunately none of those pesky Jantars which only seem capable of turning the other way to everyone else especially in tricky thermals. There is no rule about which way to turn near the airfield. Flarm is ‘allowed’ but not mandatory. Perhaps half the fleet have it.

The Pribina Cup describes itself as a ‘low pressure’ competition and is extremely popular. One hundred and thirty five pilots is less than last year but still a testament to the popularity of the competition. The organisers reserve the right to limit the size of the competition June 2010

to 150 pilots. It’s the first comp of the season for almost all the pilots and the first ‘rated’ comp or the year in Europe.

The results get forwarded to the FAI for inclusion in the world ranking list like at our nationals and a very wide range of pilots are in attendance. There are hotshots, hopefuls, ordinary club pilots from many European countries and trainees and juniors too. The German team, ‘C-Kader’, regularly uses the competition and some time before and or after it as a training exercise. Yes this is the third rank of German team pilots, but don’t be deceived, they are mostly highlymotivated juniors with upwards of 1000 hours and no known limits. I think some of them are actually Cyborgs.

On day three the possible tendency towards over-development does eventuate after all and about half the fleet lands out. I land on Partizansky airfield with seven others and immediately opt for a road retrieve. It’s only 50 or so kilometres away and in the event we are packed up and leaving as the first of the aerotow retrieves takes off. There is simply not going to be enough daylight for everyone to aerotow home. Aerotow retrieves are commonplace, but only from airfields. Towing from fields is not allowed. My crew is Martin Snirc, a local Nitra pilot who, with his club mate Milos Tapucik, will be taking the once-in-alifetime opportunity of participating in the World championships in the World Class when they are held in nearby Prievidza later this year. Martin and Milos have the generous loan of a PW5 for practice during the Pribina Cup period and therefore break with a long tradition for the club members and actually fly during the comp, although they do not attempt any of the tasks. After the initial shock, they seem reasonably pleased with the PW5. At least it’s comfortable.

They are both quite experienced local

Brendan English

Club Class pilots. I will be watching their progress in the world championships with great interest.

Flying in Slovakia, like most Eastern Block countries was very popular during the communist era. It was heavily subsidised so that even though it wasn’t necessarily easy to become a pilot and there were political interferences (Nitra for example is only a Silver C flight away from the border to Austria and the west).

Once you did get established, gliding was essentially free. Some Nitra pilots told me that one day a truck arrived at the airfield, without warning, with two brand new Blaniks on it. They were allocated to Nitra, so they were delivered to Nitra. Club members were unfazed, they unloaded the truck, rigged the gliders, and went flying. Since the ‘Velvet Revolution’, however, things have been significantly more difficult and many former glider pilots have found other things to interest them.

Gliding is not magically cheaper here than it is anywhere else but average incomes definitely are. In Nitra they

Nitra airfield Photo: Courtesy [www.pribinacup.sk/2010]

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G FA go a long way towards addressing this problem by holding the Pribina Cup and typically one other major competition each year. It brings in enough money that pilots who have helped run the comp (everyone helps, but some animals are more equal than others) can earn a substantial balance in their flying account which covers a significant amount of normal club flying. The club has over 100 members, but only five or six private owners and most of those are early glass or wooden machines. Most members live in the town, don’t own a car, and work in a wide range of normal jobs from taxi drivers and factory workers to doctors and real estate agents.

Watching the launching on day four I am once again awestruck by the efficacy of the incredible Turbo Cmelak tow plane. It’s like watching a winch launching exercise with half a dozen airborne winches. I time one launch of a Duo Discus full of water: two-and-a-half minutes from full power to full power on the next launch. Actually I’m not sure they are even using full power. These things literally have to be seen to be believed. For an indication see [www. youtube.com/watch?v=zAdIkB5rbgo] or search you tube for ‘Turbo Cmelak 9 Blanik launch’ Even if you don’t see the video, you will get the idea. It’s a tow plane launching nine gliders, AT ONCE. It’s almost worth renting an Open Class glider just to be allowed to experience such a tow. During registration I overheard Russel Cheetham (European Open Class champion from Great Britain) asking if the extra three Euros he has to pay for each tow is because of the Cmelaks.

Of course it is! I ask if I can pay an extra three Euros as well! Russel is very quick off the mark, “You’d get a nose bleed.”

He has been here before and he is probably right. I am flying an unbalasted Standard Cirrus. The Turbo Cmelaks are the real secret to being able to run a competition with up to 150 gliders on an airfield with a single runway.

Without them you would need at least twice as many tugs. It might be made to work, but it wouldn’t be anywhere near as comfortable.

Over on the Club Class grid on the other side of the airfield we have an interesting mix of tugs: two aging Zlin Trenners, two WT9 Dynamics, two Eurofox, and something I don’t recognise at all but which looks like a pregnant

G FA Piper Cub. All of them seem fine. Apart from being dwarfed by the Cmelaks they do a sterling job. One of the Dynamics has a retractable landing gear which is retracted at two metres on each tow.

The other tugs rock their wings at 500m to ditch the glider. The retractable Dynamic just lowers its undercarriage.

The message is loud and clear and breaks through all the language barriers. The Eurofox and Dynamic tugs are interesting.

They both use the same Rotax 912S 100hp engine and both have essentially identical performance in launching. A typical average rate of climb seems to be around four knots but the decent rate is very high.

Again I timed some launches: exactly five minutes repeatedly to 500m and back ready to roll. Before you start bleating, yes it was 14ºC that day, but at 35ºC last summer on an airfield at 1000ft it wasn’t much different. The Eurofox is a rag and tube derivative of the kit ‘Fox built on the airfield at Nitra, the Dynamic is an all composite sleek machine built by glider pilots for glider pilots on the airfield in neighbouring Prievidza. Both are extensively used in Slovakia as glider tugs so there must be some competition between them, but they are so fundamentally different that they certainly both have a future. The ‘Fox is a bit cheaper than the Dynamic, but both seem to be very good value for money. The Dynamic is especially good at aerotow ferrying/retrieves. The tug pilot routinely asks the glider pilot how fast the glider is allowed to fly on tow and then sticks to 10km/h or so lower than that.

The website entry list shows 141 pilots (135 actually flew) from 17 countries with 15 different languages. There is no ‘safety’ frequency except the airfield frequency. A few team frequencies are assigned to countries with similar languages. Many of the pilots choose private frequencies of their own which is neither allowed for nor forbidden in the rules. I listen in to a team flying pair from Germany and don’t say much. My radio German is adequate though not good, but I am not a part of their team.

It is very interesting to hear how they work together though and every now and then I can give them a more or less useful scrap of information, mostly a mistake I have made which they shouldn’t bother repeating. I usually start ahead of them (I am here for a good time and I want to survive the experience so start line games with 134 others aren’t that enticing) and

they overtake me about halfway around the course on most days, sometimes flying over my paddock.

This is the 10th anniversary of the Pribina Cup which is held in Nitra every Easter. It’s an inspiring success story and it illustrates for me just how different things can be and still be accepted as ‘normal’. My Australian perspective though is simply overwhelmed by the size of the event. Everything is huge: the registration effort in the office, the number of tables in the briefing hangar, the distances everyone drives to get here, the length of the launch queue, and of course the statistical likelihood of a midair collision. The only thing which is not huge is the price. Ninety nine Euros registration fee plus 31 per launch for the Club Class is hugely reasonable. It seems there are some economies of scale.

The other really striking reality from my Australian perspective is how much we managed to wring out of the weather.

There was only one day I would have called anything like good if left to my own devices. We had to leave climbs so as not to infringe the countrywide 8000ft airspace restriction at one point over the mountains on that day and the Open Class winner had a speed of 130km/h or so. The rest of the time mostly looked unflyable. Really! We would not have left the clubhouse at home. The CD saying in English that the expected maximum temperature for the area was 16ºC didn’t stop anyone reading 12 off the weather chart. Vladimir is supremely optimistic and I have flown tasks handed out by him after rigging the glider while it was snowing! It’s this optimism in large part which makes the Pribina Cup such a great time. You know you will fly if it’s at all possible and you don’t care that you might land out. After all, most of the pilots are itching to fly after a long land bound winter.

So how did I place? Well honestly I didn’t care that much, I was too busy having fun, but in the end I was 30th in the Club Class field of 43. I landed out on four out of five valid days, one of them within the three kilometre finish circle.

If anyone is interested in flying the Pribina Cup next Easter I’m sure they would be made very welcome.

For information watch out on[www. pribinacup.sk/2010/] or drop me a line on< brendan@plasmatronics.com.au>.

Safety Management System Implementation – Incident/Accident Data Eric Novak

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apturing and analysing incident and accident data is an incredibly effective method of identifying opportunities for improvement in management systems. Data allows us to identify trends and assists with allocating resources to areas that will have the greatest impact on improving systems and ultimately safety.

As part of the Safety Management System (SMS) implementation, the GFA is committed to improving incident reporting and investigation processes, incident data capture and incident data analysis.

The aim is to prevent repeat occurrences, not apportioning blame, with confidentiality being a key consideration in data management and publishing.

Activities that will facilitate these improvements include: • Review and update of existing report forms and procedures • Analysis of existing data • Capture, collation and analysis of future data • Provision of effective databases • Communication of data to members • Information and education on incident reporting and investigation Owen Jones from Beverley Soaring Society in WA has commenced the process of collating data captured during the last six years. At this early stage, Owen has generated several graphs to give a higher level view of recent data.

The benefit of analysing incident and accident data can only be realised if the information being reported is accurate

GFA Pilot Injuries 2004 to 2009

GFA Glider Damage 2004 to 2009

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8

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0 2004 Minor

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GFA Incident and Accident Frequency 2004 to 2009 and detailed enough to 45 allow effective analysis, and if people actually 40 report the incidents 35 in the first place.

Three main challen30 ges are being faced 25 while analysing the 20 existing data. Firstly, the standard of infor15 mation being captured 10 in reports varies with some reports providing 5 insufficient detail to 0 allow effective analysis.

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Secondly, current Incident reports Accident reports databases are not ideally suited for easy access, collation requirements and provide the necessary and analysis of captured data. functionality to allow easy and effective Thirdly, not all incident and accident data analysis. reports are finding their way to a central We can all benefit from effective location to facilitate collation and subincident and accident reporting and data sequent analysis. analysis. Who wouldn’t prefer to learn The SMS Committee has reviewed from the experience of others rather than and updated the existing GFA report experiencing an incident themselves? form to ensure it captures the necessary Whether you are a student, solo pilot, information to meet statutory reporting competition pilot or instructor, as GFA requirements (ATSB), as well as relevant and club members we can all contribute information to facilitate meaningful to improving safety in gliding. Individuals analysis. This form is undergoing a trial can contribute by reporting incidents and feedback process before being and accidents. Instructors can promote adopted and implemented nationally. a culture of reporting and ensure forms Once the review process has been are completed with adequate detail completed, the communication and and are submitted in a timely fashion. education process will commence.

By providing quality information, the Several incident reporting and analysis GFA can then feedback this information databases are also being reviewed to to members for the benefit of all. determine whether they align with GFA

June 2010

June 2010

2005

2006

2007

Serious or severe

2008

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2004

Fatal

Minor

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2007 Significant or substantial

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Severe or write-off

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Two Weeks At Manilla... Two Months After Finishing My Course Stephen Noble Newly graduated from a course in paragliding, armed with 10 hours of airtime and a brand new B glider, I decided to book a three week stay at Manilla during January. High summer.

I

t was an inglorious start. My first 10 days from 24 December to 3 January were filled with near constant rain. Over a third of my trip was down the drainpipe.

While this was frustrating, I managed to occupy myself with test matches, relatives and brushing up on my piano skills.

I expect it would be more of a drama for overseas or interstate pilots who book only a brief trip.

View from my window – rain

While at Manilla, I stayed at Godfrey’s place where you will find an on-site camp ground and cabins.

It is a sweet set-up if you like to camp, go to bed after talking with visiting pilots from around the world, roll out of bed the next morning and start all over again: debating conditions and when and where to go for the day.

4 to 6 January I started with three days of boating around, with flights of around 15km.

A nice start, and an introduction to the joys of hitchhiking.

After my first 7pm landing, with the sun starting to go down, I resolved not to forget my phone next time.

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The 9th was Day One of a very casual comp. I still have lots to learn: the call in procedures, having the correct way-point information… I love the new technology, but the comp highlighted my dysfunctional PC which which wasn’t downloading my tracklogs. You have to be so organised, everything needs to work.

On 10 January I had another scare, a 50% collapse directly above launch. I checked my manual that night. It assured me the glider would continue flying with such a collapse – maybe so, but it felt like I was falling out of the sky. Maybe I went ‘hands up’, I have no recollections. After a second which seemed like a lifetime, the wing inflated and I pulled away from

Rainy view back towards launch

the hill and headed towards the landing zone. I was rattled, but not rattled enough

to give up a weak thermal for a late afternoon 10km.

11 to 14 January

Split Rock Dam intersection

7 January This turned out to be an interesting day.

The experienced pilots got up and headed west – I followed. It was an overcast day with just a touch of drizzle. Some of the clouds – although a good 10km north – weren’t changing much and seemed a bit intimidating.

After my first glide I met up with a friend, Ion, who suggested we head further away from the clouds which sounded good to me. We noticed a slight drift back towards the clouds while thermalling, but we still made good southward progress.

The clouds began to look darker and there are areas of heavier rain! I missed a thermal and Ion and I were separated.

I found another thermal and started to catch up again when I felt significant turbulence. I figured it was time to head out to the road, two kilometres away, and land. I glanced at my GPS and it told me I was heading 80km/h sideways, oh dear! (I’ve since checked my tracklog and, thankfully, it may have just been a spike.

I can see at one point I was doing 75km/h during a downwind section.)

Ion was in my ear with advice on finding large paddocks, clear of trees and fences behind my landing spot, and to keep the speedbar on for as long as possible. I spent a nervous few minutes washing off height, then picked a spot, turned back into wind and was relieved I wasn’t not going backwards. I fumble my landing and took a little tumble, blessing the harness and helmet manufacturers. I was very relieved to be motionless.

A Swiss pilot was also caught out, so it wasn’t just a newbie error. We think the gust fronts from the storms gathered together, swept around the range and funnelled down the valley.

Photos: Stephen Noble & Ion Ghilescu

Four more solid unspectacular flights – it was very hot. I spent two late afternoons on pick-up duties. Driving with air-conditioning was preferable to hanging around camp. On the 12th a few of us drove up for a late flight. We had been in A/C after our modest first flights, so when we arrived at launch it was so hot I just wanted to jump straight back into the car.

On 14 January I bombed out, it was the first day I didn’t get away There was lift there, my tracklog doesn’t lie… It was harder than usual to get up and I wasn’t alone, but plenty of others made it. One of these ‘others’ was Dominick, who logged a 60km triangle (during the XC Open he flew a 250km boomer on Day One). Later in the day it blew out of the west. I hung around waiting for it to die off, but it never did. A storm was brewing in the east and the wind quickly turned from strong west to strong east as the gust front reached us.

During the rest of my stay I was able to recognise three more gust fronts.

I did have some prior experience with thermalling, I flew hang gliders for a few years, but this was 20 years ago. The modern paraglider pilot’s meteorological knowledge is so far advanced of what I knew then, it’s as if I’m a beginner. My advantage is that I know how much I don’t know. I’m sure I was as careful back then as I am now – you had to be, but I don’t recall being as aware of the many dangers back then.

8 to 10 January Two more good days. I was starting to see a pattern: I hang around launch for a while, catch a cracking thermal and then head off on a glide, I catch a whiff of another thermal but don’t nail it and land shortly afterwards. I still don’t know why. I suspect the better pilots are more committed and head further away from the roads. If they bomb out they’d have a few kilometre to walk out, but since they only bomb out occasionally it’s no big deal.

An approaching storm, time to land

15 January I returned to camp after an 11km flight.

Conditions looked good and I was getting annoyed that I hadn’t made it further, at least to Boggabri. Still, I had 12 straight days of flying, approximately two hours a day for a total of 22 hours.

Richard from the UK was talking about how comp organisers had introduced a rest day during competitions because they noticed that more accidents occured after a long run of flyable days.

It was then I realised I’d had enough flying for now and what I had achieved over the last two weeks.

Thank you, Godfrey and all the visiting pilots for a great trip.

Lake Keepit from above

At the west bomb-out

June 2010

June 2010

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HGFA News

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Forbes April Aerotow Clinic Another very successful aerotow clinic was run at Forbes from 14 to 19 April.

We had 22 pilots over the week with all students progressing very well under the guidance of instructor Curt Warren of [www.warrenwindsports.com.au].

The weather was typical for Forbes, though early in the week it was more stable than I’ve ever seen. Perfect for our students. As the week progressed, and students gained more confidence and skill, the thermals grew accordingly, giving great inland thermal flights and some PBs. Most of the pilots camped at the airfield and, as usual, the Forbes aeroclub looked after us. We used the club house, kitchen, bar, toilets and showers and even had Smithy, Paul, Veronica and Jim from the aeroclub organised to cook and clean up for us one night just to give us a much needed break. After a long day of flying this was greatly appreciated by all. A perfect day’s flying finished off with great company, a cold beer at the very low aeroclub prices, a BBQ, salads and Veronica’s home made strudel and ice cream. Why would you be anywhere else?

Hang glider and new aerotow pilot Neil McGregor of Yarrh Wines [www. yarrhwines.com.au] near Canberra brought a good supply of wine he very generously shared around. These wines are exceptional, but remember don’t drink and fly.

During the clinic Andrew Phillip managed to put together an excellent video. It even features one of our Forbes locals, a Little Eagle [www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ydFXYiDRbFg].

All Fliers Please Note: When flying at Forbes we are operating from an airfield with other air traffic, including sky divers and general aviation aircraft often flown in the circuit pattern by very low time student pilots. We are required to operate as set out for gliders 6 Soaring Australia

in the ERSA published by Air Services. We all work in together quite well as long as the procedures are followed. If you fly with us and are unsure of what is required please ask me and especially when landing plan and follow the required procedures.

Thank you Curt and all the pilots who attended. Thank you to the aeroclub members who generously allow us to use their facilities, looked after us and maintain the airfield. Thank you to Bill Moyes for assisting and providing the Dragon Flys and thank you to Trevor Smith and Matt Drane who allowed me access to their workshops when I needed to do a rush repair on a break down.

Steve McCarthy (Tugmaster)

1st International Women’s Paragliding Open 21 to 28 August 2010, Áger, northern Spain. The event will see around 80 to 100 female pilots from across the world converge for a week of high level competition and learning. The purpose of this event is to provide a safe and fair flying competition, to determine the best female pilot, to reinforce friendship amongst pilots from nations all around the world and to introduce more female paragliding pilots to an international competition environment. This is the first time an all-female competition has been sanctioned by the international air sports governing body, the FAI [www.fai.org]. Áger is a town stemming from the Middle Ages with a fascinating history and architecture and known among free fliers from paragliding and hang gliding fraternities for hosting the 1st International HG competition in 1995.

To date, Áger has hosted several major international events, including World and European Championships, as well as the prestigious Paragliding World Cup. The geography of the area allows interesting and challenging tasks. It also has a history of good, reliable weather in August.

Currently, 440 female PG pilots from more then 50 countries around the world are registered in the FAI international ranking system (WPRS).

During the event seminars and mentorship programs will be hosted to discuss topics that are pertinent to female pilots, including safety, equipment and motivational training. Traditional events are male dominated by up to 95%, such an imbalance is often said to discourage many women from finding their way onto the competition scene. The organisers are using this event to address this issue and

are committed to providing a supportive learning environment for these women, within a world class event.

For more information contact: Klaudia Bulgakow Women’s Paragliding Open 2010 Organization Team <media@ womensopen.org>, Ph: +48501461972 or register at [www.womensopen.org/].

N ew P roducts Apco News Mayday 28 UL: Completely new emergency parachute with slider and double universal bridle for 340kg maximum load, tested by Air Turquiose EN laboratory.

Play 42 UL: Beefed up, heavily reinforced version of Play 42 for loads up to 340kg. to accommodate the variety of paramotor trikes on the market.

Our ultimate answer to needs of many professional tandem trike pilots. Play 42 UL retains all virtues of Play 42 MKII but is stronger and even more robust.

New Reflex wing: FORCE – our promise to leave the rest in the dust and we are not only referring to speed.

New universal paramotor harness will be offered soon – it is based on our previous model, but has provision for any possible connection to the frame, as well as facilities for low and high hook-in versions.

Latest achievements/comp results: First Place Russian PPG Championship won by Pavel Knyazev on Thrust HP – well done Pavel!

Lee Scott [ww.highadventure.com.au]

New EN-D Gradient Avax XC3 Gradient replaced their performance glider Avax XC2 with Aspen 3 in the EN-C category. The next logical step was to move the continuation of the Avax XC line one class higher. The result is Avax XC3. A completely new design, but still sticking with the well-proven construction conventions; a strategy that helped to build the spotless reputation of Gradient gliders. Avax XC3 allows an experienced pilot to get as close as safely possible to the uncertified Open Class comp gliders.

With gliding ratio 10+, sink rate about 0.9 m/s and top speed over 60km/h this glider has great performance. As usual, Gradient has concentrated on the less obvious aspects of the performance like handling, sink rate in turns and glide at high speed. It is especially hard to provide figures for these characteristics, but anybody experienced with Gradient products will know what to expect.

June 2010

The new glider has been certified EN-D with flying colours in all sizes – 22, 24, 26, 28 and 30. Due to its sophisticated design, using the latest materials and labour-consuming manufacturing process, Avax XC3 will be slightly more expensive than its predecessor.

More information at [www.paraglidingheadquarters.com].

New GPS/Vario Combo by Digifly Digifly, Italian manufacturer of aviation instruments, has filled the gap between their basic and top of the range flight computers with a new model, Leonardo Plus, answering the growing demand for inexpensive alti/varios with basic GPS functions.

It is simple enough for a novice and has enough performance to satisfy a demanding XC pilot. Besides the standard GPS related functions, like glide ratio, groundspeed, wind direction and speed, Leonardo Plus also features graphic altimeter/vario field, long battery life and three-year warranty. Unlike similar products, the owner of this instrument is not stuck with the ‘basic’ combo forever. When the time comes to upgrade, Leonardo Plus can be upgraded online (for an extra fee) to the top of the Digifly range, flight computer Leonardo Pro. There is virtually no financial loss on the upgrade. Regular upgrades (improvements to the existing model) are at no cost. Leonardo Plus is available under $700.

More information at [www.paraglidingheadquarters.com/ instruments.html].

Skywalk News Cult3 Executive chair!

Our innovative AS-Speedsystem is available on this serial harness.The speed system completely separates from one side of the harness, along with the stirrups, upon pilot activation of the rescue system (video on the skywalk homepage). This effectively prohibits the rescue from becoming entangled in the speed system, and is therefore a valuable contributor to heightened safety.

The Cult3 offers more comfort with a separate seat board and ergonomically formed back part – a clear advantage during launch, as well as during groundhandling. Additionally, the rescue handle has been optimised and is now ideally positioned, providing for smooth-running operation. Thanks to the serial production carbon seatboard, the Cult3 has lost weight while offering serious comfort at the same time – size M weighs only an amazing 4.6kg!

Chili2 XL – Dream Machine!

The XL also has LTF1-2/EN-B classification and is for budding cross-country pilots with a launch weight of 105 to 130kg.

As the first true three-liner in the 1-2 segment, the Chili2 scores with stand-out performance and spoils pilots while still retaining high damping and a reassuring safety margin. The Chili2 pilot has his wing well under control, even in rough conditions, thanks to premier brake feedback. Your spring flights just got markedly longer.

More info at [www.skywalk. info] <info@skywalk.org>.

June 2010

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GFA Board Members Maximum Term of Office Phil McCann – GFA Vice-president The GFA Board has agreed to submit a proposal to the 2010 Annual General Meeting to amend the Articles of Association to clarify the maximum length of a term of office for Board members. The proposal is to remove the five year limitation on tenure on general Board membership and introduce a five year limitation on tenure in any Board position.

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ub-clause 12(e) of the GFA Articles of Association provides the following in relation to the maximum term of Board members: “A maximum consecutive term for any Board member shall be five years and shall apply except in special circumstances

8 Soaring Australia

and where invited to continue, such an invitation being approved by at least twothirds majority of the Board.”

This year, 2010, is the fifth year of the Articles in their current form and analysis of the implications of sub-clause 12(e) has revealed that application of a strict interpretation in its current form will have, and continue to have, a negative and disruptive effect on the governance of GFA. Some turnover in the membership of the body governing an organisation is generally accepted as a good thing to ensure fresh input. In order to encourage change over time many organisations have provision in their constitution for some limit on the tenure of members of the board of governance. This was the reason that 12(e) was written into the current Articles.

Discussion with GFA members who were actively involved in the drafting of the current Articles has revealed that the intention at the time was to limit the consecutive tenure in any one position on the Board rather than place a limit on Board membership overall.

Notwithstanding the apparent intent, the Articles as adopted must be complied with, or, if considered inappropriate a change put to the members.

In an organisation where governance leadership roles are actively sought after, some form of enforced rotation would usually be considered highly desirable.

In an organisation such as GFA which is constantly struggling to fill positions, enforced turnover can cause a great deal of frustration, disruption and wasted effort in trying to find candidates and can involve people being persuaded into something they may not really want with

obvious adverse outcomes for them and the organisation as a whole.

Experience shows that involvement in the GFA Board and Executive typically might start with gaining election as a regional representative, then after a year or two nominating for, and being elected to, an Executive position which may be held for a couple of terms, then possibly nominating for president or vice-president. On this basis a person interested in contributing time to the governance of GFA would after (say) a two year term as (say) a regional representative and then a further two years as (say) chair of one the technical committees, then one year as vicepresident, effectively be prohibited from going on to seek election as president.

More often than not it has proven difficult to attract candidates for GFA Board membership. Almost always individuals have to be sought out and persuaded to nominate. There have been very few actual elections due to lack of more than one candidate. There traditionally has been very little interest just by announcing vacancies.

There is a ‘get out of gaol free’ card built in to the Articles in that a person can continue in a position beyond the five years if special circumstances exist and if invited by two-thirds of the Board. While this would help get around particular situations it is not considered that a clause of this nature is intended for, or suited to, routine management of Board succession.

After considering the issue at length the Executive believes that the five year limitation as it relates to Board membership generally has the very real potential

June 2010

to be restrictive and disruptive and not in the best interests of utilising the skills, ability and experience of those who are prepared to be actively involved in GFA governance by means of experience gained by progression through different roles.

Notwithstanding the position on general Board membership, the Board is of the view that a limit of five consecutive years in any one Board position should exist to ensure that there are opportunities for fresh views in specific roles and to ensure any one person cannot dominate one particular aspect of GFA governance for an extended period without a break.

After detailed consideration of the issues the Board has agreed to submit and recommend for adoption the following motion as Special Business at the 2010 AGM. “That Clause 12(e) of the GFA Articles of Association be deleted and replaced with the following: (e) A maximum consecutive term for any Board member in any one position shall be five years and shall apply except in special circumstances and where invited

to continue, such an invitation being approved by at least two-thirds majority of the Board.”

The Board believes that the amendment being proposed will provide a reasonable balance of providing opportunity for people to gain experience in different governance roles over time, while ensuring that occupancy of any one position cannot go beyond five consecutive years, thus encouraging a healthy level of turnover.

In considering the above recommendation it should be kept in mind that every position is, and will continue to be, required to be vacated every year and subject to an election process. The recommendation does not guarantee any Board member a term of any more than one year unless re-elected through the normal process set out in the Articles.

Any member who requires further information is encouraged to contact Phil McCann, at <vp@sec.gfa.org.au>.

In September 2010 the current GFA Articles are five years old: • T hese Articles require all Board members to retire after five years.

• This wholesale changeover was not envisaged and will be massively disruptive.

• While enforced changeover is desirable, the possibility for talented Board members to be elected to higher positions is also desirable.

• It is proposed that the Articles be changed to permit this without removing the changeover test.

• The fundamental requirement for all GFA positions to be exposed to annual re-election remains.

Coaches’ Corner

Coaching activities in SA and NT Bernard Eckey – GFA Head Coach for SA & NT

Photo: Bernard Eckey

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he SA coaching panel met at the end of March to finalise arrangements and dates for coaching activities over the next 12 months. The aim is to increase the level of confidence and competence amongst members.

Our winter lectures’ program has become a vital step towards this goal.

Over a period of six months theoretical aspects of the sport are put under the microscope at Adelaide University. These free lectures are provided by some of our most experienced pilots and coaches.

Theoretical knowledge is the key to helping pilots progress and hence improve our membership retention rate.

Here are the dates and topics for the current winter lecture program.

June 2010

DateS

Topic

Presenter

Wednesday 9 June

Thursday 29 July

Tuesday 17 August

Wednesday 15 September

Thursday 21 October

Weather Navigation Wave flying Basic thermalling Outlandings RASP Requirements for badge flights / OO World Comps report Flight analysis World Comps report

Mike Hancy Andrew Horton Frank Johann Andrew Horton Nigel Baker Alex Wallis Mandy Temple Peter Temple Bernard Eckey Graham Parker

The ever-increasing popularity of our annual coaching week has forced us to limit the number of participants to 55 in future. The event is free of charge and will again be hosted by the Waikerie Gliding Club. It is scheduled from 27 December

2010 to 1 January 2011 and early enrolments are encouraged (email to <Eckey@internode.on.net> will do).

Participants are welcome to attend the SA State comps held at the same venue during the following week.

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49th Multi-class Nationals

Profile: Jo Davis

– Dalby, October 2010

GLIDING FEDERATION OF AUSTRALIA INC Airworthiness Inspection

FORM 2 and C of A Notice ■ A Form 2 inspection is due. $165* payment is enclosed

■ The C of A requires renewal. $42* payment is enclosed and the existing C of A document

Ralph Henderson My partner has

T

here’s an old adage that “the best practice for a competition is a competition”, or so that authoritative journal, the Chinchilla News, recently quoted in an interview with Lars.

So it was good to have a trial run for the nationals at the annual Gliding Queensland Easter competition. We went through all the daily procedures of weather, tasksetting, gridding order, relight area, selflaunching procedure, finishing and so the list goes on.

This year we had an added challenge.

Chinchilla airport is now at the centre of

The 2004 grid ready for launch

VH-MDK won’t be there in 2010 but hopefully Stow, as Darling Downs Soaring Club patron, will

Briefing 2004; this year it will be the Dalby hang gliding club hangar

10 Soaring Australia

is returned

■ Initial registration package is required. $400* payment is enclosed

the rapidly developing gas industry on the western Darling Downs. We have had many competitions at Chinchilla over the last 13 years but this year, for the first time, we had a charter Dornier 228 scheduled to arrive and depart night and morning on each business day.

The morning eight o’clock arrival and 8:40 departure didn’t cause any problems.

However the afternoon 3:30 arrival and 4:10 departure was always going to be challenging. As everyone who has flown in Queensland knows, you need to be home by 4pm or at least safely on final glide.

And by the time you get around to early April, the days are even shorter. The thought of 40 gliders finishing as a twin turbo-prop tried to take off or land, requiring the entire area with in the gable markers to be clear of gliders, was not good.

From the outset on Thursday, the last business day before the public holidays, we had a long talk to the two pilots about what a gliding competition was all about. Needless to say it was a bit of any eye-opener for them.

The competition operations team gave the issue a fair bit of thought over the next few days and talked it over with some of the experienced competition pilots.

We came up with a few ideas on what to do, most of which centred on using the cross-strip as the main landing area.

We gave it a trial run on a day when the Dornier wasn’t coming in. Most of the gliders landed on the cross strip and with one or two exceptions all achieved reasonable separation. Not surprisingly, there were a few things that didn’t work and we amended the procedures accordingly.

The Tuesday after Easter the Dornier arrived in the morning and the pilots advised that the afternoon charter had been cancelled. That made Tuesday easy.

Come Wednesday and it was the real thing. We set the tasks and finishing procedures accordingly and with the good will of everyone it all went very smoothly.

Thursday was not quite as successful, but Friday went without a hitch and we farewelled the Dornier for the last time.

It was interesting to see how we could adapt our procedures when we needed to, to accommodate other aircraft and

to take the credit (or blame) for me [http://2009.gfa.org.au/index.php?option= com_content&task=view&id=729&Itemid=220] The contest director, Ralph Henderson, at briefing

having my first

flight. Following a bit of nagging when I used to work with him, he relented and brought me to the Darling Downs Soaring Club at Jondaryan.

Photos: Ralph Henderson

how, with the cooperation and goodwill of everyone, it could all work.

One of the things a number of pilots commented on was the general increase in traffic in the area; not only charter flights, but also ultralights, helicopters, aerial survey flights and significantly increased GA traffic. We all have Flarm but there is an awful lot of other traffic out there as well.

On the way back from Chinchilla I spent some time at Dalby going over the operational procedures while it was all fresh in my mind. The runways and airfield in general are in very good condition, with a good surface and excellent grass cover.

A few things have changed since last month. We are now accepting a maximum of 66 entries. We expect that all 66 places will be taken and we will run a wait list so that we can replace any pilots who have to withdraw before the competition starts.

The dates for the Queensland State Comps and the Boonah Grand Prix have changed, please check the respective websites. Check the website [www.ddsc.org.au/ dalby2010/index.html] for the latest news or email me <rhenderson@iinet.net.au>.

This month we have included some more photos from the 2004 Dalby Nationals to remind you what the place looks like.

June 2010

fter my first flight I was hooked. am a self-confessed flying junkie. Gliding Before I knew it, I was starting is my drug. Practically every weekend is to learn and I’ve been busy a flying weekend for us and every ounce learning ever since. I think of annual leave goes towards competiquite a few people get into gliding tions, coaching weeks like the women’s because of their fascination with flight. week or other gliding holidays.

For me it’s all about the sky – the beauty There hasn’t been a year since going of it; its energy and complexity. I spent solo that I haven’t spent at a competition a fair amount of my childhood watching of some sort and I still count down the the skies over the Jimbour plains and days till the next one. This year will have developed my sky addiction there. something a bit extra special though.

Being able to be up there We’re off to Omarama to and actually interact with do the Glide Omarama it is just amazing. course and I’ve got to say There are just so many I’m beyond excited! For of my favourite moments in a flatland pilot it’s pretty gliding. Pair flying with my special over there. partner on a beautiful low I could write a thesis cloud base day would be about what the things I love one (we aren’t that great at about gliding and I don’t managing to fly together). think I will be able to nail The other would be going down just one aspect. I think solo at the Chinchilla Easter it would be the people who Jo Davis at the Gliding comp in 2002 and realising fly, being privileged enough Queensland Easter when on final for my first to harness the energy up competition presentation solo landing that I had a there, playing with clouds, Photo: Garrett Russell crowd watching me – with playing with soaring literally thousands upon birds, playing with my thousands of hours of flying to their gliding buddies, challenging myself and credit – and then doing one of my better continually finding ways to drive landings – phew! my glider that little bit faster.

It’s now been eight years and over GFA Sub-editor’s note: Jo’s latest 1200 hours since that solo at Chinchilla achievement was taking out the Club and I still can’t believe how much there is Class section of the 2010 Queensland to learn or how much I still love the sport.

Easter Competition.

It’s safe to say I’ve been bitten by the flying bug a little harder than some and

June 2010

■ Cheque

■ Credit Card ■ Direct Deposit For internet payments, deposit into: BSB: 013-442 Account No: 304729562

A) Documentation request ■ ■

lease send me a transfer of ownership document P Please send me a change of registered operator document

Aircraft Type................................................................................

Registration marks VH – ............................................................

Address to which documents are to be sent is:

A The tie down area in 2004

* Fees include GST

Payment method:

Name ..........................................................................................

Address . ..................................................................................... .....................................................................................................

State.......................................................Postcode.......................

Forward to: GFA Airworthiness Secretary, Level 1/34 Somerton Road, Somerton VIC 3062.

Email: <Airworthiness@sec.gfa.org.au> Fax: 03 9303 7960

Soaring Australia 11

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The Concise Revised History of Hang Gliding 1963-1973 – Part 2 Graeme R Henderson © 2010 Following is the conclusion to Graeme’s article from May 2010 Issue.

O

nce the wing was assembled Dickenson tried to get it to fly.

He exhausted himself being towed behind a boat with the wing, but he couldn’t get it to fly. Norm Stamford was next and he encountered the same problem.

Adjustments were made and Bob Clements had a go. Now, strictly speaking, Bob Clements was the first to fly the wing, however, he went up fast, and down fast, to crash heavily into the water.

Part of his problem was that Dickenson had moved the hang point back too far after the first two attempts showed it was possibly too far forward. Also, it is possible that the boat driver overreacted to the high climb rate and cut the throttle, thus stalling the wing at a very high nose angle. It is also possible that Bob Clements over-reacted to the unexpectedly high nose angle and climb rate. The fact that the glider survived the crash from about 80ft demonstrated its structural integrity, as well as the value of testing over water. It also indicated that the boat had either stopped, or

Rod Fuller flying the Mark I with the A-frame, early October 1963. This flight was conducted to promote the upcoming Jacaranda festival Photo: Courtesy ‘The Daily Examiner’

12 Soaring Australia

slowed considerably before the impact, thus reducing the forces on the wing.

John Dickenson made some more adjustments to the C of G, and then Rod Fuller had a go, “It seemed like a reasonable proposition to me,” is how Rod Fuller explains his willingness to have a go, even after the spectacular crash.

With Pat Crowe as Fuller’s chosen boat driver, and Bruce Young observing, the fourth attempt succeeded, the C of G wasn’t perfect yet, and the strong wind made this a difficult exercise, but the three men involved made it work safely.

Rod Fuller and Pat Crowe have exciting stories of their roles in this success, but to Dickenson it seemed to be a non-event. From his vantage on the river bank, it simply went how he had hoped it would. Neither Pat The Mark II Crowe nor Rod Fuller had any idea just how different this wing would be to a flat kite, but they were up to the task, neither panicked and they both dealt with their initial shock at their spectacular success with courage and intelligence.

Following this successful flight, and after listening to Rod Fuller’s account, Dickenson made some more adjustments to the C of G, and he also moved the handle-bar forward. It was quite late when Dickenson finally got to have another go with the wing and the strong winds encountered by Rod Fuller had died away.

Everything went perfectly, the wing flew well, there were no surprises and the control worked. Dickenson found that he could swing to each side and go up and down at will.

It was at this point, while up in the air in his creation, that the enormity of what

Photos: Courtesy John Dickenson

he had done hit home. He was suddenly aware that he was in a lovely little aeroplane, and that, inadvertently, he was continuing the work of Otto Lilienthal.

Dickenson’s excitement was almost overwhelming and he immediately set about drawing up a patent application for his ‘Improved Gliding Apparatus’.

Now everything was different for John Dickenson, aware of what he had, and suddenly with a vision of the future, he reappraised the glider.

By shifting the top of the struts from the leading edges to the keel he could substantially increase the glider’s strength, for no appreciable gain in weight. This created the first ‘A-frame’. The struts were replaced with a second set of side wires. The original configuration had two bolts through the leading edges at the nose plate. By abandoning the second

unnecessary set of bolts, the wing became easier to rig and de-rig.

And so, by the time the Jacaranda Festival arrived, the wing, to all intents and purposes, possessed all of the desirable qualities that would lead eventually to it being cloned in the thousands, all over the world.

Fuller and Dickenson continued to fly the wing after the festival, but Dickenson was already working on the second wing.

This time he used an all aluminium airframe, but his lack of welding skills resulted in a rectangular frame to position the handle-bar. Dickenson again utilised the banana bags, and used contact adhesive to attach it to the airframe. The main spars were reduced to 14ft, he wanted to increase the take-off and landing speed to harmonise with the speeds that water skis work well at. The big wing wanted to fly before the pilot was able to ski properly. This glider, that we call the Mark II, flew well, but the contact adhesive was not up to the job and so the wing was quickly abandoned.

The next wing saw a return to the wooden spars so that the banana plastic could again be attached using nails. The wing was reduced in size yet again as the 14ft wing was still flying at a slower than desirable speed for water skiing.

Dickenson found a bent steel bed-head at the rubbish tip, by simply increasing the bends he was able to return to the triangular A-frame of the Mark I, without needing welding skills. It is interesting how many people copied that ‘bed-head’ bent basebar design, indeed it was still being produced in the late 1970s, even though it is an inferior structural design.

The first of the Mark III gliders. This photo from Grafton shows it in its original configuration. The second set of side wires are visible. The sail is banana bag plastic and insulation tape. John Dickenson is preparing to launch Photo: Courtesy John Dickenson

Diana Nickel, the author, and Ron Nickel, with the Mark IIIa, 2009

Terry Aspinall watches as Ron Nickel deals with a wasp nest in the bolt hole. The glider had been in the shed for 25 years and was covered in dust

Dickenson flew this wing in many places, attempting to sell it to finance the next one.

Finally, he sold the wing on 29 July 1964 to the owner of the Tweed Heads Ski Lodge, the late Rex Bernoth. This wing was flown by Ron Nickel and he still has the glider.

The next wing had a sewn sail, and Dickenson dropped the second set of side wires. It was sold to a person from the Forster area and its story remains a mystery.

It was, however, the plans to this wing that Dickenson sent to NASA in November 1964 after they contacted him with a

Photo: Courtesy Terry Aspinall

From the plans John Dickenson sent to NASA in November 1964

request for information on his invention.

Providing this material to NASA was probably Dickenson’s biggest mistake as far as getting recognition for his

Photo: Graeme Henderson

June 2010

June 2010

Soaring Australia 13

Water Skier magazine covers featuring Ray Leighton and his glider

invention was concerned, but he naively believed that NASA and its employees could be trusted.

The next wing was sold to Ray Leighton in 1965. Ray Leighton played quite a role in the promotion of the wing with his photo appearing on the cover of Water Skier magazines.

Shortly after Ray Leighton purchased his wing it was measured up by Bill Moyes.

It is uncertain if Moyes built a clone at that time.

14 Soaring Australia

John Revelle was the first confirmed person to actually build a clone-based on Dickenson’s glider. His glider suffered a snapped leading edge though.

This was in 1965, and John Revelle used an all aluminium airframe while Leighton’s glider had wooden spars. John Revelle sold that wing to Bill Moyes in 1966.

From here on the changes Dickenson made to the wings only involved construction techniques and different materials. This process culminated in the Aerostructures built wings, that were built to aircraft specifications.

In February/March 1967 Bill Moyes approached Mike Burns at Aerostructures, wanting to buy a wing. Not realising that Bill Moyes already had at least one wing, Mike Burns arranged for John Dickenson to teach Bill Moyes to fly the glider.

Moyes had wanted to learn on Sydney Harbour, but that request was refused as Dickenson was under the impression that it was to be a first lesson and he did not want someone giving his product a bad name, in the middle of the city. Bill Moyes was invited to attend a group demonstration John Dickenson had planned, and once the others had finished, Bill was given his chance. Bill Moyes climbed quickly, flew a short circuit, and released high, even though he had been instructed not to release from the rope and to just let the boat lower him back to the water. Bill flew down and landed perfectly. Both Mike Burns and John Dickenson thought Moyes was an absolutely natural pilot, for him to be able to fly so well on his first flight.

But was it his first flight?

Bill Moyes purchased an Aerostructures wing at that time, which was brought back for repair a couple of times in the first weeks that he had it.

It is important to realise that the first record flights made by Bill Moyes and Bill Bennett were on Aerostructures wings.

When Bill Moyes flew from Mt Crackenback he was flying an Aerostructures wing.

The next major change came when John Revelle adapted a parachute harness to replace the seat, he then developed the first prone harness so as to reduce drag from the pilot.

In 1969 Bill Moyes and Dick Rangott took a wing to La Perouse for some tethered flying. Moyes ended up soaring

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John Revelle flying his Dickenson wing clone, looks at his wife Angela flying his flat kite. Both aircraft were built by John Revelle

John Dickenson prepares to fly the third Mark III at Grafton, 1965

Photo: Courtesy John Dickenson

Photo: Courtesy John Revelle

for 29 minutes when Rangott dropped the rope because there was no strain on it. When Rangott tried to emulate the feat after Moyes landed he unfortunately crashed the glider.

In 1969 Bill Bennett took the glider to the USA where it took off as a foot launchable aircraft. Then Bill Bennett taught Dave Kilbourne to fly it behind boats. Dave Kilbourne then ridge soared the wing, and asked for a larger wing that would fly more slowly.

When Bill Bennett built the 16ft wing for Dave Kilbourne the wing returned to its original size.

In 1970 on a trip to the USA Bill Moyes flew a glider into the Grand Canyon, even though a few Americans still claim it all started in 1971 in California.

On a trip to Europe in 1969 Bill Moyes sold a 13ft clone to Alfio Caronti, who eventually started manufacturing the wing under license to Bill Moyes. It appears that Alfio Caronti was under the impression that Bill Moyes had invented the wing.

In 1972 Bill Bennett took the wing to the United Kingdom. After one of his water ski displays he was approached by one of the early legends of hang gliding in the UK, Ken Messenger, about the wings suitability for foot launching from hills. The next morning Bill Bennett demonstrated the feat for Ken Messenger.

Because of the high winds at the time, he flew it from near the base of the hill.

Both Bill Bennett and Bill Moyes helped spread the wings popularity through

June 2010

Striking The Balance Right UP Trango XC – the true three-liner This is a new performance wing like no other. It launches better than most school wings, it handles like a hot knife in butter, it has a high top speed of 57km/h and it remains very stable all the way up there.

Add to this the directional stability at speed and the very docile behaviour when the going gets rough, and you have the perfect tool for going far, fast.

John Dickenson cruises past the club house, 1965. Mark Dickenson is standing on the water-ski jump watching his father

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The spread of the wing around the world was organic and explosive. Virtually everyone that got one became an

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June 2010

instant instructor, many became instant manufacturers.

As happened with the Leighton wing, gliders were copied, some people worked from photos to build their wings, some

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Soaring Calendar

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AUSTRALIA Dam Busters 2010 PPG Fly-in Queen’s Birthday Long Weekend 11 to 14 June 2010 The Paradise PPG group and the Pico Club will be hosting the first annual PPG fly-in in SE Queensland at Atkinson Dam, approximtely 60 minutes west of Brisbane. Camping style accommodation available and all skill levels welcome. For further information contact: Grant Cassar 0416 269894, <grant. cassar@iinet.net.au> or Brett Paull 0435 203153, <101airbourne@gmail.com>.

Keepit Speed Week 5 to 11 September 2010 Sunday, 9am to 6pm at Lake Keepit. This coaching week is aimed at those wishing to raise their competition skills, a ‘Not the National Squad’ week to provide a lead in to the competition season.

Contact: Paul Mander 0417 447974 or email <paul@mander.net.au> for further information.

Bunyan Wave Camp 17 to 26 September 2010 Canberra Gliding Club, Bunyan Airfield, 15km north of Cooma, NSW. The Spring Equinox period has produced Diamond Height flights over the past three years. Limited clubhouse, oxygen refills, access to high altitude soaring areas and coaching available.

Registration of your intention to attend is requested.

Phone Stuart Ferguson on 0419 797508 for details.

National Paramotor Fly-in A Volmer Jenson VJ23. This one has been fitted with a motor and the photo was taken as David started his flight across the English Channel Photo: Provided by Terry Aspinall / David Cook

John Dickenson with his Yamaha 650

met people like Leighton, or Moyes, or Bennett, and were assisted into the activity. Those new enthusiasts spread the wing’s popularity by teaching friends and interested spectators.

Later, Steve Cohen, influenced by the ridge soaring stories coming back from California, started pioneering flying sites south of Sydney and making profound

16 Soaring Australia

Photo:Courtesy John Dickenson

changes to the wing. Cohen was the first to fly from, and then the first to soar, Stanwell Park. He was closely followed

by John Revelle and Ray Ryan for the soaring flight as they virtually all took off together. Cohen was the first to drop from a balloon in a hang glider, Bill Moyes was there to witness his landing.

Cohen also claims the first positive G loops in a hang glider, an SK1.

Cohen designed the keel pocket, the first really significant design change to the airfoil.

Another very important person who was involved is Kevin Mitchell. Mitchell was a sailmaker and his knowledge and his inputs were important. At one point Mitchell was making the sail for Cohen’s business, Ultralight Flight Systems, as well as for Moyes.

Many people have contributed to the design of the wings as they evolved.

Many people contributed to the spread of the wing. The popularity, and the money generated from the commercial exploitation of the original Dickenson wing supported that evolution and expansion. All modern ultralight aviation started here, there are only two wings that did not start in some way with John Dickenson, the Icarus by Taras Kiceniuk and the VJ23 by Volmer Jenson.

However, even their limited popularity was largely due to the interest and media created by the wing invented in Grafton, NSW, Australia.

June 2010

16 to 19 September 2010 Milbrulong, NSW. Organised by The Pico Club Inc. The biggest gathering of powered PGs in Australia, a weekend of fun and flying. For information visit [www.thepico.com.au] or contact the organisers Jeff Hoffman <jandlhoffman@bigpond.com> or Andrew Shipley <andrewshipley@netspace.com.au>.

Queensland State Gliding Championships NEW DATES: 18 to 24 September 2010 Kingaroy, QLD. Please send expressions of interest to Lorraine Kauffmann <hlkauffmann@bigpond.com> or 0427 427448. The Kingaroy Soaring Club website [www.Kingaroygliding.com] will incorporate a dedicated section in due course. The usual awesome Kingaroy weather has been rescheduled for the new dates.

Queensland Coaching Week

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Australian Gliding Grand Prix 26 September to 2 October 2010 Boonah airfield, QLD. The official practice day is Saturday, 25 September. Entries close 30 June, 2010. Further information [www.glidinggrandprix2010.com.au].

49th Multi Class Nationals 4 to 15 October 2010 Hosted by the Darling Downs Soaring Club at Dalby aerodrome, QLD. For further information contact <info@ddsc.org.au>.

Ride The Spiral Spring Comp 30/31 October & 1/2 November 2010 Mt Beauty, VIC. We have booked out the Mt Beauty Bush Lodge for all pilots to stay at. The cost of the accommodation has been worked into the comp entry fee this year. The bush lodge is right next to the little Emu bomb-out, you don’t even have to pack up, as you can walk it to the lodge easily.

Classes are Open, King Posted, Open Crossbar. The comp style is simple: fly as far as you can each day. Out and returns are scored as well as straight lines. Accuracy landings are also scored. You can fly multiple times per day from the same hill. The comp cost is $110 incl. three nights accommodation at the lodge, breakfast each day and the Monday night BBQ including beer. Prizes and trophies will be awarded on the Tuesday morning. Organiser: Will Faulkner 0411 205718, Duty Pilot: Pat McMahon, Comp channel UHF 16 TSQL 100, website [www. ridethespiral.net/?page_id=1970].

NSW State Gliding Championships 27 November to 4 December 2010 Practice day: 27th. Lake Keepit Soaring Club, NSW. All classes including Club Class. For further information and entry form see [www.keepitsoaring.com].

Corowa Classic 2011 21 to 29 January 2011 20m seat Grand Prix style competition, hosted by Australian Soaring Centre Corowa and Corowa City Shire. A friendly competition designed to introduce competitors to grand prix racing and an opportunity to learn from the some of Europe’s best pilots.

Entry fee $300 by 21 November 2010, late fee $350. Further information contact [www.australiansoaring-corowa.com/], email <f.bruinsma@mikefox. nl> or Peter Summersby 0413 028737, email <pjsum@bigpond.com>.

1st International Women’s Paragliding Open 21 to 28 August 2010 Female pilots from all around the world are set to compete in the world’s first all-women international PG competition. The event, which will be hosted in Áger, northern Spain, will see around 80 to 100 female pilots from across the world converge on the small mountain town for a week of high level competition and learning. The purpose of this event is to provide a safe and fair flying competition, to determine the best female pilot, to reinforce friendship amongst pilots from nations all around the world and to introduce more female paragliding pilots to an international competition environment.

This is the first time an all-female competition has been sanctioned by the international air sports governing body, the FAI [www.fai.org]. Áger is known to free flyers from PG and HG fraternities, as the town which hosted the 1st International HG competition in 1995. To date, Áger has hosted several major international events, including World and European Championships, as well as the prestigious PWC. The geography of the area allows to set interesting and challenging tasks.

It also has a history of good, reliable weather in August. Paragliding, as the youngest and fastest growing air sport discipline, attracts people of all ages and professions. A spectacular sport, which for spectators provides a sky full of energy and colour.

Currently, 440 female PG pilots from more then 50 countries around the world are registered in the FAI international ranking system (WPRS). The aim of Women’s PG Open is to attract females from this pool of pilots and promises to include some of the best female pilots in the world. During the event seminars and mentorship programs will be hosted to discuss topics that are pertinent to female pilots, including safety, equipment and motivational training. Traditional events are male dominated by up to 95%, such an imbalance is often said to discourage many women from finding their way onto the competition scene. The organisers are using this event to address this issue and are committed to providing a supportive learning environment for these women, within a world class event. For more information or to receive frequent news regarding this event or media news contact: Klaudia Bulgakow Women’s Paragliding Open 2010 Organisation Team <media@womensopen.org>, ph: +48501461972 or register at [www.womensopen.org/].

More international events can be found at [http://events.fai.org/].

18 to 24 September 2010 Contact Greg Schmidt 0414 747201.

June 2010

O verseas

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Density Altitude

often have only a vague appreciation of the dangers associated with flying at high altitudes. The higher we climb, the closer we get to the limits of pilot and aircraft alike.

Bernard Eckey The first time I came across these two strange words was during studies for my German

L i m i tat i o n s o f the human body

glider pilot’s licence. For the next 10 years I never heard of it again until it hit me

Most humans have evolved to live close to sea level. Our physiology is not adapted to prolonged exposure to an environment to which it is not accustomed. For example, humans will respond with a marked loss of performance if exposed to high altitudes.

Regardless of altitude, the composition of air (21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen plus 1% of other gases) remains unchanged, but the ambient pressure does not. At 18 000ft, for example, the air pressure is half that of sea level – and that means that there is only half the amount of oxygen in a given breath.

Reduced pressure at altitude not only decreases the actual number of oxygen molecules per unit volume of air but an insufficient ambient pressure also restricts the blood’s carrying capacity of oxygen.

If the blood oxygen saturation drops to approximately 93% all of us suffer from a noticeable deterioration in our mental and physical performance. Even well below a supposedly safe altitude of 10 000ft the effects are evident to an observer, though not the person suffering from the lack of oxygen.

The general medical term for an oxygen deficiency is hypoxia, but the specific type we will consider as part of this article is ‘altitude hypoxia’. Also called ‘hypoxic hypoxia’, it is a condition that results when there is a lack of available oxygen or lowered partial pressure of oxygen. Individual responses to hypoxia vary considerably, not only between individuals, but also in the same person at different times. These can be dependant on such factors as diet, physical condition, body chemistry, age, general wellbeing, stress factors, dehydration, current blood sugar levels, etc. The severity and onset of hypoxia can vary.

However, not even the fittest or youngest of us remain unaffected.

Before we look at a simple example we need to know that the International Standard Atmosphere (ISA) is based on a temperature of 15°C at sea level and that the following formula ignores the effect of moisture.

DA (ft) = PA (ft) + (120 x [OAT – ISA temperature]) DA = Density altitude PA = Pressure altitude OAT = Outside Air Temperature

with a real vengeance when I was in training for my Australian private pilot’s licence.

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hat begs a question! Is density altitude only relevant for theoretical purposes or has it some real significance for pilots?

Is it something glider pilots need to be concerned about or is it only relevant for power pilots and the performance of their aircraft? Let’s look into it and first work out the difference between pressure altitude and density altitude.

PRESSURE AL T I T UDE What our altimeter displays is just pressure… nothing else. This pressure is then converted into altitude. As long as we adjust the subscale to the pressure at mean sea level our altimeter simply indicates our vertical distance Above Mean Sea Level (AMSL). But our altimeter can provide additional information. If we dial in our current elevation we can read the Mean Sea Level (MSL) pressure (also called QNH) off the subscale.*

As a result of a density altitude that is higher than the actual physical altitude, the following effects can be observed: The aircraft will need to achieve a higher true airspeed to attain the same lift. This implies both a longer take-off roll and a higher true airspeed which must be maintained when airborne to avoid stalling.

The aircraft will climb slower as the result of reduced power production and lift.

The aircraft service ceiling (maximum altitude which can be attained) will be

lower due to both lower power output and reduced lift.

The rate of acceleration of the aircraft on take-off will be lower as a result of reduced power production.

Now we know the effect of density altitude on the performance of an aircraft, but what about the person sitting behind the controls? Are we as pilots also affected by density altitude? The fact that regulations prohibit flying above 10 000ft without supplementary oxygen suggests that the answer is ‘Yes’, but glider pilots

DENSI T Y AL T I T UDE To understand density altitude we need to know that changes in temperature and humidity will cause changes in air density.

Thus, in hot and humid conditions, the density altitude at a particular location may be significantly higher than the pressure altitude. Density altitude is nothing more than pressure altitude adjusted for non-standard temperature and humidity.

Calculating density altitude is straight forward – but more on that later!

Air density is perhaps the single most important factor affecting aeroplane performance. It has a direct bearing on: The lift generated by the wings – reduction in air density reduces a wing's lifting capacity.

The efficiency of the propeller – a propeller (effectively a rotating wing) acts in a similar way.

The power output of the engine – power output depends on oxygen intake, so the engine produces less power at higher ambient temperatures and increasing moisture levels.

Photos: Bernard Eckey

18 Soaring Australia

June 2010

June 2010

Let’s assume a glider pilot flies on a 44°C day and during the course of his flight he climbs to the maximum legal limit of 10 000ft. There he finds some nice streeting which he makes use of for several hours. What density altitude is our pilot exposed to?

DA = 10 000 + (120 x [44 – 15]) = 13 480ft We all know that such high temperatures occasionally occur in Australia and that gliders can reach altitudes of more than 15000ft in normal convective conditions. However, as the above example shows, even pilots climbing to only 10 000ft are, on a really hot day, operating as much as 35% over and above the altitude regarded as safe by aviation authorities.

The situation could even be significantly worse on days which are not only hot but also humid and this makes hypoxia an ever present danger. Let’s not forget that our body’s ability to absorb oxygen is related to density altitude – not just pressure altitude!

D u r at i o n o f e x p o s u r e The effects of hypoxia become worse the longer we deprive our body of an adequate supply of oxygen. Scientists have established a benchmark and determined the Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC) for the average person at various altitudes.

As the name implies TUC is the time span during which we can remain conscious but it does not necessarily mean that we are well enough to make the right decisions or take proper corrective action if and when necessary. Here are some typical figures:

Table 1: Time of useful consciousness ALTITUDE

TUC (min)

15000ft 18000ft 22000ft 25000ft 28000ft

30 or more 20 to 30 5 to 10 3 to 5 2 to 3

(4600m) (5500m) (6700m) (7600m) (8500m)

T h e i n s i d i o u s n at u r e of hypoxia Of equal concern to recreational pilots is the insidious nature of hypoxia. The most dangerous aspect of altitude hypoxia is that pilots do not, and cannot, detect the deterioration in function. Even worse, they lose their ability for critical judgement. As one Australian aviation medicine lecturer puts it: “The lights are on – but there is no one home.”

Our very limited ability to recognise the onset of hypoxia must be kept in mind

Oxymeter

if we don’t want it to become a silent killer. While operating above 10 000ft, we need to check and ensure the proper functioning of our oxygen equipment on a regular basis.

Any feelings of euphoria should give rise to suspicion and trigger corrective action immediately. Altitude-induced exuberance must be replaced by rational thinking.

Imagine you are in strong wave lift and are beginning to think that you can detect the curvature of the earth. No wonder you are ecstatic, especially if you are only a few thousand feet away from a diamond height goal. In a situation like this you must remain cool, calm and rational and remember that the difference between perceived and actual performance is unbelievably large.

Lately, small ‘Pulse Oximeters’ have come onto the market for non-invasive measurement of oxygen levels in the bloodstream. These small gadgets simply clip onto a finger (or earlobe) and provide a digital readout of oxygen saturation levels as well as pulse rate. Their accuracy is affected by body movement and/or cold. Also they tend to overstate the blood oxygen saturation in smokers by a few percent. In spite of their limitations, they enhance safety considerably and are therefore highly recommended – especially for flights above 15 000ft.

C arbon monoxide If you smoke, you will be affected by hypoxia at a much lower altitude than a nonsmoker. According to some research findings smokers are affected approximately 5000ft earlier than non-smokers. The reason is that carbon monoxide combines with the haemoglobin in our red blood cells much more readily than oxygen does and this in turn limits their capacity to carry oxygen. To refrain from smoking for a day or two does not make the slightest difference as it takes a long time for the body to get rid of toxic substances.

Soaring Australia 19

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To underline the above, let me pass on a valuable lesson learned during a seminar with a hyperbaric chamber run at the Edinburgh Air Force Base in South Australia.

A simulated flight to 22 000ft was arranged for eight glider pilots. After a fairly quick ascent to 22 000ft, we were instructed to take the oxygen mask off and keep subtracting 7 from a figure of 1000 while recording all intermediate results on a piece of paper. The instructor suggested stopping the exercise when this mental arithmetic was getting too hard and asked all of us to sign the paper afterwards.

The results came as a rude shock.

For most of us the mental arithmetic became too hard somewhere near 850 and all of us had to admit to making mistakes before we even got down to about 900. Some of us forgot to sign the paper altogether and hardly any of us were able to recognise our own

signatures afterwards. Symptoms ranging from tiredness to blurred vision and a total mental blackout were reported.

So, what is the solution? Yes, you guessed it – the two magic words are: ‘supplementary oxygen’.

C arrying oxygen in gliders In order to remain safe, we need to adhere to the rules which require us not to climb above 10 000ft AMSL without breathing supplementary oxygen. The history of aviation is full of oxygen starvation-related losses of human lives.

Portable oxygen dispensing systems are not recommended as restraining heavy oxygen containers has proved to be very problematic in gliders. When carrying oxygen in gliders we need to be aware of risks posed by oxygen’s explosive potential. Therefore, prior to the installation of any oxygen system expert advice should be sought. The final

Glider Display at Moonee Valley Festival Ian Kerton

O

n Sunday, 28 February we had a very successful display at the Moonee Valley Festival.

The festival is an annual event

held in Queen’s Park, Moonee Ponds and attracts thousands of local with a large number of displays from different

selection of equipment and dispensing unit comes down to intended mode of operation. An oxygen system used for cross-country flying up to 15 000 or even 18 000ft can be very different from a system that is intended for wave flying to twice this altitude.

This article does not touch on technical matters such as airworthiness requirements etc. It might be a worthy subject for another article in future.

On 4 September 2010,

Emilis Prelgauskas The formulation of the Glider Pilot Certificate processes represents a step by the sport of gliding

*The abbreviation QNH originates from the days when communication was done by Morse code and many of the most commonly asked questions were incorporated into a ‘Q code’. To ask for atmospheric pressure at sea-level (ie, at zero altitude) the letters 'QNH' would be transmitted. A common mnemonic for QNH is ‘No Height’, (whereas the mnemonic often used for QFE is ‘Field Elevation’).

organisations and a stage with musical groups playing all day.

With a 7:30am start Richard Traill, Rodger Krueger, Andrew Kerton and I set up the display in a central location next to the local Taekwondo group.

We had great support from the GFA with a supply of soaring magazines and pamphlets and, with assistance from the VMFG club members, had a great day.

There was a lot of interest from the public and I believe that it was very beneficial to inform the locals on the sport that some had never had any prior contact. I am sure the display did introduce the sport of gliding, and the VMFG, to many people who will investigate and, hopefully, join the club, or at least try a flight.

We had a long day with de-rigging not starting till about 1830.

I must thank all the members of the club for their help. Without the club support and the support of the GFA it would not have been such a great success.

Thanks to the VMFG members Richard Traill, Roger and Robyn Kruger, Philip Volk, Helen Chapman, Rowen White and Andrew Kerton for their help; also to Linda Kerton for her assistance on the day.

The gliding display at Moonee Valley Photo: Ian Kerton

20 Soaring Australia

Thoughts on the Glider Pilot Certificate

June 2010

to bring together in a comprehensive entity the tasks at club level traditionally done by pre-solo flight instruction, coaching toward becoming a proficient soaring pilot, with the necessary aircraft knowledge toward Independent Operator standard.

S

everal aspects in the sport, it is hoped, will benefit. The student pilot comes to appreciate the further aspects awaiting them in the sport; the emerging pilot gains more practical skills which makes flying more meaningful, feel easier, and thus be more fun; and established pilots can use the GPC in ‘licence’ form to ease their path in flying overseas.

The roll out of GPC includes established skill-set areas drawn from the three procedural areas and brought together into the syllabus. At a meeting I attended, several clubs had expanded the traditional pre-solo training booklets to incorporate these skill-set areas, even to including handy hint links to references to encourage student pilots to self-directed learning ahead of the flying field practicals.

The implementation in the wider sense is to evolve.

As this is to include cultural change in some clubs, there is work to be done on upskilling existing instructors, coaches, and the way these input to the student pilot progress.

Around the table at the meeting I heard suggestions for training panels within individual clubs to include in their meetings, discussion topics where all can draw on methods and emphasis differing amongst participating individuals.

That increased skill base then is on hand for student pilots to draw on. There was discussion about the additional resource methods as used in other sports that may, over time, be useful to create June 2010

Darling Downs Soaring Club 50th Anniversary

for use in the sport. Electronic hand out and web-based audio-visuals, for example, whereas at present it is predominantly mainly available in real time seminar form.

The unknowns about how this rolls out is yet to be seen.

There are likely to be local issues in differing clubs. In a large club, it may be practical to roster both instructor and coach, have a booking system, and have appropriate aircraft for those tasks.

A comment was passed at the meeting I attended that most now operate modern two-seat sailplanes which make it easier to demonstrate the possibilities of cross-country flight enjoyment, even early in the training process.

There are, however, still clubs whose size and current fleet may be barriers to those exercises. Some exercises presume sailplane accessories that aren’t core business at some sites: PDAs, GPS, flight directors, radios.

The ambitions for GPC extend to increasing the retention of glider pilot numbers in the sport, and attracting the under-represented sectors to the sport.

It isn’t clear to me what elements in GPC target those goals.

People still leave the sport through time, work and family priorities. The hope might however be to make it more obvious to the incoming participant that: • the scope the sport offers is greater than normal public expectations • it is fine to go and come back when person, life pressures and the sport’s ethos better fit

Darling Downs Soaring Club will be having a celebration to commemorate 50 years since the club’s first flight on 7 September 1960.

Fly-in or Drive-in – All are welcome to attend our special day, especially if you are a past member, or have flown with us, or would like to catch up with past and current members.

For planning purposes, please notify the DDSC Secretary, Richard Armstrong, of your interest in attending: Post: DDSC 50th Anniversary PO Box 584, Toowoomba QLD 4350 Email: info@ddsc.org.au Check our website for updates and more details [www.gogliding.org.au].

• a nd throughout emphasise the fun, even while the individual skill acquisition steps are daunting.

I don’t see anything in GPC that makes becoming proficient in guiding a sailplane any better aligned to societal expectations about rapid progression in any activity.

Flying a sailplane well is hard. Other aviation sports may be able to offer ‘three easy lessons’ entry; albeit through the process of drilling holes in the sky where motor-control substitutes for decision making, or in accepting a higher misadventure rate than we are prepared to with sailplanes.

GPC, however, does open the door to the sport developing the wider diversity of learning materials which should increase engagement by moving the learning experience beyond just the flying field and with particular training individuals. And toward learning self directed, resourced by individual copy and public domain source, to social interaction as well as event learning, and drawing on a wider skill-set range of existing participants in the sport.

In that sense, GPC roll out is beginning, with those wider supports to evolve; and experience in application to refine and sharpen the processes.

Soaring Australia 21

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Gliding Queensland Easter Competition 2010 Garrett Russell Five world competition pilots came to Chinchilla for this year’s Gliding Queensland Shinzo Takizawa – a familiar face at Queensland-run competitions

Easter Competition, but they would probably all agree that they were not the competitors who personify the spirit of this popular event.

T

hat honour must go to two pilots whose performances belied their comparative lack of experience in such august company: Queenslanders Jo Davis and Luke O’Donnell.

Jo not only won Club Class with 100 points clear of her closest rival, but also made her debut as a competition task setter. She succeeded in mastering some slightly tricky weather conditions to deliver seven competition days from a possible eight with relatively few outlandings (although she has to claim one of them for herself!).

Youngster Luke O’Donnell not only won the Gliding Queensland trophy for ‘Best Performance in a First Competition’, but also distinguished himself with an 11th overall placing in Club Class, ahead of many more seasoned competitors. Luke has a good example to follow as he develops his competition career: Luke O’Donnell won Gliding he shared Standard Queensland trophy for ‘ Cirrus VH-GOT with Best Performance in a his father Stephen First Competition’

Greg Schmidt having a bit of a snooze before take-off

Briefing

Gary Ransky

Backroom Boys – Mick Moloney and David Higgs at IT/scoring headquarters

22 Soaring Australia

O’Donnell, who marked his return to competitive flying with a second overall in Club Class.

Craig Tuitt, flying the only Libelle in this year’s field, took the Club Class bronze in a further demonstration of the spirit of the event.

At the other end of the spectrum Tom Claffey, using the event to practise flying an ASG 29 for his upcoming world’s campaign, decisively won Sports Class from New Zealand visitor Grae Harrison and local Jenny Thompson, each flying their own Ventus 2.

The event returned to Chinchilla from last year’s close-to-washout at Dalby, and was once again hosted by avowedly non-cross-country Caboolture Gliding Club with invaluable assistance from other Queensland club members.

DDSC’s Ralph Henderson was again competition director, taking over airside administration while Caboolture CFI Brian Wade handled all the landside details.

Greg Schmidt came from Kingaroy to explain the weather; Jo Davis, as mentioned, put her local knowledge to work on task setting, Grant Harper came down from North Queensland for what he said will be his last year as event safety officer and Val Wilkinson flew up from Warwick in Australia’s prettiest Pawnee to take the reins as tug master.

The rest of the organisation was handled by a team of Caboolture members with the support of Chinchilla Aero Club, whose George Lattimore deserves special praise for personally maintaining the facilities to an exemplary standard for more than 50 pilots for the entire nine days.

Chinchilla has moved on since we were last there two years ago. Rapid economic development has brought more traffic to the airfield including a regular passenger service which added another

The delightful Fran Ning

Darling Downs Soaring Club president Pam Kurstjens with husband Gerritt

Caboolture volunteers David Higgs, Eric Dickenson and Brian Wade

challenge for the organisation and pilots – although, from a Caboolture point of view, it was more like a typical day in the circuit!

Following the traditional Good Friday practice, the competition got serious on Saturday with a possible 327km AAT to Jimbour and Cecil Plains for Club Class and 350km to Bell Silo and Cecil Plains for Sports Class. Jo Davis and Tom Claffey stamped their names early on

their respective classes with wins ahead of Grant Harper and Bevan Lane in club; Grae Harrison and Lars Zehnder in sports.

The winners’ speeds were 86.2km/h and 96.9km/h.

Sunday dawned with a doubtful sky which eventually convinced everyone that hunting Easter eggs and a handful of rather short local flights were better options for the day. The forlorn scene of a pull of tug pilots sheltering from rain under a Pawnee wing even made the competition website.

Monday, by contrast, was good enough to inspire a 474km task for both classes, to Jandowae North, Drillham and Tara. Jo Davis maintained her supremacy with 83km/h, ahead of fellow locals Richard Hoskings and Pearce Mitchell, while Tom Claffey ceded first place to Andrew Georgeson (88.6km/h) with Bill Hatfield third.

Tuesday was the boomer of the week, with Jo Davis averaging 92.7km/h to Warra, The Gums, Drillham and back and Tom Claffey back in form over the same course at 104.3km/h. Stephen O’Donnell and Grant Harper took the lower podium steps in Club Class; Bill Hatfield and Grae Harrison in sports.

Wednesday was back to more average weather with some high stratus inducing the first wave of outlandings. However, the day began with enough promise to offer a possible 490km to Kumbia, Kogan and Miles for both classes.

Grae Harrison showed he can handle Aussie flats as well as Kiwi mountains to win Sports Class at 81.3km/h while Shinzo Takizawa relegated Tom Claffey to third.

Jo Davis (are you seeing a pattern yet?) claimed club with an impressive 83.3km/h over Erich Wittstock and Al Sim. And Erich was flying Warwick’s twoseat Marianne!

Thursday brought Jo’s previously mentioned outlanding (there goes the pattern!) and she was far from alone.

Both classes again shared the same task, a possible 393km to Jandowae North, Kupunn and Miles Airfield, with Pearce Mitchell scoring a popular Club Class win at 78.6km/h ahead of Craig Tuitt and Grant Harper. Somewhat faster was Grae Harrison at 87.4km/h in front of Tom Claffey and Robert Bradley/Peter Griffiths in the Nimbus 4DM – the second twoseater to achieve a podium finish.

Friday saw the two class tracks diverge slightly: club to Jimbour, Kogan and Condamine for a possible 329km; sports to Kumbia, Kogan and Condamine for 450km.

Garrett Russell and Mick Moloney flying for fun on the cancelled competition day

Team Caboolture – Mick Moloney, Kevin Rodda, Eric Dickeson, Brian Wade (David Griffiths and Leon Moran in cockpit)

Club Class saw two new faces in the front finishers of what turned out to be the competition’s most challenging day. Brian Allerby made it around first at 73.4km/h ahead of Grant Harper and David Nash. Meanwhile sports added one new face to the podium with Greg Schmidt coming third to Grant Harper and Shinzo Takizawa, whose winning speed averaged just 77.4km/h.

Saturday, being the last day and lead up to the final night award’s dinner, was a short 246km AAT for everyone to Miles Airfield and Kogan.

Pearce Mitchell, Craig Tuitt and Jo Davis gained the last glory in club while Tom Claffey, Grae Harrison and Bill Hatfield did the same in sports.

The presentation dinner at Chinchilla RSL was, as usual, a roaring success with none of the pilots present concentrating on a sharp mind for the morning. Amid all the well-deserved back slapping more than one mention was made of another highlight which beautifully demonstrates the spirit of this uniquely friendly and welcoming event: Jo Davis, class winner and tasksetter, made her first solo flight at the Gliding Queensland Easter competition just eight years ago.

What can we expect from Luke O’Donnell and the other new competitors over Easters, Nationals and Worlds to come?

Contest Director Ralph Henderson with Ian Lesch

June 2010

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The Paragliding State of Origin 2010 James Thompson

How do you keep a pilot happy? Simple! Give them so much good air that they sit at briefing with

At last I get in the air, last gaggle away Photos: James Thompson

a stunned look on their face.

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he State of Origin is held over Easter at Mt Borah, Manilla. The comp is designed for novice pilots as a introduction to competition flying, as such uses a handicapping and no requirements for additional instruments like GPS. Another way the novices are helped it to team them with experienced pilots, one advanced and two novices along with two other pilots form crews. Scoring is achieved by each crew submitting a landing statement with each pilots kilometres, which is then multiplied by their handicap.

This year’s State of origin saw some of our best flying weather for years with three great days of flying. With 116 pilots flying the comp. Everyday saw over 60% of the pilots achieving personal bests with nearly 40% having a PB every day.

…and the sky filled with gliders

24 Soaring Australia

Each day a generally southerly wind took us north along Manilla’s classic route towards Barraba and on to Bringara.

The State captains organise their crews and get their pilots in the air. By the end of the day we had novices having multiple flights or scattered along the course line north from the dreaded Tarply sinkhole to the day winner Jason Turner out at 140km at Warialda. Just behind this group JJ Bastion, a local pilot, had decided to land at Warialda rail, still on the main Mason Roy 2500m over Barraba Photo: Godfrey Wenness road, JJ declared himself ‘The Hitchhiking King’ because no sooner had he packed and got to the road, from the west against the forecast of SSE when he received a a ride all the way back winds. With a small inversion the sky in to Manilla, almost 180km in one hitch. front of launch filled with gliders, and Jason and the small group of pilots with then, as it broke, we had a huge gaggle him had flown on to the township itself. at base with some of the novices flirting They phoned for their retrieve, told two with the grey room. Pilots again steamed cars were on their way. The first one for north with multiple-100km flights and/ some reason headed to Gunnedah. The or PBs. With such big distances and pilots second car headed north but stopped at spread across the landscape, I didn’t Bringara, of course didn’t find them and finished scoring until 11pm. also turned around. After further ‘commuThe last day saw us set a speed run nications’ with the retrieve, Jason and the task with a land by time to have the group got back to Manilla near midnight. pilots back in town by sundown so that Next morning saw us back up on we could score and present winners in the mountain at 11am with cu’s flowing the early evening instead of midnight.

June 2010

Dinner and presentation were held at the Royal Hotel. There were smiles all round, so many tired but happy pilots, enjoying a quiet beer and loud yarns. The handicapping had worked well with the winners in the categories, within the top 17. The winner on handicap was Warren Hall, a novice, having three of his best flights. Top female pilot was Kirsty Withecombe.

The top pilot in their first competition, David Byrne.

Craig Collins was best advanced pilot. Jerry Furnell, the best intermediate. Felipe Rezende, the Kirsty Withecombe best tandem pilot (yes we had competition between four tandems).

There were so many notable novice flights, but Tony Reid was awarded Felipe and tandem passenger this prize of June 2010

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n arriving at the HQ of the 2010 SoO in Manilla, I found a hive of activity.

James was feverishly registering pilots as they flooded through the door whilst my arch rival and Queensland Captain, Lofty, swooped on any Queenslanders. Lofty was busily entering information on his records so that he could build a database of his forces. I had a short lived twinge of guilt that I wasn’t doing the same. Should I as NSW Captain be looking busy, acting the like the commander of a well drilled air force? Was I letting down the brave NSW warriors?

After a few seconds thought, and remembering the outstanding quality of my pilots, I consigned the guilt to the dustbin in dark backblocks of my psyche. In what was to be the pattern for the weekend I chose to take a low key approach and adjourned to the Canberra Cafe for a well earned beer and some dinner.

After briefing on the hill on Friday morning, Lofty called a meeting of the Queensland forces. Not wanting to appear over confident, I called my men and women together. After answering a few sensible questions, such as “Which way should we fly today?”, I said a few words of encouragement, reminded them that

the hopes and dream of all NSW pilots hung on their mallions, and then sent them off to do battle.

But something very strange happened that day.

We did not prevail. The Queensland team beat us, and what’s worse so did the four-person South Australian team! In fact the Crow Eaters won the day. Lofty and I quickly put our heads together and realised that this could only have occurred through an anomaly in the scoring system.

A quick vote of the pilots and we made a new rule that a State Team had to have at least 10 pilots. This meant that the South Aussies had to join the ‘Others’ at the bottom of the table. Such is life!

I decided not to fly on the Saturday as the previous day’s scores clearly demonstrated the need for me to take a slightly more commander-like role. I had to make the supreme sacrifice to get NSW back in its rightful position, No 1! So, I stayed on launch and helped my pilots into the air, each with a wish for ‘God speed’. Now, I’m not religious, but it seemed to work!

NSW took the lead by the end of the day and stayed in front until the end of the competition. Another glorious victory for the mighty Blues!

Lindsay Wootten Soaring Australia 25

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Profile: Warren Hall • S igned off course with Manilla Paragliding on 29 May 2009.

• Since then, all flying on the Advance Epsilon 6 (31m2) Post course: • 7.1 hours consolidation at Manilla immediately following course (1 to 5 June 2009) • Prior to competition, only 6 hours alpine flying in Interlaken, Switzer-

Winner crew ‘Fly Manilla’

NSW takes the prize

a free entry to the next Canugra Cup. The winning crew was ‘Fly Manilla’ with Godfrey shepherding his team to a substantial victory. The State of Origin winner this year went to New South Wales.

One of the lectures held in the evenings was on competition flying for begin26 Soaring Australia

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land (September 2009) then a few days from arrival in Manilla on 25 March 2010 just prior to the comp – a period of 6.5 months break between, followed by 9.9 hours prior to State of Origin competition from 25 March 2010 to 1 April at Manilla • Prior to commencement of competition (2 April 2010), total hours: 31.7 • First cross-country flight: 27 March 2010 (9km short of Barraba) Yehar!

• Total cross-country prior to the competition: 5.2 hours (including a few hours boating around the ridge!)

During competition: • Day 1: 4.1 hours, 82km direct • Day 2: 4.7 hours, 98km direct • Day 3: 2.8 hours, 59km direct • Total hours post competition: 43.3 • Have now flown a total of three different blocks (Manilla, Interlaken, Manilla) • Next planned flying: Interlaken, June 2010 Other flying experience: • 12 965 hours fixed wing • 9267 hours Airbus

ners, when asked what a novice was looking for in competition, one pilot suggested, “Just what we are getting at the State of Origin, low-key, low stress and low cost.” This was exactly my aim, but could only happen with the generous support of the sponsors.

The major sponsor being the Department of Sport and Recreation through the NSWHGPGA who have been wholly funding the competition over the last 10 years. Both major State associations were approached for their support, Queensland declined to fund their pilots. This year saw a change when NSWHGPGA after many years of trying to get support from other associations, had the stipulation that the cost of the infrastructure would be covered and the entry fees of the NSW pilots. The other States’ pilots would have to to cover their own entries. Other sponsors whose help I must recognise are Vic and Tom of the Royal, ‘Spar’ food market for the hard cash prizes, and the business people of Manilla.

From the paragliding side: ‘Manilla Paragliding’, ‘Polyglide’, ‘Paragliding Queensland’ and Gavin of ‘Ozone’ who also sponsored a free entry to the next Canungra Cup and of course ‘The Coffee Man’ who donated the profit from the great espressos served each day at briefing.

• 3600 hours Military (RAAF) • Currently: Type Rating Instructor Airbus A330-200, A340-300, A340-500 Emirates airline Paragliding is a passion for me; it is not the only one. I don’t have the opportunity to fly recreationally as regularly as I desire. I am exceedingly busy, being based in Dubai and flying for an airline receiving one new aircraft on average every three weeks! Planning recreational time is a high priority.

I am fortunate to have a compassionate wife who maintains a balanced perspective on life and two fantastic and healthy kids (8 and 11). Safety is always number one and the pleasure that inevitably follows is cream on the cake.

Since being involved with the paragliding fraternity, I am unceasingly impressed by the calibre of individuals both in Australia and overseas. Like most activities in life, you reap what you sow – I see a bright future for the sport globally!

This year saw the introduction of the innovative on-line registration system by Brett Harden, instead of 20 registrations, I had 111 at the cut-off date (and as usual a few late regos). Also the introduction of the SoO10 web page [http://hunterskysailors. org.au/soo] which has now been updated with the score sheet, photo link, and a link to time lapse movies of each day’s launch – very cool. I like the Saturday movie – watching the clouds cycle and move (thank you, Bob).

Even with so many lower airtime pilots in the air, we only had two incidents, a tree landing with no damage or injury and a hard landing with a wrist injury.

Lastly a big thank you to the pilots themselves who make this event what it is: safe, fun and informative. I hope to see you all next year (I already have an order in for the same weather).

June 2010

Greetings all!

Lofty, Team Captain Queensland

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he past months have not been kind on the weather front in south-east Queensland, and in particular to our novice and intermediate pilots craving quality airtime.

The only shining light left to hold onto, was the prospect of good weather during the 2010 State of Origin in Manilla.

As time drew nearer, the phone calls intensified with questions of ‘Will the eight hour journey be worth it?’ ‘How’s the weather shaping up?’ ‘Can Queensland reclaim the Paragliding Holy Grail from last year’s victors NSW?’ Thirty-six brave Queenslanders (10 advanced pilots, two intermediates and 24 novices) decided to venture south of the border, many of whom had never laid eyes on Mt Borah, let alone fly it alongside 90 other paragliders and eight hang gliders.

Friday 8am (7am QLD time), we rallied the Queensland Warriors at HQ to put names to faces and formalise the five pilot crews, before the official 8:30 briefing to be held by organiser James Thompson.

The main briefing was kept as painless as possible, with emphasis on pilot safety (quite important when you have almost 90 novice/low airtime pilots all flying off the same hill). As James turned to the weather outlook, a renewed energy filled the room, as he provided the information everyone was wishing for: “Looks like we’ll be in for three days of good cross-country flying! Briefing on the hill at 11am!”

Some of the Queensland team thought they needed to dust off the cobwebs and get to launch for an early sleddy. All was going well until Craig Dunn performed an impromptu helicopter, followed by a short cascade of collapses not much above hill height on the east launch, in front of everyone, on his trusty DHV 1/2 Apco glider! Craig recovered well and from then on was dubbed ‘Acro Boy’.

Conditions on both days would follow the usual Borah shuffle. Early winds coming from the east, then swinging around to the south-west by lunch. The slight crosswind on the west launch made life a little challenging with pilots relying on the thermal cycles to get a clean launch.

June 2010

I was quite impressed with the launching skills of our novice pilots.

The lack of soarable conditions on launch over the three days, meant novices thermalling and gaggle flying skills were going to be tested, and with this a wealth of experience would be gained in just a few days. Most pilots would have been happy with that, however, the advanced pilots had other ideas… getting the novices cross-country!

Day 3 proved difficult, both in getting away from launch and flying down the courseline. It was a bonus that we had a nice southerly airflow pushing pilots up towards the north each day.

Throughout the weekend, all the novices shared the glory of flying personal best (PB) cross-country flights.

The Royal Hotel can attest to this with record takings across the bar, and many a story told of how novices expertly thermalled to dizzying heights and watched Mt Borah dissappear behind them.

The weekend proved a steep learning curve for all. Advanced pilots learned to slow down and wait for the novices.

Novices learned that if you fly inland in a T-shirt and shorts, you are going to get cold quickly. Girls can fly just as far, if not further than boys (or husbands/partners)!

As a State, Queensland jumped to a commanding lead over the Blues. Novice Andrew Dobinson won the day with a flight to Bingara around 90km. Hot on his heels was the top female for the day, Kirsty Withcombe, with an 89km flight! NSW got their novices into gear on Day 2 and 3 and ran away with a victory… this time!

I still put it down to the Queensland novices thermal marking for the NSW team!

Special kudos goes to Miles Crawford who displayed the ‘never give up Queensland spirit’ – bombing out nine times over the weekend to finally thermal high enough to fly 11km (PB) on his last attempt late Sunday afternoon. Well done mate!

Congratulations to everyone. Thanks also to the advanced pilots for your support, both to me and the novices. I’m proud that the Queensland pilots gave it their best shot, gained a

bunch of experience and had a good time doing it. The Queensland spirit is alive and well, and we’ll be back for another crack at it in 2011.

Soaring Australia 27

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intage gliding corner

two high-tech machines. For a few seconds, the unusual trio remains in this incredible position, then they dissolve and Steiner parachutes down to earth.

A precision job

Let’s Get Connected Austrian Paul Steiner and the Blanix Team redefine the term ‘connecting flight’ Reprinted with permission from Red Bull

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nnoying delays when changing flights?

Constant packing and unpacking in security controls? Not for Paul Steiner! The 47-year-old skydiver and member of the Red Bull Skydive Team performed an unprecedented daredevil stunt with the Blanix Team: 2100m above the ground the athlete from Salzburg opens the Blanik’s cockpit and climbs to the edge of the wing where he changes flights by climbing onto another Blanik flying below at a speed of 130km/h. After that he stands up and forms a human connection between the aircrafts by touching both of them. Only then he jumps off the Blanik L-13 and safely lands on the ground in Upper Styria.

Resumé: a brilliant flying performance and the most spectacular aerobatic stunt of the year.

Changing flights for professionals

Paul Steiner moving on the airplane 2100m above the ground

Photos © Markus Zinner/Red Bull Photofiles connecting flight!” This is what a flight attendant’s speech could sound like in the future if it was for Paul Steiner and the Blanix Team. Three Austrians have invented modern aviation in Austria and done away with changing flights. All you ‘normal’ people out there relax: this is not going to be introduced on regular flights and you should not try this at home.

Mission possible It has the ring of Baron Münchhausen’s ride on a cannonball to it, but it really happened and is now part of aviation history. Paul Steiner alights from one aircraft at 130km/h, climbs to the edge of its wing, does a forward roll and holds on to the wing. While he is hanging there under enormous strain, fighting gravity and the strong adverse winds for near-

ly a minute, the second aircraft is drawing close from behind until Steiner can change onto its wing – the critical moment in which the pilots must not make any mistake.

Man and machine However, the best and hardest bit is yet to come. Right after the changing, the skydiver climbs onto the glider’s hull and the second Blanik L-13 comes even closer in mirror formation. Slowly and metre for metre, the pilots near their aircraft and Steiner has to give them final instructions via radio, because he is not in their field of vision any more. The stunt is successful: the Salzburg athlete is standing upright on the hull of the one Blanik and holds on to the wing tail of the second Blanik, creating a human connection between

“Ladies and gentlemen! We have now reached our final altitude of 2100m above ground level. Please unfasten your seat belts, open the emergency exit and proceed onto the wing in order to catch your

Hanging on the rear side of the wing by doing a roll – at a speed of 130 kilometres per hour

28 Soaring Australia

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[www.vintageglidersaustralia.org.au]

Exhausted, but overjoyed, the 47-yearold safely lands on the airport in Niederöblarn. “This was an incredible stunt that has not ever been done before. We’ve rehearsed it for a whole year, minimised sources of errors and practised every single step again and again. In the end it was all worth it,” Steiner says.

The two pilots, Kurt Tippl and Ewald Roithner, are just as happy, “It was a perfect precision job! Flying was very difficult today since there was a lot of turbulence, but we have proved that we’re a perfect team and that we can fly in closer formation than anyone else in the whole world!”

As soon as the pressure is gone, the three Austrians start whispering in a corner and grins spread over their faces.

“We’ve already got a few new ideas, but they’re of course still secret.”

Red Bull Sky Dive Team The Red Bull Skydive Team was founded in June 2008 with members of the Austrian Armed Forces Aviation Team Red Bull Salzburg. The team consists of five professional skydivers – David Hasenschwandtner, Paul Steiner, Michael Löberbauer, Marco Waltenspiel and Georg Lettner – and the team’s coordinator Hans Huemer.

They mainly perform demonstration jumps (wingsuit, basejump, formation jumps, etc.), tandem jumps and special projects like the ‘Akte (Blani)X’. Further information on [www.redbullskydiveteam.com].

Paul Steiner connecting two Blanik planes in the mirror flight. The 47-year-old Austrian is member of the Red Bull Skydive Team

Bl anix Tea m Blanik L-13 flights in mirror formation were first practised in the summer of 2002, the main idea behind it being to perform aerobatic flights with high precision and perfection. Within no time, the regular training sessions above the team’s home base in Aigen im Ennstal turned into impressive choreographies accentuated by smoke effects and mystical music by Ennio Morricone.

The first performance in front of 25 000 enthusiastic spectators was a total success and many other performances followed. The team, for example, presented their stunts at the Airpower 2005 and 2009. The Blanix Team consists of five members: Kurt Tippl (pilot, team leader), Gerfried Heinzle (co-pilot), Martin

Some last minute advice/instructions from an anxious ‘Speedy’ Gonsalves and Bert Persson is ready for the ASK14 (VH-GYP) evaluation flight.

Trevor Mills' Sperber Motorglider (VH-GHY) waits patiently in the background; no points for guessing that it was Speedy in the front seat of GHY (with Trevor and his camera in the back seat) when the Sperber launched shortly afterwards to view VH-GYP's flight from close range in the air!

Strimitzer (wingman), Ewald Roithner (wingman) and Markus Köberl (operator).

Further information on [www.blanix.com].

Bl anik L-13 The LET Blanik L 13 aircraft was manufactured in the former Czechoslovakia between 1956 and 1978. Around 2700 units, which were originally intended for military purposes, were produced. The Blanik is a two-seater with a wing spread of 16.2m and an effective length of 8.4m.

Its basic weight is 292kg and its limit speed is given as 252km/h. Despite its relative age, the glider is still used today and is especially well suited for aerobatics due to its ideal construction design and its excellent power rating.

What a great sight to see this beautifully restored ‘wood and fabric’ vintage aircraft in the air

Photos: Kevin Rodda and Trevor Mills

Masterpiece of flying by the pilots – picking up Paul Steiner for changing the planes

June 2010

June 2010

Soaring Australia 29

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[www.vintageglidersaustralia.org.au]

intage gliding corner

wingtip hitting the back of a Navy Land Rover parked on the strip.

Don Nottle and I made the return trip with the Kingfisher. Going through Mildura, we’d run into Reg Hudson of the Sunraysia Club. “Watch out for the cop on the fruit-fly block,” he’d said, “he might query your trailer lights.” (These were still a mess from the trip over.)

We pulled up at the border. As we intended to camp for the night we were

The Narromine Comps 1962/63

in no hurry, so chatted to the cop about gliding for a while. I’d told him we were going to rewire the trailer when we got home. (I thought I’d get in first; and we did eventually rewire it, a few years later!) Eventually another car approached; I put my car in gear, started up, and put the lights on as I started to move. “Hmm,” the cop said, “wouldn’t you be over-width with this when you turn a corner?”

Noel Matthews

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he first Nationals I competed in were at Narromine in 1962/63. This was also the first all aerotow comp; so we first had to learn how!

On a very windy day – 23 September 1962 – Helmut Apitz flew the ASC Tiger Moth to Everard so we could experience the joys of aerotowing. So, instead of 1500ft over the end fence, we were at about 50ft with not much airspeed. Not so enjoyable, in a strong westerly.

Our Clare Soaring Club Kingfisher had been to Harry’s to have a nose-hook fitted. With the two hooks connected, the effort required to release was high – too high. One of our pilots, John Reid, had to give an almighty yank to get off at Narromine; the tug had already started to peel off, taking the Kingy with it. After that the belly hook was disconnected and taped up for the duration.

Colin McKinnon and I left for Narromine, towing the Kingfisher, on Christmas

Line-up at Narromine with BG12 and LO150 in the foreground

Col Churches in the ASC Ka6

30 Soaring Australia

VIvan Wiese and his wife with the Olympia VH-GLY from Alice Springs

Photos: Noel Matthews Day 1962. We called in on an uncle at Mildura for an unexpected Christmas dinner, before camping on the side of the road waiting for John Reid and Don Nottle to catch up. Reidy was driving his farm ute towing his caravan. They got to us early on Boxing Day, and we lost them at Hay. In those days there was a sharp turn to stay on the right road rather than go into Hay, and that was where the A-frame on his van came apart.

Mac and I left them there and carried on. We arrived at Narromine as dawn broke (after a delay in Forbes jury-rigging the trailer lights) and asked the milko for directions. It had been raining a lot, and we found the hangar there full of people trying to dry very wet bits of gliders.

(Some years later the Kingy had a heavy landing. During the repair some old water damage was found, and we reckoned it stemmed from this trip!)

When the comps were proposed for Narromine, there were a lot of objections from the Sydney DCA – until it became known that the Director-General, Don Anderson (an old Waikerie boy) was going to do the official opening. No problems after that, and we set up camp on the airfield. He flew from Melbourne in a DCA F-27, at huge cost to the taxpayers, no doubt.

The rain continued, and the first day was washed out. The organisers instead asked Merv Waghorn to entertain the troops with a talk. I was a bit surprised by the topic: his experiences, cloud flying in Australia!

I think I came about last overall. Narromine has a very long main strip. You could soar in the Kingy, then push off and work another thermal at the other end of the strip, and finish up where you started. It kept on raining as well, so the paddocks

Taylor Glider Replica Presented to National Museum of Australia

One of the Renmark club's Cherokees, with a Mucha behind it

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group of Australian Gliding Museum members met in Canberra on 28 April this year to mark the presentation of the Taylor Glider replica, built by the Australian Gliding Museum, to the National Museum of Australia.

This represented a culmination of a project begun in 2006 by the gliding museum volunteers, to build three replicas of the famous aircraft. The aircraft built for the National Museum of Australia was built to their own specifications, including coverage with cotton fabric similar to that used on the original glider, whereas the other two

were covered with the more durable ceconite fabric.

The aircraft has pride of place in the ceiling of the museum entrance hall, and presents an inspiring view of the first successful Australian glider to museum visitors.

After the presentation, gliding museum members were treated to a visit to the Australian War Memorial Refurbishment Centre, where they spent three hours viewing, discussing and learning the restoration skills in detail, to assist with future glider and archive preservation and presentation.

Jim and Graeme Barton and Bruce Hearn were involved in the project from the start

Max Howland and Marj Pegler in the North Coast Kooka, which was rigged for night flying trials

were very wet. On one retrieve (you didn’t dare drive into the field) we took the wing off the Kingy to lift it over the fence. The fuse just sat there, no need to support it in the mud.

Overall I logged four hours and five minutes in six flights, covering a total of 67 miles. On the last day I’d teed up a flight in a BG12A which was on the market. And that took about 15 minutes to reach 2500ft, behind a Tiger Moth, and the same to get down.

I was a bit nervous on this flight.

Partly because the glider had a somewhat longer wingspan than I was used to, and partly as I’d just seen a GCV Ka6 have a bingle; landing across the strip with the

June 2010

The Taylor Glider replica

Photos: Russell Darbyshire

June 2010

The group views the glider

Soaring Australia 31

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Review* of ‘Soaring Australia’ Magazine From a HGFA Perspective Brian Webb The Soaring magazine is the major communication tool for the HGFA and its members.

It has been in publication in one form or another since at least 1988. It has evolved from an A4 newsletter to its current format of 48 pages, two colour and four pages, full colour monthly in partnership with the Gliding Federation of Australia, the GFA.

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he diversity of our membership, geographically and by discipline, each with their own expectations, ensure that there has always been some discontent with the magazine. The editors and the preceding Boards have sought to maintain a compromise that best served the majority of the membership needs.

The magazine is a notable line item in the HGFA expenditure and is due for review. This review is not intended to alienate our magazine partners, the GFA. The review does present various alternatives and associated costs both partnering with the GFA and solely as the HGFA.

Requested from the Membership We need to know what the membership preferences are for the magazine.

The HGFA website links to a web page to enable members to give an indication of their preferences for the direction of the magazine. Please visit it and respond before the end of July so that we have an idea of which direction you would like us to take.

HGFA website [www.hgfa.asn.au], visit ‘Forums’, then ‘HGFA organisation related posts’, select ‘Soaring Australia Review’.

Current Magazine Specification

• P rinting, where the printers take the artwork provided by the editor and print the magazine.

• Fulfillment, where the printers take the printed magazines, package them, prepare mailing labels, add inserts and then post.

Monthly Annually Annual cost to the HGFA

Editorial Printing Fulfillment Total Unit cost

$2,700 $6,668 $6,147 $15,515 $3.23

$32,400 $80,012 $73,763 $186,175 $38

$16,200 $40,006 $36,882 $93,088

Lead Time The lead time for the current format is five weeks, the content deadline is the 25th of the month preceding. Submit an article by 25 February and it will be in the issue published at the start of April. This allows for two-and-a-half weeks collation and editorial and two-and-a-half weeks printing and fulfillment.

[Ed note: The lead time for printing has since been reduced by four days (to four weeks total lead time) by switching to an overnight ftp upload of artwork to the printers and an ftp proof download, instead of the sending artwork and receiving proofs by express overnight mail.]

The HGFA struggles to find content for 52 pages monthly. Partnering with the GFA we can share the 52 pages monthly, each having 26 pages. We would need to move the magazine frequency back to bi-monthly to have enough content to publish without partnering.

Perceived Strengths and Weaknesses of the Magazine Weaknesses

Strengths

Lead time between sub- Monthly frequency mission and publication of content Quality of the magazine Reduced cost of the magazine because of the GFA partnership Cost of the magazine, Membership wide printing and postage communication tool Lack of discipline Safety communication tool specific content Not enough local con- Hard copy tent submitted to regularly fill the magazine

This review seeks to clarify the costs of the existing ‘Soaring’ magazine and to offer some alternatives, together with their costs and an idea of their relative advantages and disadvantages.

The costs are based on: • A HGFA distribution of 2400 issues (HGFA only) at 52 pages per issue • The cost to the HGFA of a GFA joint partnership distribution of 4800 issues.

(HGFA and GFA) sharing 52 pages per issue, 26 pages each Options include: F1 The current format of 48 pages in two colour plus four pages in four colour F2 52 pages in full four colour format F3 An electronic format of 52 pages in full four colour

• A monthly publication of 52 A4 (297 Some Rationale for the Magazine Partnership with the GFA by 210mm) pages – 48 pages in two The partnership with the GFA enables colour, four pages in four (full) colour. an exchange of information and culture • Typical print run of 4800 magazines – with a large body of pilots that share 2400 for HGFA, 2400 for GFA. a similar environment.

• Cost and content shared 50/50 with The partnership with the GFA also our partner, the GFA. enables the cost of magazine production Monthly costs consist of: to be significantly reduced for both part• Editorial where the sub-editors source ners. Printing 4800 issues (GFA and HGFA) content and the production editor rather than 2400 (HGFA only) saves each assembles each issue of the magazine partner some $13 847 annually. and provides print-ready artwork to the printers. * This article was originally written in 2009 and based on costs from 2007/2008 and quotes from 2009 32 Soaring Australia

June 2010

Some Alternatives These are some of the alternatives considered. There are more that I have not pursued, such as partnering with New Zealand’s ‘Airborn’ magazine, and I am sure others I have not thought off. Please use the website feedback form to help us become aware of them.

• Replace the printed magazine with an electronically available monthly eMagazine • Reduce the frequency of the printed magazine to bi-monthly, six issues a year • Reduce the frequency of the printed magazine to quarterly, four issues a year and introduce an additional four issues per year of an electronic magazine (eMag) • Partnership with ‘Cross Country’ magazine • Partnership with a publisher to achieve news stand distribution • Partnership with ASAC

Replace the printed magazine with an electronically available monthly eMagazine

Format Annually

Pages per issue Cost for HGFA analysis

HGFA only F3 $24 000 52 Table 1

line 7.1 Savings to the HGFA annually of $69 088 ($93 088 – $24 000)

Some advantages • E liminates printing and fulfillment costs, significantly reducing the cost of the magazine • Enables use of full colour at no extra cost • Environmentally friendly • Reduces the lead time to 2½ weeks

Some disadvantages • C urrently only approximately 80% of the membership have email addresses • This should improve when online memberships is introduced in March 2009 and members can update their own standing information • Some of the membership would prefer a printed publication • Some of the membership do not have a broadband internet connection • Magazine at 52 pages resolved to 72dpi is approximately 10mb to download • Constitutional requirements for printed advice of certain information such as AGM dates • Constitution can be changed for circa $3000 to $5000

June 2010

• C ASA requirement for the HGFA to be in a position to reliably distribute safety information to all members • An A4 newsletter style ‘on demand, emergency’ mailout to all members would cost circa $1600 per issue

Reduce the frequency of the printed magazine to bi-monthly, six issues a year

Format Annually

Pages per issue Cost for HGFA analysis

HGFA only F1 $61 641 52 Table 1

line 5.1 HGFA only F2 $61 641 52 Table 1

line 5.2 HGFA and F1 $46,544 26 Table 2 GFA line 5.1 HGFA and F2 $49,887 26 Table 2 GFA line 5.2 Savings to the HGFA annually of $25 447 ($93 088 – $67 641) HGFA only using F2 format Savings to the HGFA annually of $43 201 ($93 088 – $49 887) HGFA and GFA using F2 format

Some advantages • R educes the annual cost of the current magazine by approximately 50% predominantly because a significant expense is the fulfillment of the magazine, posting and packaging • We sometimes have problems sourcing 26 pages of content per month • Fewer issues suggests less problems sourcing sufficient content. Should we find we have more content than pages available then perhaps the quality of the content will improve as lower quality content is dropped.

This content could be set aside for populating additional editions of an eMag which would have zero fulfillment costs.

Some disadvantages • T wo months between each issue, reducing communication lead time to membership by content authors such as other members, advertisers, HGFA or CASA

Reduce the frequency of the printed magazine to quarterly, four issues a year, introduce an additional four issues per year of an electronic magazine (eMag)

Format Annually

Pages per issue Cost for HGFA analysis

HGFA only F1 $49 094 52 Table 1

line 3.1 HGFA only F2 $53 094 52 Table 1

line 3.2 Savings to the HGFA annually of $39 994 ($93088 – $53094) using F2 format

Comments A quarterly printed magazine partnered with GFA would only give us 26 pages of content, probably not enough. A quarterly printed magazine would be more suitable as an ‘HGFA only’ publication providing full access to the 52 pages.

Possible publication dates could be: Printed: December, March, June, September eMag: January, April, July, October.

[Ed note: Alternatively the page number of the magazine could be doubled to allow for enough split content and maintain the savings.]

Some advantages • F urther reduces the annual cost of the current magazine although we would probably lose the cost benefit of partnering with the GFA • A ‘HGFA only’ full colour quarterly publication is still annually saving more than 50% on the current monthly format • A magazine with HGFA only content • Allows us to trial and discover the issues with the membership using an eMag • Fewer issues suggests less problems sourcing sufficient content • Should we find we have more content than pages available then perhaps the quality of the content will improve as lower quality content is dropped or set aside for populating the four issues of the eMag

Some disadvantages • T hree months between each printed issue, reducing communication lead time to membership by content authors such as other members, advertisers, HGFA or CASA. • Mitigated by the addition of the eMag giving six weeks between each issue although the eMag would only be delivered to members with email valid addresses.

• Loss of partnership with the GFA

Partnership with Cross Country magazine

Format Annually

Pages per issue Cost for HGFA analysis

HGFA only F2 $180 000 84 Table 1

line 8.1 Cost to the HGFA annually of $86 912 ($180 000 – $93 088)

Comments Cross Country magazine (XC) is a high quality, full colour, 84 page, bi-monthly international publication that has been

Soaring Australia 33

H G FA

Table 1 – Soaring magazine cost review Estimated cost to HGFA based on 2400 issues per print run

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1 8.1

No of issues Printed eM ag

1 1 2 2 4 4 3 3 6 6 12 12 0

11 11 5 5 4 4 4 4 0 0 0 0 12

• D ependency on an external agency for our National publication

Printed e Mag

1 annual issue, B&W 1 annual issue, Colour 6 monthly issue, B&W 6 monthly issue, Colour 3 monthly issue, B&W 3 monthly issue, Colour 4 monthly issue, B&W 4 monthly issue, Colour 2 monthly issue, B&W 2 monthly issue, Colour 1 monthly issue, B&W 1 monthly issue, Colour 1 monthly issue, Colour XC Magazine partnership

$10273 $11273 $20547 $22547 $41094 $45094 $30820 $33820 $61641 $67641 $123282 $135282 $0 $180000

Total

$22000 $22000 $10000 $10000 $8000 $8000 $8000 $8000 $0 $0 $0 $0 $24000

$32273 $33273 $30547 $32547 $49094 $53094 $38820 $41820 $61641 $67641 $123282 $135282 $24000 $180000

Table 2 Estimated cost to HGFA partnering with GFA, based on 4800 issues per print run

No of issues

Saving to

HGFA by

Printed eMag Printed e Mag Total partnering

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 7.1

1 1 2 2 4 4 3 3 6 6 12 12 0

11 11 5 5 4 4 4 4 0 0 0 0 12

1 annual issue, B&W 1 annual issue, Colour 6 monthly issue, B&W 6 monthly issue, Colour 3 monthly issue, B&W 3 monthly issue, Colour 4 monthly issue, B&W 4 monthly issue, Colour 2 monthly issue, B&W 2 monthly issue, Colour 1 monthly issue, B&W 1 monthly issue, Colour 1 monthly issue, Colour

$7757 $8314 $15515 $16629 $31029 $33258 $23272 $24943 $46544 $49887 $93088 $99774 $0

$14850 $14850 $6750 $6750 $5400 $5400 $5400 $5400 $0 $0 $0 $0 $16200

$22607 $23164 $22265 $23379 $36429 $38658 $28672 $30343 $46544 $49887 $93088 $99774 $16200

$9666 $10109 $8282 $9168 $12665 $14436 $10148 $11477 $15097 $17754 $30194 $35508 $7800

The current format

circulating for over 20 years, 20% of the magazine is devoted to advertising.

XC have proposed selecting articles from their XC magazine and their Paramotor magazine and combining them with Australian specific content so they can offer a bi-monthly, full colour, 84 page magazine tailored for Australia.

A partnership with XC would feature international and Australian content for paragliding, paramotoring and hang gliding, but would not include international content for weighshift microlight.

XC have proposed a partnership where the annual subscription for each member would be $75, a cost of $12.50 per magazine, per member.

A partnership with XC would not include the GFA.

Some advantages • H igh quality magazine with a combination of international and Australian content

34 Soaring Australia

Some disadvantages • P ossible marginalisation of the WM community • More expensive solution than we have currently • Dependency on an external agency for our National publication • Loss of partnership with the GFA

Partnership with a publisher to achieve news stand distribution Comments There is some benefit in considering altering the standard of the magazine so that it is suitable for viewing by the general public then distributing at newsagents and magazine outlets. The aim here would be to improve the general public’s awareness of the sport and gain more participation and members. The additional cost of a news stand quality magazine might be offset by the additional memberships it might generate.

The Recreational Aircraft Association (RAA) have sought to achieve this via a partnership with publishing company,

Zebra Publishing. The RAA have approximately 10 000 members, many of which own three-axis airplanes. The general arrangement was that the magazine was passed over to Zebra who produced and distributed the magazine on their behalf.

Zebra sourced and sold advertising in the magazine which paid for a substantial part of the RAA costs for the magazine.

Zebra were approached and asked to tender for ‘Soaring’ magazine but they declined. If any members know of other companies offering a similar product then please let us know.

Some advantages • Outsourcing of the magazine • Professional advertising sales to offset the cost of the magazine • Distribution to news stands and consequent exposure to the general public

Some disadvantages • Loss of direct control of the magazine • Increased advertising at the expense of member content

Partnership with ASAC Comments The Australian Sport Aviation Confederation (ASAC) is group comprising of a number of sport aviation orgnisations including the Australian Aerobatic Club, Australian Ballooning Federation, Australian Parachute Federation, Gliding Federation of Australia, HGFA, Model Aeronautical Association of Australia.

See their website for more detail of their member organisations [www.asac. asn.au].

A long term option for ‘Soaring’ might be to have a magazine published by ASAC on behalf of all the member organisations.

The depth of overall membership of such a venture would be attractive to advertisers and could provide a publication suitable for the new stand.

Our ASAC representative will be raising this for discussion at forthcoming meetings with ASAC.

Some advantages • Outsourcing of the magazine • Professional advertising sales to offset the cost of the magazine • Distribution to news stands and consequent exposure to the general public

Some disadvantages • Loss of direct control of the magazine • Dependency on an external agency for our National publication • Dilution of our sport specific content

Summary Changes in printing costs have significantly reduced the cost difference between of four colour, full colour printing and our existing two colour format. Full colour printing is now marginally more expensive than two colour. Using full colour could help address some of the quality issues associated with the magazine and encourage content submission from members.

All costs were estimated based on actuals from the last two years and quotations from our current printer. They do not include GST. Historically we have been receiving approximately $15 000 to 20 000 per annum advertising income against HGFA content per issue. This income has not been included in the costs. If we move to a reduced frequency of magazine or an electronic format we should expect

a reduction in advertising income. If we improve the quality of the magazine we may recover that reduction by attracting more advertising.

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Personal Note This review had proven interesting for me.

By working it through I have learnt a lot about the background of the magazine and understand it better.

The magazine means many different things to many different people. For my own part when it arrives I rarely read it immediately, but put it aside and get to it a few days later. I often pick at it for a few days reading all cross-country articles, both HGFA and GFA, also the letters from the members. By the time I have finished it seems only a few days before another arrives.

My personal choice would be to improve the quality of the content so that I would feel inclined to read it immediately. I was tempted by the XC magazine solution but it is too focused on cross-country pilots, it is also much more expensive.

The solution I think would immediately better serve the whole membership would be a printed issue in full colour, marginally more expensive, to provide a more attractive magazine to read and to contribute to. We have problems finding enough content for the current monthly 26 pages so I would reduce the frequency to three-monthly. There would be less content available in a quarterly issue, 52 pages rather than 78 thus creating some competition for content. I would also like to see a quarterly eMagazine published to provide a communication bridge between the three month gap of the printed issues. This would also allow us to introduce the concept of an eMag and explore how well the membership would respond to it.

Moving to quarterly might not align with the aims of the GFA. Without their partnership a HGFA only magazine would cost circa $53 000 per annum and still realise a significant cost saving from the current format of some $40 000.

The partnership with ASAC requires more research, but is a logical, longer term alternative worthy of consideration.

Whichever format we adopt I would like to see the magazine reviewed again after 12 months.

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Soaring Australia 35

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Gliding in Australia – Quo Vadis Harry Medlicott

T

hat the gliding movement in Australia has a membership problem is surely beyond question. In the years I have been involved in the sport, membership, despite a substantial population increase, has halved to less than 2500. This decline brings with it problems such as maintaining the necessary infrastructure and extracting funds from a declining pool of members.

Please don’t say this decline is universal. During the same period recreational power flying utilising low cost aircraft, often home built but capable of impressive economical performance has grown from a few hundred to over 7000 members and continues to attract about 500 new members a year. Our record, despite having one of the most glider-friendly countries in the world and relatively unscathed by the global financial crisis, does not compare favourably with overseas gliding countries.

I guess everyone has a preconceived reason for this decline but most solutions would suffer from the Ben Casey syndrome – solving a problem based on your own skills, knowledge and interests. Any worthwhile action taken must be based on established facts. We know we have a high churn rate, in that people take up gliding and then leave after a relatively short time. If this rate of attrition could be modified, it would be a good first step in rehabilitating our fortunes.

What we don’t know and only guess at are the reasons behind this loss. A few casual questions will not elucidate the truth. When asked, people almost always will give other than the real reason behind a decision – either wishing to save face or not wishing to embarrass the questioner.

I suggested to the NSWGA that a proper survey may be useful but that idea got nowhere. Perhaps some other body may think differently.

The thought was that a well-prepared non-judgmental questionnaire be posted to recentlylapsed members. We have all the necessary information on GFA Wind, rain, and club databases. temperature, The information humidity, sought would be wide ranging and barometer, seek answers as to why plus more… they no longer flew.

Items could include Also available: time constraints, family commitments, Windsocks and frames, cost, distance from handheld weather meters. suitable facilities, lack of progress, lack of Australian Agent social contacts among for Davis Instruments. pilots, lack of professionalism, personal conflict with other club members, and Ask for your not feeling wanted.

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Weather Station

ECOWATCH

36 Soaring Australia

back to gliding.” That always gets a useful response. The package would include a reply paid envelope and hopefully an inducement, such as in a draw to win a prize, to reward the effort to reply. I am sure the gliding movement has people with the skills and enthusiasm to put together a suitable questionnaire on a voluntary basis and troll through the records to select suitable recipients. The total cost would be mostly postage and a $1000 budget; not unreasonable. The information gleaned, which as well as giving a general picture, could be club specific, and give us the real reasons for the churning of membership and where scarce resources could be best directed.

My own preconception is that aerotow launching costs are a strong impediment to most considering taking up gliding as a sport. A day’s training can cost not much less than $200 – unaffordable for many on a regular basis or judged to be an unreasonable discretionary expenditure. For juniors not in employment it is an impossible dream. In Europe, 80% of launching and most training is by winch. Aerotow is for the well off few.

Even the USA, with lower fuel costs, uses winch launching more than is realised. If not already in the position of unaffordable training for the majority of those interested in gliding, we are fast approaching it.

Lake Keepit Soaring Club has been hosting regular flights by air cadets, whose launching costs are met by and RAAF subsidy. There are about 90 of these young would-be pilots in the Armidale, Tamworth and Gunnedah regions. They are mostly high school students in their senior years. Speaking to them elucidated that they were enthusiastic to fly but cost beat them.

We have just concluded an arrangement to give introductory flights to groups of local high school students as part of their sporting activities. It would be great if we could offer a low cost package to them.

To provide low cost launching, and to act as an aerotow back up, I built a better-than-average winch based on a European design at no cost to my club.

It is powered by a 7.4 litre Chevy motor and equipped with Dyneema rope which June 2010

does away with many winch launching problems. It is giving heights of 1600 to 2000ft, plenty for training or to find a thermal. In Europe, efficient winches are used to launch moderately water ballasted single-seat gliders.

To further encourage these young would-be pilots to fly with us LKSC discounted our membership fees to $40 and only charged half rates on glider hire. In my innocence I approached the NSWGA and through them the GFA hoping they would match our membership rate. No way: I was told it was unaffordable for insurance reasons. Did they approach our insurers to see if an accommodation was possible? I thought the cost of junior GFA membership could be reduced by our members passing on their copies of Soaring Australia. The NSWGA, despite having cash reserves of over $100 000 and collecting $500 a year from LKSC members, wouldn’t assist. I wonder where the priorities of the powers-that-be lie? In the last 12 months GFA has spent or committed over $50 000 on overseas travel, mostly assisting pilots, some of whom are my friends, compete overseas. I have no problem with this and the principle can be justified even if only one percent of Australian pilots are interested in international championships and of those perhaps half would have the ability to finish prominently. What is a concern is that little or no funds seem to be available to assist grassroots development. If a club or individual receives little or no support from their governing body, then enthusiasm quickly evaporates. Why bother if others don’t seem to care?

Great Britain has a cadre of young enthusiastic pilots. Lasham, the largest club, has free membership, including BGA charges, for juniors. The Netherlands, a country smaller in size than Tasmania and with very limited gliding opportunities, has 3900 members, about the same as 10 years ago. I have been told that about one-third are under 30 years of age and of these, nearly half are young women.

It is pretty clear that for the future of gliding in Australia we need to rethink our priorities. The average age of our members is increasing. Initiatives such as LKSC suggests should be encouraged to the greatest extent possible. We all need to play our part.

June 2010

Happened recently on an Airfield Martin Feeg In summertime we have been out with the car exploring the countryside; which does mean we go bush and quite often the roads are at best unsealed. Usually we are prepared for such trips with extra food and water, UHF and tools such as a spade, saw etc as part of the equipment, but not so on this day since we just wanted to go and explore this little path for the lookout.

The road looked like it was a little boggy some time ago and so I explored on foot, testing the ground for strength and suitability for our non-4WD. All looked good and we went; 20m on we were stuck. Ah well, no worries dig the stuff behind the wheel away and reverse out. Done it before – do it again. So we hopped out and started digging by hand (usually we had gear not so today, but still plenty of water), while the engine was still running to have the aircon for little daughter going (fending off about 40°C outside). Half an hour later I called it off, since we had only managed 10cm back, but the wheels got even a little deeper. Plan B was put into action; mum and daughter take to the nearby shade with water, I tugged a bottle and hiked to the group of people we spotted earlier. Two hours later the car was clear again.

Close shave? Well, somewhat yes. Firstly very poor preparation, no emergency gear and a car not suited for the condition. But mostly I was astonished about my body’s performance.

Usually I am quite energetic and physical challenges see others buckle while I am still going.

Not so this time. The heat had me buckle much quicker than I ever would have imagined, I nearly got a sunstroke from initially not wearing a hat (thinking it wouldn’t be long before we were off again).

The moral for me is: if you get yourself in a tight corner don’t exhaust yourself thinking you will be through in no time. Set yourself up as if it will take forever.

And if you guys are in a paddock after an outlanding, be 100% – and I mean 100% – certain you can reach that farmhouse you have spotted. Otherwise stay with the aircraft, people will find you there, but looking for a body in the bush is tedious.

Lastly two pennies worth of thought: keep part of your ballast water, 10 or 20 litres while landing is not a heavy burden, but will, combined with a collapsible receptacle, increase your survival tremendously.

Safe soaring

Chairman of GFA Sports Committee to Retire Rob Moore OAM, the current chairman of this committee is to retire at the Annual Board Meeting in September 2010 and expressions of interest are sought to fill this role.

This is a volunteer role with involvement at both GFA Board and GFA Executive Level.

The chairman is responsible for: • Convening and chairing the Sports committee meetings • Overseeing the management of the Sports committee departments, its officers, representatives and sub committees • Setting active programs and budgets for each year • Maintaining and updating the MOSP – 4 Sporting • Contributing to the management of the GFA at an executive level includ-

ing attendance at all GFA Board/ Executive meetings • Financial accounts pertaining to the sports committee.

The committee comprises of those positions below: • NCC Committee • ITC Committee • Coaching convenor • FAI certificates officer • Trophies officer • IGC representative The GFA is currently developing a SMS and the Chairman will be responsible for overseeing the sporting aspects of this when introduced.

Please Contact Rob Moore OAM, phone 08 8258 8026 or email <robcoll@adam.com. au> who will discuss the job role and provide a job description.

Soaring Australia 37

G FA

G FA

A Dusty Day and a DG1000 Richard Frawley You wouldn’t know it now after the recent floods, but outback New South Wales was just a tad dry and more than a tad dusty back in November 2009. Even the east coast towns and cities got a good dose of free red topsoil dressing and some algae fertiliser, but the west of course took much worse and a whole lot more.

O

ne of those dusty days occurred during the 2009 NSW State Gliding championships held at Narromine NSW late last year. After the passing of a strong storm front on the preceding Thursday and strong windy conditions on the Friday, I woke to the Saturday practice day with a room noticeably infiltrated with red dust. It seems that the BLIP charts and met reports don’t have the dust effect much factored in and the days forecast appeared good enough for a formal task to be set by those in charge. The forecast was for clearing conditions, a 7000ft cloudbase, four to five knots lift, a wind shift predicted at about 3500 to 4000ft along with some generous stipple.

It looked good enough for a reasonable day’s flying.

Not wanting to waste any day’s training opportunity, Derek Ruddock and I loaded up the Southern Cross DG1000 and planned for the day ahead. By midmorning the dust haze was still fairly thick and in addition, some unforecasted high cloud was dampening the surface temperatures. By 12:30 a half dozen adventurous souls had headed off into

Derek Ruddock and Southern Cross Gliding Club’s DG1000

the murk, but by the radio chatter most it seemed had stayed local. Visibility was only five kilometres at very best.

After launch, we spent the first 30 minutes or so testing out the local conditions and seeing if the lift would improve. We were seeing two-anda-half to three knots average at best, pretty broken and narrow and topping out at about 3700ft agl, awe inspiring stuff: not! As I had entered the event primarily as a training exercise under Derek’s experienced and watchful eye, we decided after some discussion that we might as well strike out and have a run at the set task; if nothing else take a shot at the first leg and if it didn’t improved we would just shoot back to Narromine.

There is nothing like character-building weather conditions to improve one’s confidence and flying skills.

Our earlier expectations that conditions might improve turned out to be overly optimistic. Only in the latter part of first leg at a point about 12km west of Gilgandra, did we see any climb that would take us above 3800ft agl. About one hour 35 minutes into the flight we started to see break in the higher level clouds. This provided enough additional heating to allow a few thermals to start breaking through the solid inversion layer and strike up to the predicted 7000ft. Although the thermals were broken and only showing three-anda-half knots average, we did catch a few up to 6700ft giving us encouragement to press on. These conditions certainly provided an interesting opportunity to develop my circling skills, especially as the thermals were choppy with at least four major wind shift points and the wind doubling in strength from 1000ft AGL to 5000ft agl. That, with a very dusty and

marginal horizontal reference it was, as I said, good character-building conditions.

Our optimism with those few good climbs was short-lived as the wind was building and the upper cloud and haze was again gaining the upper hand.

Sometimes in conditions where the base is low, thermal density is reasonably good, however on this day the spread behaved like the base was around 6000ft and quite widely spaced. This was quite different to that expected with a 3800ft inversion. In addition the working band was only about 1800ft, not that much to work with. The wind was registering upwards of 40km/h at times, coming pretty much out of the WNW and was increasing rather than decreasing as the forecast has predicted. As such, we had to press on fairly cautiously as it would have been very easy to go too hard and find ourselves in an early outlanding situation.

The slight amount of high cloud seemed to make a critical difference on the day, combined with the haze and inversion it was a touch and go affair for any thermal trigger point.

By this time we had gotten about half way along to the second turnpoint and things had turned rather difficult. I remember clearly as we trundled along parallel to the main road from Gilgandra to Warren that we must have picked at least six paddocks to outland in. But each time, with guidance from Derek, we were able to find lift to take us back up to the inversion layer and allow us to move on, pretty much straight in wind. I think I will remember this section for the rest of my life. On several occasions we had to stay with a bubble for what seemed liked hours though in review it was rarely more than five minutes. Sometimes we were just maintaining height, waiting for it to lift off and sometimes it would

break away nicely only to die out a few hundred feet later. We just had to find enough to keep us moving forward and searching for the next and, hopefully, better one. As Derek kept saying to me, many a competition has been won or lost on days like these.

Although this was quite gruelling, it was also highly satisfying. At this stage there was no way we were giving up with so much of the day still left to run. Accurate thermalling speed and constant angle was critical in all this.

Being in the low part of the band a lot of the time combined with the effect of the gusty wind, the thermals were far from organized. By using careful lighthanded flying and remaining sensitive and alert to lift cues and by allowing the aircraft to ‘talk to me’, I did manage to work the available lift and keep us heading towards the next turn point.

There was still time in the day and damned if I wanted to pack the DG1000 up and reassemble before day one of the competition. I am happy to say that all my practice around Camden in light, scrappy lift was indeed paying off!

We managed to get to the second turnpoint in three hours 40 minutes, covering a task distance of 120km. Woohoo!

We had cracked an all time record of 32km/h average (push bike speed)!

Looking at the trace on SeeYou, with the strength of the wind and the number of thermals we needed to take and search for, it looks like we actually flew at least one-third that distance again, as every time we took a climb on the upwind leg we were going backwards by at least three kilometres. It felt like I was in a K13 rather than a DG1000. Still we were slowly getting there, and from what we heard on the radio it sounded like we were the only ones out there. We were probably the only ones silly enough to have a go at the task.

Passing turn point two about 10km east of Warren with the wind swinging even more to the north during the afternoon, we now had a good cross-on tailwind for the run home. The first 20km into that leg felt very promising and we found a good line of energy giving us a nice extended glide. Coming off that line and entering in what we later came to realize was lower lying and cooler damp country next to the river (from the storm on Thursday), the lift really took a turn for the worse. It was getting late in the afternoon and although the haze

had in fact thinned significantly, it was probably too late and the energy damage was done. That, combined with the close proximity of the river to which we had assigned a parallel track home (bad planning boys!), the time soon arrived when an outlanding was inevitable. We were over quite reasonable country to land out and I did find a thermal that was keeping us climbing, albeit slowly, gaining only 400ft in 10 minutes of circling. The immediate challenge was to try and find a house that was not deserted. Most places looked like they had been owned by some fanatical keeper of wrecked cars and old derelict farm machinery. As we were in slight lift and being blown pretty down track at a good clip and neither of us fond of a long walk, we decided to stick with the weak lift and press on. It was a bit frustrating, because if we had found even half decent lift to 3500ft we could have made it back to Narromine quite easily. We were now both certain that was not going happen. The day was dying and the country down track looked rather uninviting. We needed to find a place to land.

By gaining a bit more height for another five minutes or so, Derek was able to select a suitable paddock not far from a house with a nice blue swimming pool, a reasonable indicator of current habitation we thought. In clarifying which spot Derek had in mind, I asked if he meant the airstrip ahead, and he replied, “Yep, that dirt-looking strip to our left will do,” to which I then responded, “Oh, what’s wrong with that big runway with the dog bone turnaround things just to the right of nose?” “Err right, yeah I suppose that one will do.” No point in landing in the dirt when you have a one and a half kilometre long, one and a half glider wide hard-packed runway as an option is there! Well if you have to land out, why not do so in style and safety. It does pay to keep your eyes and options open.

No sooner had we touched down when the station manager arrived with a friendly smile and his attendant kelpie dogs. Offering us hospitality and the usual questions, he also offered up his mobile phone so we could call base and call for the tug. When we called the tuggie, he was surprised to hear we were still out on course, as according to him the organisers had thought that everyone was safe at home some time ago. This little issue did cause the event management to reconsider their process

The dusty outlanding paddock

of checking that everyone had arrived home safely and not to close shop too early on.

Soon after this, the manager’s wife and young family arrived and lots of photos were taken. We were given a two minute ride back to the farmhouse in a ute for a very pleasant afternoon tea. Not long after, the tug arrived with the usual recovery formalities. Half an hour later we were back at Narromine tying the DG1000 down for a good night of rest.

Certainly it was one of those flights that will stick with me for a long time to come. And yes, we were the only ones to have a go at the task!

F A I N ews FAI Gliding Badge Report 30 April 2010 A Badge

Eccleston, Callan S S 11604 NSW Air TC Atkinson, Scott James 11608 NSW Air TC McGrath, David John 11609 WA Air TC B Badge

Papps, Reginald G

11264 RAAF Richmond GC

C Badge

Lewis, Ashley

11583 Byron Gliding

A & B Badge

Sara, Richard Paul

11603 Narrogin GC

A, B & C Badge

Luland, Andrew Ernest 11600 Grafton GC Mull, Heather J 11601 Mt Beauty GC Maierhofer, Konrad 11602 Adelaide SC Vigo, Kitty Grazyna M 11605 Mt Beauty GC Arthurs, Raymond J 11606 Narrogin GC Gralton, James 11607 Beverley SC Silver C Badge

Rowe, Mark Tasman 4742 Hunter Valley GC Diamond Goal

Binks, Stephen Wesley

Beverley SC

Photos: Richard Frawley

38 Soaring Australia

June 2010

June 2010

Soaring Australia 39

HGFA General Manager’s Report

• • •

Letters to the Editors Sea Breeze at Morawa – Mark 11

W

ell, here I am, still in the GM seat.

I have accepted an offer from the board to stay on until the end of June, by which time they will either find a replacement GM or invite me to remain in the job.

Board Report I assume that the majority of you will have received my report to the board which was printed in a recent Newsletter.

The report was not written for member distribution. I trust my comments regarding my predecessor did not offend anyone. My comments were honest and without prejudice.

In the accident review of 2009 accidents contained in the board report, I failed to include a microlighting fatality which occurred at Rutherford in June ’09.

I apologise for this omission. I was not able to find any record of this accident on the GM computer.

Speed Wings These aircraft are becoming popular in Europe and recently also in Australia. ‘Speed wings’ are small paragliders (around half the size of a conventional paraglider); and can

HGFA Board handover meeting, 24 April 2010, Gold Coast. Left to right: Benn Kovco (via laptop, he attended fulltime electronically from the USA), Chris Drake, Craig Worth, Alex Jones, Brian Webb, Raef Mackay, Martin Halford, Donna Steele-Smith (CASA), Heather Fitzpatrick (Aerosafe), Rodger Smith (our delegate for CASA work), Rob Woodward. Absent with apologies were: Lee Patterson (work commitments), John Twomey (illness)

be flown in stronger wings due their size/ wing loading. As these are paragliders, to operate these wings legally the pilot must hold an HGFA paragliding pilot certificate. I am hearing that a growing number of parachutists are flying these gliders at HGFA sites around the country.

Having non-HGFA members using our sites is a major problem, not just because they are illegal due to them not holding a paragliding certificate, but also because they are uninsured. I have been in contact with the Australian Parachute Federation; they will be advising their members of the legalities of flying these wings. Meanwhile where possible we will have to coerce these pilots into joining the HGFA and gaining a paragliding certificate.

CASA Audit The recent CASA audit of systems found a number of deficiencies. Of major concern was our Operations Manual which is greatly in need of updating. We are currently carrying out a complete rewrite of the manual. The Sixth edition will be issued in July.

Accident Reports I have only received one accident report in the past month. Perhaps this is due to you all flying more safely; if this is the case, well done to you all. Or maybe this lack of reports could be as a result of non-lodgement. I remind members that accident reporting is encouraged to enable training and operational requirements to be improved, thus increasing safety. No reports are published without the consent of the member involved.

The one report I received relates to a very experienced microlight pilot landing without the front wheel being straight, causing the trike to roll over onto its side. The pilot suffered very minor injury, though the wing and propeller were totally damaged. Given that the need to have the wheel straight on landing is basic practise, perhaps a lack of focus led to this one.

Fly safely, Craig Worth

Bruce Atkinson landing at Porepunkah airfield after epic flying off Buffalo

40 Soaring Australia

June 2010

In the April edition of Soaring Australia the GFA sub-editor published an article I had written; I thank her sincerely for that, and also the postscript she wrote expounding on its author, me.

While her gracious remarks were essentially correct, there was one inconsistency which I though I should rectify. I did indeed, during my RAAF days, fly the aircraft P40 (Kitty Hawk) A29-448 the subject of the book ‘The Whole Nine Yards’.

However, it was not as a member of the 75 Squadron. I was trained as a bomber pilot, and the greater part of my wartime flying was on multi-engine aircraft including my last posting: to 25 Squadron flying B24s (Liberators) at Cunderdin at the end of hostilities.

My association was at 2 aircraft depot, Richmond, where I was posted as a resident test pilot, and I had the opportunity to fly the high performance singles, including A29-448 in mid-1943.

Dick Sasse

Help Them Getting Started The below was posted on our forum addressed to a potential new pilot in Tasmania. The author, Pete Steane, has given verbal permission for wider publication in ‘Soaring Australia’.

“Hi Carlos There are no paragliding or hang gliding instructors or schools in Tasmania. You will have to do a course on the mainland with one of the paragliding schools. If you are lucky with the weather it will take about a week to 10 days.

Some people have to return at a later date to finish off. Once you are licensed, you will be able to fly with other people here in Tassie. In reality most Tasmanians who stick at it find that they have to go on interstate or overseas trips every year or two to keep the hours and motivation up. Or do what Mick does with his hang gliding and live two minutes from your own personal site.

Here are some things to consider: It is a major investment of time and money, especially at the start when you are paying thousands of dollars for licence courses, equipment, HGFA fees and follow-up courses, not to mention all those interstate and overseas flying holidays, and the 4WD that you just have to have to get you to your favourite launch, as well as a broadband connection and a new computer powerful enough to drive your latest GPS software.

June 2010

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

It’s a slow learning curve here in Tassie because we don’t get out as often as we would like due in part to the unreliable flying weather.

It’s a pain because once you are hooked you never stop looking at the sky and find it hard to do normal things.

The road to being a safe, confident and competent pilot is long and slow.

Don’t count on being able to come back from your course and do all the acro and wild XCs that you might have seen on Youtube.

And don’t count on being able to fly wherever you want, whenever you want. The weather, terrain, land managers/ owners, legal situation and time restraints simply don’t allow it. In short it can be a very frustrating sport.

If I have not yet put you off, I suggest you check out the Hang Gliding Federation of Australia. They have a list of training providers [www.hgfa.asn.au]. Check out the various schools’ websites and suss out which best suits your needs. Some (eg: Manilla) are ‘live in’ courses while with others you have to provide your own accommodation.

People here in Tassie have learnt from schools in Bright (Victoria), Laurieton (NSW), Manilla (NSW), Canungra (Queensland) and in WA as well as overseas. It may also be advisable to do a weekend taster course to see if it really is something you want to do. You will after all be investing a lot of time and money in it if you decide to take the plunge.

Let us know how you go.

Pete”

Geoff Wong working a weak thermal near Conargo Photo: William Oates

As an addendum to this I would like the HGFA to consider halving the membership fees for the second year of membership, or making the first annual membership fee cover two years. For us this is critical. So many new pilots fall away at the end of the first year from school when they get to paying the bill and reviewing their logbooks. An incentive to continue at this point would allow these pilots to make it past this low point in their hours/funds invested to flying hours returned curve.

Simon Allen, Tasmanian SSO (PG), Treasurer and Secretary

Soaring Australia 41

Contact Addresses Southern Cross Gliding Club PO Box 132, Camden NSW 2570, 02 46558882, 0417 705997 (emergency).

Southern Tablelands Gliding Club 57 Munro Rd, Queanbeyan NSW 2620, 02 62973504.

South West Slope Soaring P/L 181 Fishers La, Bendick Murrell NSW 2803, 0488 531216.

Sydney Gliding Incorporated PO Box 633, Camden NSW 2570, 0412 145144.

Temora Gliding Club PO Box 206, Temora NSW 2666, 02 69772733.

G FA

Australian Gliding Museum 2 Bicton St, Mt Waverley VIC 3149, 03 98021098.

Gliding Queensland C/- Treasurer, 67 Glenora St, Wynnum QLD 4178, 07 38348311, 0417 762621.

NSW Gliding Association The Secretary, 44 Yanko Ave, Wentworth Falls NSW 2782, 02 68892733, 02 68891250, Trs: 0407 459581.

South Australian Gliding Association PO Box 65, Millicent SA 5280, 08 8733421, 0427 977218.

Victorian Soaring Association 4/139 Roberts St, Essendon VIC 3040, 03 83835340, 03 93355364.

Vintage Gliders Australia 22 Eyre St, Balwyn VIC 3103, 03 98175362.

WA Gliding Association Inc. 59 Wellington Pde, Yokine WA 6060, 08 93282511, 08 94449505.

NSW Gliding Association (NSWGA) 327 (Gliding) Flight, Australia C/- R Sheehan, 176 Macquarie Grove Rd, Camden NSW 2570, 0427 977127, 02 46553171.

Bathurst Soaring Club PO Box 1682, Bathurst NSW 2795, 02 63371180 (weekend), 0427 470001.

Byron Gliding Club Incorporated PO Box 815, Byron Bay NSW 2481, 02 66847627.

Canberra Gliding Club GPO Box 1130, Canberra ACT 2601, 02 64523994, 0428 523994.

Central Coast Soaring Club PO Box 1323, Gosford South NSW 2250, 02 43639111, 02 43844074, 0412 844074.

Cudgegong Soaring Pty Ltd C/- Matthews Folbigg, Level 7, 10-4 Smith St, Parramatta NSW 2150, 02 96357966, 02 96357966.

Grafton Gliding Club 16 Fuller St, Mullaway NSW 2456, 02 66541638, 0403 088551.

Hunter Valley Gliding Club Co-op Ltd PO Box 794, Singleton NSW 2330.

Lake Keepit Soaring Club 234 Keepit Dam Rd, Lake Keepit NSW 2340, 02 67697514.

Leeton Gliding Club PO Box 607, Leeton NSW 2705, 02 69533825.

Narromine Gliding Club Inc. PO Box 240, Narromine NSW 2821, 02 68892733, 0418 270182.

Orana Soaring Club Inc. PO Box 240, Narromine NSW 2821, 02 68897373, 0418 270182.

RAAF Richmond Gliding Club RAAF Base, Richmond NSW 2755, 02 45873214.

RAAF Williamtown Gliding Club C/O Mr G R Lee, 10 Federation Dr, Medowie NSW 2318, 02 49829334.

Scout Association NSW Gliding C/- Bob G Balfour, 80 Malvern St, Panania NSW 2213, 02 96951100.

Soar Narromine Pty Ltd PO Box 56, Narromine NSW 2821, 02 68891856, 0419 992396.

Gliding Queensland 2 Wing AAFC School of Aviation Inc. 201 Squadron Air Force Cadets, PO Box 647 Archerfield QLD 4108, 07 38791980, 0415 150965.

Barambah District Gliding Club 2 Yellow Gully Rd, Wolvi QLD 4570, 07 54867247, 0412 719797.

Boonah Gliding Club Incorporated 164 Depot Rd, Boonah QLD 4310, 07 54632630, 0408 016164.

Bundaberg Gliding Incorporated PO Box 211, Bundaberg QLD 4670, 07 41579558, 0417 071157.

Caboolture Gliding Club PO Box 920, Caboolture QLD 4510, 0418 713903.

Central Queensland Gliding Club PO Box 953, Rockhampton QLD 4700, 07 49331178.

Darling Downs Soaring Club Level 1, 1 Swann Rd, Taringa QLD 4068, 07 46637140, 0409 507847.

Gympie Gliding Club PO Box 722, Cooroy QLD 4563, 07 54835380.

Kingaroy Soaring Club PO Box 91, Kingaroy QLD 4610, 07 41622191, 0438 179163.

Moura Gliding Club PO Box 92, Moura QLD 4718, 07 49973265, 0428 360144.

North Queensland Soaring Centre PO Box 3835, Hermit Park QLD 4812.

Pacific Soaring PO Box 259, Caboolture QLD 4510, 07 54994997, 07 54994805.

Southern Downs Aero & Soaring PO Box 144, Warwick QLD 4370, 07 38348311.

SA Gliding Association (SAGA) Adelaide Soaring Club Inc. PO Box 94, Gawler SA 5118, 08 85221877.

Adelaide Uni Gliding Club Incorporated Adelaide Uni Sports Assoc, The University of Adelaide SA 5005, 08 88262203, 0412 870963.

Air Cadet Gliding Club PO Box 2000, Salisbury SA 5108, 08 83805137, 0429 805137.

Alice Springs Gliding Club PO Box 356, Alice Springs NT 0871, 08 89526384, 0417 530345.

Australian Junior Gliding Club 67A Balfour St, Nailsworth SA 5083, 0417 421650.

Balaklava Gliding Club PO Box 257, Balaklava SA 5461, 08 88645062.

G F A M ember­ship F ees 2 0 1 0 - 2 0 1 1 Membership: NSW Victoria South Australia Queensland Western Australia

Normal $225 $230 $232 $230 $230

Student membership: Full NSW $136 Victoria $141 South Australia $143 Queensland $141 Western Australia $141

42 Soaring Australia

Family $183 $188 $190 $188 $188 Family $94 $99 $101 $99 $99

Short-term membership: 1 Month* 3 Month* Queensland/Victoria $62 $79 New South Wales $67 $84 South Australia $74 $91 Western Australia $72 $89 *Note: Once only purchase to Australian residents, thereafter 12 months membership to be purchased.

International postage for Soaring Australia to be added to membership fees: Zone Country 1 New Zealand 2 Singapore 3 Japan, Hong Kong, India 4 USA, Canada, Middle East 5 UK, Europe, South

America, South Africa

Price $51 $51 $51 $74 $74

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Barossa Valley Gliding Club PO Box 123, Stonefield via Truro SA 5356, 08 85640240, 0488 841373.

Bordertown Keith Gliding Club PO Box 377, Bordertown SA 5268, 08 87521321, 0409 693027.

Millicent Gliding Club PO Box 194, Millicent SA 5280, 08 87333421, 0427 977218.

Murray Bridge Gliding Club PO Box 1509, Victor Harbor SA 5211, 08 85543543, 0409 677677.

Northern Australian Gliding Club PO Box 38889, Winnellie NT 0821, 08 89412512.

Renmark Gliding Club PO Box 450, Renmark SA 5341, 08 85951422, 0417 890215.

Scout Gliding Club 22 Burford Crescent, Redwood Park SA 5097, 08 82895085, 0418 815618.

Waikerie Gliding Club PO Box 320, Waikerie SA 5330, 08 85412644.

Whyalla Gliding Club PO Box 556, Whyalla SA 5600, 08 86452619, 0413 127825.

VMFG GPO Box 1096, Melbourne VIC 3001, 0402 281928 or 03 98486473 (h).

Wagga Wagga Soaring Club Inc. PO Box 613, Wagga Marketplace, Wagga Wagga NSW 2650, 0427 205624.

Victorian Soaring Association (VSA) Albury Corowa Gliding Club PO Box 620, Wodonga VIC 3689.

Beaufort Gliding Club 41 Ruby St, Essendon VIC 3040, 0431 702175.

Bendigo Gliding Club PO Box 846, Bendigo VIC 3550, 03 54423459.

Bothwell Gliding Club PO Box 288, Sandy Bay TAS 7005, 03 62267615.

Cloud Riders Pty Ltd C/- 18 Wyndham St, Werribee VIC 3030, 03 97413142, 0429 351234.

Corangamite Soaring Club Kurweeton, Kurweeton Rd, Derrinallum VIC 3325, 03 55939277.

Geelong Gliding Club PO Box 197, Bacchus Marsh VIC 3340, 03 93385925, 0409 212527.

Gliding Club Of Victoria PO Box 46, Benalla VIC 3671, 03 57621058, 0429 950580.

Grampians Soaring Club PO Box 468, Ararat VIC 3377, 03 53525710, 0417 514438.

Horsham Flying Club PO Box 158, Horsham VIC 3402, 03 53823491, 0427 315845.

Latrobe Valley Gliding Club PO Box 625, Morwell VIC 3840, 03 51221081, 0407 839238.

Mangalore Gliding Club PO Box 208 Nagambie VIC 3608, 03 57985512, 0428 635717.

Melbourne Motor Gliding Club PO Box 278, Dingley Village VIC 3172, 0418 511557.

Mount Beauty Gliding Club Box 486, Mt Beauty VIC 3699, 02 60591417, 0402 075131.

Murray Valley Soaring Club Ltd PO Box 403, Corowa NSW 2646, 02 60335036, 0400 244578.

Soaring Club Of Tasmania 34 Clinton Rd, Geilston Bay TAS 7015, 03 62437508.

South Gippsland Gliding Club PO Box 475, Leongatha VIC 3953, 0437 454986.

Southern Riverina Gliding Club PO Box 32, Tocumwal, NSW 2714, 03 58743052, 03 58742914.

SportAviation Pty Ltd Gate 10, Babingtons Rd, Tocumwal Airport, Tocumwal NSW 2714, 03 58742734, 0427 534122.

Sunraysia Gliding Club PO Box 647, Mildura VIC 3500, 03 50257335, 0448 293927.

Swan Hill Gliding Club PO Box 160, Nyah VIC 3594, 03 50376688.

Tumbarumba Gliding Club C/- Judds Engineering P/L, PO Box 5283, Wagga NSW 2650, 02 69251642, 0428 251642.

H G FA

WA Gliding Association (WAGA) 716 Flight Australia Air Force Cadets 7 Wing HQ, RAAF Base Pearce Bullsbrook WA 6084, 08 95717800.

Beverley Soaring Society PO Box 136, Beverley WA 6304, 08 94595719, 0437 377744.

Gliding Club of Western Australia PO Box 6231, East Perth WA 6892, 08 92212164, 0417 992806 (weekends).

Morawa Gliding Club PO Box 276, Morawa WA 6623, 08 99723022.

Narrogin Gliding Club PO Box 232, Narrogin WA 6312, 08 98811795 (weekends), 0407 088314.

Stirlings Gliding Club C/- Peter Hardy-Atkins, 8 Parker St, Lockyer, Albany WA 6330, 08 98428816, 0408 842616.

All correspondence, including changes of address, mem­bership renewals, short term memberships, rating forms and other administrative matters should be sent to: HGFA National Office 4a-60 Keilor Park Drive, Keilor Park VIC 3042, ph: 03 93367155, fax: 03 93367177, <office@hgfa.asn.au>, [www.hgfa.asn.au].

HGFA Operations/General Manager Craig Worth 02 65592236, 0417 766356 <general.manager@hgfa.asn.au>, PO Box 5071, Hallidays Point NSW 2430.

Information about site ratings, sites and other local matters, contact the appro­pri­ate State asso­ciations, region or club.

Board Members 2008 to 2010 Pres: Rob Woodward 0408 808436 <Presi dent@hgfa.asn.au>, 38 Addison Rd, Black Forest SA 5035.

V-Pres: Alex Jones 08 97344531 <Vice.

President@hgfa.asn.au>, 1 McAvoy Rd, Allanson WA 6225.

Sec: John Twomey <Secretary@hgfa.asn. au>, 108 Osborne St, Williamtown VIC 3016.

Trs: Raef Mackay 0408 894104 <Treasurer@hgfa.asn.au>, 1/20 Junction Rd, West Burleigh QLD 4219.

Board Members: Ray Firth 02 99854600 <ray.firth@hgfa. asn.au>, 17 Noonbinna Cres, Northbridge NSW 2036.

Chris Drake 0466 005967 <chris.drake@ hgfa.asn.au>, PO Box 988, Noosa QLD 4567.

States, Regions & Special Interest Groups ACTHPA LPO Box 8339, ANU, Acton ACT 0200; [www.acthpa.org]. Pres: Matthew Smith <matt.taet@gmail.com> 0402 905554; V-Pres: Nic Welbourn <nic@corinbank. com> 0422 783763; Trs: Kristina Smith <kdsmith71@gmail.com> 0407 905554; Sec: Nic Siefken <Nicolas.Siefken@ausport. gov.au> 0418 421683; Committee: Miguel Cruz <pyro_gest@hotmail.com> 0432 987819, Andrew Luton <andrewluton@ hotmail.com> 0404 254922; Public Officer: Barry Oliver <Barry.Oliver@anu.edu.au> 0407 825819; Meetings: 1st Thu/month 7.30pm Yamba Sports Club.

Hang Gliding Association of WA Inc. PO Box 146, Midland, WA 6936 <hgawa@hgfa.asn.au>. Pres: Peter South <ronwaysouth@yahoo.com.au>; V-Pres: Alex Jones <aa.jones@bigpond.net.au>; Trs: Greg Lowry <g.lowry@iinet.net.au>; Sec: Mirek Generowicz <mgenerow@ optusnet.com.au>; Trs: Colin Brown 0407 700378, <cobrown@bigpond.com>.

NSW HG and PG Association PO Box 3106, Bateau Bay NSW 2261, [www.nswhpa.org]. Pres: Bruce Wynne 0417 467695, <bwynne@bigpond.net.au>;

June 2010

V-Pres: Nir Eshed 0423 422494, <vice-president @nswhpa.org>; Sec: Paul Cox 0421 072897, <coxy@ccparagliding.com.au>; Trs: Graeme Cran 0414 668424, <gicran@gmail.com>.

North Queensland HG Association PO Box 608, Kuranda QLD 4881. Pres: Bob Hayes 0438 710882 <rohayes@optusnet.com.au>; V-Pres: John Creswell 0400 122261; Sec/Trs: Tracey Hayes, PO Box 608, Kuranda QLD 4881, 0418 963796 <info@azurephotography.com.au>.

Queensland HG Association Pres: Greg Hollands <greg.s.hollands@ transport.qld.gov.au>, PO Box 61, Canungra QLD 4275 07 38448566.

South Australian HG/PG/ML Association SAHGA Inc, c/O PO Box 6260, Hallifax St, Adelaide SA. All email: <sahga.exec@gmail. com>. Pres: Stuart McClure 0428 100796; Sec/Trs: Rob Woodward 0408 808436.

Tasmanian HG & PG Association [www.thpa.net]. Pres: Stephen Clark 0419 997550, <stephenmclark@iprimus.com.au>; V-Pres: Pete Steane 0407 887310 <psteane@ vtown.com.au>; Sec/Trs: Simon Allen 0438 086322, <simon.allen@csiro.au>. Northern TAS info: Richard Long (Burnie PG pilot), 0438 593998, <northern@thpa.net>.

Victorian HG and PG Association PO Box 157, Northcote VIC 3070, [www.vhpa. org.au]. Pres: Martin Halford <president@ vhpa.org.au> 0434 427500; Trs: Rob Parker <treasurer@vhpa.org.au> 0415 316861; Sec: Steve Poole <secretary@vhpa.org.au> 0419 573321; SO: Hamish Barker <hamish.barker@ gmail.com> 0437 137893; Site Dev: Mark Pike <mark.pike@baesystems.com>; Committee: Glenn Bachelor <hangliding@netspace.net. au>, Stephen Leak <sleak75@gmail.com>, Julie Sheard <jsheard@ihug.com.au>, Jan Bennewitz <jan.bennewitz@gmail.com>.

The Pico Club (National Paramotor Club) 62 Anderson Street, East Geelong VIC 3219 Pres: Andrew Shipley <andrewshipley@net space.net.au>; V-Pres: Grant Cassar <grant_ cassar@yahoo.com; Tres: Chris Drake <hgfa@ chrisdrake.com>; Sec: Jos Weemaes 02 6026 5658 <jweemaes@bordernet.com.au>.

NEW SOUTH WALES Blue Mountains HG Club Inc. [www.bmhgc.org.au]. Pres: Andy McMurray (PG SO) <andyonalaya@yahoo.com. au>, 0428 866737; V-Pres: Gregor Forbes (HG SO) <forbesy@virginbroadband.com. au>, 0421 376680; Sec/Ed: Alex Drew (PG SO) <dalexander@med.usyd.edu. au>, 0423 696677; Trs: Allan Bush (HG SSO) <bethandallan@bigpond.com>, 0407 814524; Comp Dir: Mark Stewart (PG SO) <artik_mark@yahoo.com.au>, 0421 596345, Comp: 2nd and last Sunday of each month.

Meetings: Contact committee.

Central Coast Sky Surfers PO Box 3106, Bateau Bay NSW 2261, [www. centralcoastskysurfers.com]. Pres: Glen McFarlane 0414 451050 <glenbuilt@bigpond.com>; V-Pres: Jeff Terry 0416 291545 <jeff@survival solutions.com.au>; Sec: Julie Terry 0411 567825, <julie@survivalsolutions.com.au>; Trs: Paul Cox 0417 355897, <coxy@ccparagliding.com.au>, SSOs: Paul Cox 0417 355897, Javier Alvarez 0418 116681. Meetings: 1st Thu/month, 7:30pm, Erina Leagues Club, Ilya Ave, Erina.

Dusty Demons Hang Gliding Club 6 Miago Court, Ngunnawal, ACT 2913. Pres: Trent Brown 0427 557486, <Trent.Brown@ anu.edu.au>; Sec: Peter Dall 0428 813746, <peter.dall@casa.com.au>; Trs: Michael Porter 0415 920444; SSO: Peter Dall 0428 813746.

Hunter Skysailors Paragliding Club Pres/SSO: James Thompson 0418 686199, <jamesflys@gmail.com>; V-Pres: Brent Leggett 0408 826455, <brent@flashme. co.au>; Sec: Albert Hart 0421 647013, <albert.hart@bigpond.com>; Meetings: Last Tue/month, 7pm, Hexham Bowling Club.

Illawarra Hang Gliding Club Inc. 27a Paterson Rd, Coalcliff NSW 2508. Pres: Frank Chetcuti 0418 252221 <chetcuti1@ bigpond.com>; Sec: John Parsons; SSO: Tim Causer 0418 433665 <timcau@ozemail.com.au>.

Kosciusko Alpine Paragliding Club [www.homestead.com/kapc]; Pres: Michael Porter 0415 920444 <Michael.Porter@jllrld. com.au>; V-Pres: James Ryrie 02 61610225 <James@Micalago.com>; Sec: Mark Mourant 02 48464144 <tully@ispdr.net.au>.

June 2010

ALL CLUBS PLEASE CHECK DETAILS IN THIS SECTION CAREFULLY Could all Clubs please ensure they maintain the correct and current details of their Executive Committees and contacts here in the magazine. Specific attention is directed to the listing of SSOs and SOs for the Clubs. Please ALL CLUBS and nominated Senior SOs and SOs confirm ALL SSO and SO appointments with the HGFA Office <office@hgfa.asn.au> to ensure that those holding these appointments have it listed on the Membership Database and can receive notices and correspondence as required. Appointment of these officers is required to be endorsed by Clubs in writing on the appropriate forms. Sometime in the future if confirmation is not received, those listed in the Database where no current forms or confirmation is held, the appointment will be taken as having expired.

General Manager, HGFA

Manilla SkySailors Club Inc. PO Box 1, Manilla NSW 2346, [www.mss. org.au]. Pres/SSO (PG): Godfrey Wenness 02 67856545, <skygodfrey@aol.com>, V-Pres: Matt Morton <Matt.Morton@defence.gov. au>, Sec: Suzi Smith <suzismith@hotmail.com>, Trs: Bob Smith <bobskisan@hotmail.com>, SSO (HG) Patrick Lenders 02 67783484 <patrick. lenders@gmail.com>, SSO (WM): Willi Ewig 02 67697771 <skyranch@gmx.net>.

Mid North Coast HG and PG Club Pres: Nigel Lelean 0419 442597; SSO: Lee Scott 0429 844961.

Newcastle Hang Gliding Club PO Box 64 Broadmeadow NSW 2292; [www. nhgc.asn.au]. Pres: Stuart Coad <president@ nhgc.asn.au> 0408 524862; V-Pres: Dawson Brown 0429 675475; Sec: Simon Plint 0407 613701, <SimonPlint@newcastle.edu.au>; Trs: Allan McMillan 0400 637070; SOs: Coastal – Tony Barton 0412 607815, Inland – Scott Barrett 0425 847208, John O’Donohue 02 49549084, PG – James Thompson 02 49468680; News­letter: David Stafford 02 49215832 <editor@nhgc.asn.au>. Meetings: Last Wed/month 7:30pm South Newcastle RLC, Llewellyn St, Merewether.

Northern Beaches HG Club PO Box 840, Mona Vale NSW 2103. Pres: Peter Rundle <sf27mz@gmail.com>; V-Pres: Brett Coupland 0409 162616, <nbf@whirlwind.com.au>; Sec: Alexander Drew 0423 696677, <dalexander@med. usyd.edu.au>; CEO: Jude Ho <heyjudeho@ bigpond.com>; Trs: Steve Nagle <steve. nagle@gmail.com>; Committee: Rohan Taylor <rohantaylor@yahoo.com>, Graeme Cran <crannie@ccparagliding.com.au>.

Northern Rivers HG and PG Club PO Box 126, Byron Bay NSW 2481; [www. nrghpgc.net]. Pres: Jan Smith 0438 876926 <jansmith.cloudnine@gmail.com>; V-Pres: Brian Rushton 0427 615950 <byronair@ optusnet.com.au>; Sec: Marco Veronesi 0405 151515 <lucky_mpv@yahoo.com.au>; Trs: Paul Gray 0407 738658 <mystralmagic@ gmail.com.au>; PR: Cedar Anderson 0429 070380 <cedaranderson@gmail.com>; Sites: Peter Wagner 0431 120942, Col Rushton 0428 751379 <colin.rushton@bigpond. com>; SSO (PG): Lindsay Wooten 0427 210993 <lindsaywootten@bigpond.com>; SSO (HG): Andrew Polidano 0428 666843 <andrew@ poliglide.com>. Meetings: 2nd Wed/month, 7pm, Byron Services Club.

Stanwell Park HG and PG Club PO Box 258 Helensburgh NSW 2508; Pres: Chris Clements 0414 777853 <president@fly stanwell.com>; V-Pres: Tony Sandeberg 0413 593054 <vice-president@flystanwell.com>; Sec: Jorj Lowrey 0400 937234 <secretary@fly stanwell.com>; Trs: Peter Ffrench 0403 076149 <treasurer@flystanwell.com>; M/ship: Nir Eshed 0423 422494 <nir@flystanwell.com>; SSO: Mark Mitsos 0408 864083, <SSO@flystanwell.com>.

Sydney Hang Gliding Club Pres: Dean Tooker <capebanks@unwired.com. au>; V-Pres: Brett O’Neil <bo307@westnet. com.au>; Trs: John Selby 02 93447932 <john selby@idx.com.au>; Sec: Bruce Wynne 0417 467695 <bwynne@bigpond.net.au> or <sydney hangglidingclub@y7mail.com>; Dev/Train: Owen Wormald 02 94667963 <owen_ wormald@nab.com.au>; SO: Bruce Wynne, Doug Sole; SSO: Ken Stothard. Meetings: 3rd Wed/month, 7:30pm Botany RSL, Botany.

asn.au>; V-Pres: Lee Patterson <vicepresident @chgc.asn.au>; Sec: Mark Kropp <secretary@ chgc.asn.au>; Trs: Brandon O’Donnell <treasurer@chgc.asn.au>; Ed: Cameron McNeill 0419 706326; Gen-Exec: Greg Hollands <gem@chgc.asn.au>; SSO PG:Phil Hystek 07 55434000 (h), 0418 155317 <sso @chgc.asn.au>; SSO HG: Lee Patterson 0417 025732 <sso@chgc.asn.au>.

Central Queensland Skyriders Club Inc. ‘The Lagoons’ Comet River Rd, Comet QLD 4702. Pres: Alister Dixon (instructor) 0438 845119, <apdixon@bigpond.com>; Sec: James Lowe 0418 963315, <j.lowe@cqu. edu.au>; Trs: Adrienne Wall 07 49362699, <jaw12@bigpond.com>; Events: Jon Wall 0427 177237, <jonathon.a.wall@team. telstra.com>; SSO: Bob Pizzey 0439 740187, 07 49387607. Towing Biloela: Paul Barry 07 49922865, <prbarry@tpg.com.au>.

Conondale Cross-Country Club [www.conondaleflyers.asn.au/] Pres: Lewis Nott 0488 082937 <president@conondale xcflyers.asn.au>; Sec: Michael Strong 0414 845785 <secretary@conondalexcflyers.asn. au>; Trs: Steve Stocker 0411 226733 <steve_ stocker@optusnet.com.au>.

Dalby Hang Gliding Club 17 Mizzen St, Manly West QLD 4179. Pres: Daron ‘Boof’ Hodder 0431 240610, <daron@ aclad.com.au>; Sec/Trs: Annie Crerar 0418 711821, <annie.bruce@bigpond.com>; SSO: Jason ‘Yoda’ Reid 0424 293922, <jasonr@ gleda.com.au>.

Fly Killarney Inc. Pres/SSO: Lindsay Wootten 0427 210993, <lindsaywootten@bigpond.com>; V-Pres: Alistair Gibb 0414 577232, <11thhour@iinet. net.au>; Sec/Trs: Sonya Fardell 0415 156256, <s.fardell@uq.edu.au>.

Sunshine Coast Hang Gliding Club PO Box 227, Rainbow Beach QLD 4581; <intheair@ozemail.com.au>. Pres: Geoffrey Cole 0408 420808, 07 5455 4661; V-Pres & SSO (HG): David Cookman 0427 498753; V-Pres (PG): Tex Beck 0407 238017; Trs: Gary Allen 0417 756878; Sec: Janine Krauchi 0438 701220; (HG): David Cookman 0427 498573, 07 54498573; SSO (PG): Jean-Luc Lejaille 0418 754157, 07 54863048.

Wicked Wings Club Toowoomba & District PG/HG Club Inc, 190 Drayton St, Laidley QLD 4341. Pres: Peter Schwenderling 0427 461347 <swendo1@big pond.net.au>; Trs: Richard Cook 0427 805960 <richardtc@aapt.net.au>; Sec: Troy Litzow 0448 456607 <troylitzow@optusnet.com.au>.

Whitsundays HG Club Sec/Trs: Ron Huxhagen 07 49552913, fax: 07 49555122, <sitework@bigpond.net.au>.

Tasmania Tasmanian HG&PG Ass. (see States & Regions)

NORTHERN TERRITORY Alice Springs HG and PG Club Pres: Ricky Jones 0406 098354, <redcentre paragliding@yahoo.com>, contact for paramotoring, PG ridge soaring and thermal flying.

QUEENSLAND Caboolture Microlight Club 50 Oak Place, Mackenzie QLD 4156. Pres: Derek Tremain 07 33957563, <derekjo@gil. com.au>; Sec: John Cresswell 07 34203254, <crezzi@lineone.net>; SO: Graham Roberts 07 32676662, <trike@tpg.com.au> Cairns Hang Gliding Club PO Box 6468, Cairns QLD 4870. Pres: Bob Hayes 0438 710882 <rohayes@optusnet.com. au>; V-Pres/SO: Brett Collier 0431 151150 <brettcollier@bigpond.com>; Sec: Lance Keough, 31 Holm St, Atherton QLD 4883, 07 40912117; Trs: Nev Akers 07 40532586.

Canungra Hang Gliding Club Inc. PO Box 41, Canungra QLD 4275; [www.chgc. asn.au]. Pres: Phil McIntyre <president@chgc.

VICTORIA Dynasoarers Hang Gliding Club <dynasoarers@gmail.com>; Pres: Dale Appleton 0408 382635; SSO: Rob van der Klooster 0408 335559. Meetings: 1st Fri/ month, venue see [www.dynasoarers.vhpa. org.au].

Melbourne Hang Gliding Club Inc. PO Box 5278, South Melbourne VIC 3205 [www.melbourne.vhpa.org.au]. Pres: Gabriel Toniolo 0407 544511, <gabriel.toniolo@ hotmail.com>; Sec: Peter Davies 0400 883155, <pd33725@hotmail.com>; Trs: Greg Stroot 0402 473113, <greg.stroot@ozonline.com.au>; SSO: Peter Holloway 0408 526805, <info@ freedomairsports.com.au>. Meetings: 3rd Wed/month, Tower Hotel, 686 Burwood Road, Hawthorn East VIC 3123.

North East Victorian Hang Gliding Club Pres: John Chapman 0412 159472 <chappo 252@hotmail.com>; Sec: Bill Oates 0466 440 049 <secretary@nevhgc.net>; Trs/M/ship: Greg Jarvisy 0407 047797; SSO/VHPA Rep: Joe Rainczuk 0419 875367; Committee: Barb Scott 0408 844224, Bill Brooks 0409 411791; SSO: Karl Texler 0428 385144; Meetings: [www. hgfa.asn.au/~nevhgc/].

Sky High Paragliding Club [www.skyhighparagliding.org]; Pres: Steve Leak <pres@skyhighparagliding.org.au>, 0409 553401; V-Pres: Martin Halford <vp@ skyhighparagliding.org.au>, 0434 427500; Trs: Julie Sheard <tres@skyhighparagliding. org.au>, 0425 717944; Sec: Phil Lyng <sec@skyhighparagliding.org.au>, 0421 135894; M’ship: Loz Pozzani <mem@ skyhighparagliding.org.au>, 0421 389839; Nov Rep: Mike Armstrong 0412 329442 <nov@skyhighparagliding.org.au>; Web: Pete Condick <wm@skyhighparagliding.org. au>, 0400 560653; Safety: Carolyn Dennis <safety@skyhighparagliding.org.au>, 0427 555063; Committee: Steve Poole 0419 573 321.

Meetings: 1st Wed/month 8pm Retreat Hotel, 226 Nicholson St, Abbotsford.

Southern Microlight Club [http://home.vicnet.net.au/~stclub/]. Pres: Mark Howard 0419 855850 <mark.howard@ auspost.com.au>; V-Pres: Ken Jelleff <kenj@ jelfor.com.au>; Sec/Ed: Kelvin Glare 0421 060706 <kalkat@optusnet.com.au>; Trs: Dean Marriott <dean@ultimate.net.au>. Meet­ings: 2nd Tue/month 8pm Manning­-ham Club, 1 Thompsons Rd, Bulleen.

Western Victorian Hang GIiding Club PO Box 92, Beaufort VIC 3373, [www.wvhgc. org]. Pres: Phillip Campbell 0419 302850, <campbell.p@giant.net.au>; V-Pres: Anthony Meechan 0407 163796, <meeks65@yahoo. com.au>; Sec: Rachelle Guy 0438 368528, <rachelle.guy@cgu.com.au>; Trs: Richard Carstairs 0409 066860, <rcarstairs@ optushome.com.au>; SSO: Rohan Holtkamp 0408 678734 <Rohan@dynamicflight.com. au>. Meet­ings: Last Sat/month, The Golden Age Hotel, Beaufort, 7pm.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA Albany HG & PG Club SSO: Simon Shuttleworth 0427 950556; Sec: John Middleweek 08 98412096, fax: 08 98412096.

Cloudbase Paragliding Club Inc. Secretary, 12 Hillside Crs, Maylands WA 6051.

Pres: Mike Annear 0400 775173 <mike@ mikeannear.com>; V-Pres: Eric Metrot 0407 003059<tromes@bigpond.com>; Trs: Colin Brown 0407 700378 <cobrown@bigpond. com>; Committee: Shelly Heinrich 0428 935462 <shellheinrich@hotmail.com>, Rod Merigan 0439 967971 <rmerigan@q-net.net. au>, Clive Salvidge 0402 240038 <clive@iinet. net.au>, Julien Menager 0423 829346 <Julien. me@gmail.com>; SOs: John Carman, Nigel Sparg, Colin Brown, Mark Wild. Meetings: Last Tues/month, 7:30pm, Osborne Park Bowling Club, Park St, Tuart Hill.

Goldfields Dust Devils Inc. [www.dustdevils.itaustralia.org]. Kalgoorlie: Pres: Toby Houldsworth <drogue@bigpond. com>, 0428 739956; Trs/SSO: Murray Wood <muzel71@bigpond.net.au>, 08 90215771; Sec/SO: Richard Breyley <richard.breyley@ matsa.com.au>, 0417 986896. Perth: SSO: Mark Stokoe <Mark.Stokoe@health.wa.gov. au>, 0414 932461.

Hill Flyers Club Inc. <hillflyers@tpg.com.au>. Pres/SSO: Rick Williams 0427 057961; Sec/SSO: Gary Bennet 0412 611680; SSO: Gavin Nicholls 0417 690386, Mike Ipkendanz 08 92551397, Dave Longman 08 93859469. Meetings held on site during club fly-ins at York, Toodyay.

Western Microlight Club Inc. Pres: Brian Watts 0407 552362; V-Pres: Keith Mell 08 97971269; Sec: Paul Coffey 0428 504285; CFI: Brendan Watts: 0408 949004.

Western Soarers <wshgc@hgfa.asn.au>, PO Box 483, Mt Hawthorn WA 6915. Pres: Michael Duffy <lehanggliding@gmail.com>; V-Pres: Jason Kath <jason.kath@yahoo.com.au>; Sec/Trs: Mirek Generowicz 0427 778280, <mgenerow@ optusnet.com.au>; SSOs: Shaun Wallace, Gavin Nicholls, Matty Coull, Rick Williams, Michael Duffy. Meetings: See [http://au.groups.yahoo. com/group/western_soarers/].

Soaring Australia 43

GFA Business Manager’s Report CASA As a result of the Government’s ‘Aviation’ White Paper, a quest to keep pace with the frenetic activity generated by its content is taking place. This is true for commercial enterprises as well as sporting organisations. GFA, a member of the notfor-profit aviation sector (which when combined represents half of Australia’s aviation), is currently operating under exemptions from which general aviation in Australia must comply. The White Paper requires CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority) to implement a framework of regulations that is designed to ensure that the ‘Sport and Recreation’ organisations do not expose the community to ‘unacceptable risks’. With this shift in direction comes change and this change generates discussion, activity and regulation modification. Much time and effort over the past six months has gone into maintaining the currency of GFA Operational Regulations and MoSPs. An initiative by the Executive is to combine the MoSP2 and the Operations Regulations into one comprehensive document and continue the re-write of the BKG and MoSP3.

It is also the intention of GFA to participate in the many forums generated by this change which involve all aviation sporting SAOs (Self Administrating Organisations), organised through and on behalf of industry participants and CASA. This will ensure the intent of GFA members is fairly represented. These activities will continue and adherence to CASA’s ‘Deed of Agreement’ schedule will take place as expected.

Changes to CAAP 166-1 & CAAP 166-2 Civil Aviation Regulations 1988 (CAR) 166 and 166A. CAR 166A designates certain non-towered aerodromes (currently known as Common Traffic Advisory Frequency (Radio) CTAF(R)) in the vicinity of which the carriage and monitoring of radio and the making of specified positional broadcasts by pilots is manda-

tory. Currently, radio carriage and use in the vicinity of other non-towered aerodromes (known as CTAFs) is recommended rather than mandated. You must carry and use VHF radio at all nontowered certified, registered and military aerodromes. Effective 3 June 2010.

NB: Non-towered aerodromes include those aerodromes with Class C or D ATC services during the times when such services are unavailable. Pilots should always consult the ERSA and latest NOTAMs for operating times of ATC services at those aerodromes.

Airmanship Item 3.9 is important to note: ‘So as not to impede commercial aviation, pilots flying recreational or sport aircraft for their own enjoyment, or pilots flying general aviation (GA) aircraft for their own leisure, should consider giving way to aircraft being used for ‘commerce’ provided that the inconvenience to their own operation is not great and it can be done safely. Operators of commercial aircraft should never expect a give way offer to be assumed or automatic. Any offer to give way must be explicit and its acceptance acknowledged.’ Fortyseven workshops have been organised for around the country, venues and times can be found on [www.casa,gov.au] for registration or call 131 757.

For further information on changes please refer to [www.casa.gov.au/scripts/ nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD::pc=PC_100081].

Below is a club advisory extract that outlines situational awareness and is most timely: “Radio is the most common tool for alerted ‘see-and-avoid’. Another situational awareness tool is FLARM but a lookout remains of primary importance,

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

in implementing ‘see-and-avoid’. Vision and lookout can be impaired by ambient light, window posts, canopy cleanliness and crazing, physiological and psychological concerns. Workload mismanagement can lead to excessive ‘head in the cockpit’ so pilots must move their head and use good scanning techniques. Two aircraft converging on a point can remain fixed in one or both pilots’ point of view and relative positions may not change until moments before impact.

When using radio, pilots can achieve separation by several methods: clock code “I am at your eight o’clock, low” or “You are at my two o’clock, high”; ground reference, relative to ground features or to line features; by altitude reference, altitude and climbing/descending; or navigational or avionic reference, radio navaids. FLARM and ACAS/TCAS are also useful for alerted search. Situational awareness is knowing what is going on around you, and being able to predict what could happen. Poor radio calls can confuse and cause accidents. Radio use must be to the point, clear, accurate and necessary; so think about transmissions before using the airwaves. Concise transmissions are important, clogged airwaves can be hazardous. Pilots are expected to operate in a professional and courteous manner at all times; aviation safety requires a cooperative approach by all.”

GFA Executive Meeting The Executive has just completed the April scheduled meeting and although long hours were spent on the complex issues that GFA business entails, time was at a premium and was soon spent.

Minutes will be posted on the website as soon as approval has been granted.

GFA Board Strategy Meeting The Board was to convene in May 2010 to conduct a strategy meeting to discuss soaring’s future in sport aviation. Due to the inability of some members to attend, a re-scheduling of the event will take place, prior to the ABM.

Your business manager and Canberra Soaring Club CFI, Drew McKinnie, attended a CASA-sponsored course held at the ANU, ACT, 14 to 16 April; the course subject being ‘Venture Risk Management Planning’. Other SAOs (Self Administering Organisations) participating were RAAus (Recreational Aviation Australia), The Ballooning Federation and SAAA (Sport Aviation Association of Australia). Each SAO pre-selected a topic for the threeday event in which a practical VRMP was constructed. GFA’s pre-determined topic presented was ‘Planning for governancerelated enhancements to improve effectiveness of assurance or compliance management’. It was most fortunate that Mr McKinnie is embarking on a career in the field and had all the necessary tools available to plan and construct a detailed VRM plan, incorporating elements such as risk management, integrated risk, safety management systems, risk management process, communication and consultation.

We have produced a comprehensive VRMP that will be the basis of a living document for the GFA to refer to and modify as required. The next step is to complete a SWOT (Strength/Weakness/ Opportunity & Threat) analysis that involves input from all GFA stakeholders.

Once this is completed and complied the results will be incorporated into this plan and hopefully enacted. My thanks to Drew and the president for the opportunity to create an ongoing tool for the GFA to utilise in all manner of disciplines, creating, planning measuring and predicting outcomes of benefit to the organisation.

Insurance Issues GFA’s Public Liability Policies (‘Broad Based Limited Liability’, the ‘Contingent Liability Policy’) have been assessed and an increase of 30% has been scheduled by primary Insurer QBE. This increase will affect membership costs and will be negotiated vigorously for a decrease.

There has been a large increase in BBL reserved claims impacting on policy dues.

GFA Housekeeping

Cartoons by Codez

44 Soaring Australia

Professional Development

The membership secretary (Tanya Loriot) has been diligently going through her membership lists and informing all those delinquents of missing membership details and medical certificate declarations that they are potentially flying illegally and most importantly will not insured by club, personal hull insurance or GFA policies.

As CASA is expecting the GFA to show June 2010

June 2010

due diligence in executing its delegation, it is still the responsibility of members to adhere to agreed Operational Regulations and MoSP requirements. Any questions that members may have regarding the supply of details are most welcome to contact the secretariat for assistance.

With the advent of the PUI (Public User Interface) within the GFA computer systems, (which is in test at the moment within the secretariat) it will not be long when your details can be completed by yourself in the comfort of your own home, office or internet hot spot.

GFA Volunteer Vacancies As a way of alerting members to (ongoing) roles that need to be filled from the volunteer pool, this section of the business manager’s report will list current vacancies.

This is not only to fill these important roles within the organisation but to also hopefully secure succession-planning for those members who wish to become more involved.

These positions are for volunteers.

Interest in these vacancies can be made to state officers or through the secretariat.

NSW Gliding ‘still’ has a vacancy for a GFA Regional Development Officer to assist with sport and club development.

There is a program of materials and guidelines with an interstate team of other support. This is very much a handson member retention and recruitment role with club and sport development.

Additionally in NSW there is a requirement for a Member Protection Information Officer. In the MPIO role, you will be trained to be the first point of contact for a person reporting a complaint under the GFA’s Member Protection Policy. The MPIO provides confidential information and moral support to the person with the concern.

For further information please contact Dave Boulter <daveboulter@informgroup. com.au> or mobile 0417 705 997.

A vacancy exists for an RTO/A in Queensland. Please contact Ian Perkins <adslllej@tpg.com.au>.

Vacancies exist for RDOs – Regional Development Officers. Contact should be made with Maurice Little at <maurice@ internode.on.net>.

GFA Business Manager

Peter Hopkins Mobile: 0451 055 316 Email <BM@sec.gfa.org.au>

Classifieds

• • •

G FA NOTICE TO ALL GFA ADVERTISERS All advertisements and payment can be sent to: The Gliding Federation of Australia Inc/Advertising Level 1/34 Somerton Road, Somerton VIC 3062.

Ph: 03 9303 7805, Fax: 03 9303 7960 Email: <Advertising@sec.gfa.org.au> Advertisements may be emailed in high resolution (300dpi at 100% size) using TIF or EPS formats.

Photo­graphs may be pro­vided in either photo print or slides. Low resolution digitals are not suitable.

Photo­graphs, slides or disks may be returned. Please include a self-addressed and stamped envelope for the return of any promotional material.

All GFA advertisements must be paid for prior to publication. (Payment by cheque, money order or credit card). Don’t forget Classifieds deadline is the 25th of the month, for publication five weeks hence.

For current advertising fees, go to [www.gfa.org.au].

Single-seater Sailplanes ASW 17 VH-YKL. Complete enclosed trailer & instruments now in Australia, $35000. Ph: Brad Edwards 0427 202535 or 02 67711733.

ASW20BL VH-HDY, 15m & 16.6m configurations.

2650 hrs, 860 landings. Comp ready. Excellent trailer.

Full tow-out gear. Many extras. $62500 ono. Ph: Gary 03 53524938 or <gstevo@dodo.com.au>.

Cirrus Std good condition, good trailer, covers, walk out gear, first reg Aust. 1974, $12000.

Cirrus Open very nice aircraft, VG trailer, GPS, parachute, etc. $15000. Ph: 07 54486808.

Jantar Std 2 VH-IZT, 1850 hrs, 1100 landings. Good clean condition. Microair radio, Borgelt instrumentation, canopy hinge. Well thought out trailer & all towout gear. Competitive Std Class performance at $28000 neg. Ph: Paul 0404 851876.

Junior 51-1 VH-XOJ, 2688 hrs. Cambridge electric & PZL mechanical vario. Geneva 100ch radio 2688 hrs, 2284 launches inspection. Very good condition $18500. Ph: 03 95214942.

Libelle 201B Sn 344 VH-GBA, 2752 hrs, Form 2 to 12/10. B50 plus standard instruments & Icom A200 radio. Tow-out gear, wing & canopy covers. Enclosed tandem axle trailer registered to 8/10, $11500. Ph: 0427 015051.

LS6 VH-XJS, built 1985, incl. trailer, towing gear & basic instruments. 3500 hrs, 1000 launches, $65000.

Parachute, Flarm, logger, Ilec vario, negotiable extras.

Fresh annual 3/10. View/test fly at Temora. Ph: Mike Cleaver 0412 980886 or <wombat@netspeed.com. au>, or Andrew Ward 02 62622426 (h), <ward-ly@ actewagl.net.au>.

LS8-18 + Hangar/Land package. Rare opportunity, best LS8 with everything & hangar spot at Kingaroy &/or block of land at Narromine Skypark. Contact: Miles Gore-Brown <mgbsia@pacific.net.sg>.

Mini Nimbus B Excellent condition, always hangared, refinished in PU, 2150 hrs, Becker radio, parachute, winglets, Winter vario, Blumenauer vario/ speed to fly, oxygen, turn & bank, aluminium trailer for one-man rig/derig, $35000. Ph: 03 98466525 or <gillmanm@bigpond.com>.

Pik 20B VH-GTV. Half share based at BSC as Don Gray is retiring after 28 wonderful years of the sport & comradeship, $12500, T-hangar extra. Ph: 02 63624430.

Std Cirrus VH-GJR, Borgelt vario with averager & speed command, Cambridge electric vario, Microair radio, dual battery installation, Swiss cylindrical aluminium trailer & tow out gear. Same owner since purchase at World comps Waikerie 1974, TT 1800 hrs, $16000 ono. Ph: Marc 0408 819998 or <michellm@bigpond.com>.

Std Cirrus VH-GYZ with blended winglets, wellequipped, blue tint canopy, two-pack paint, wing covers, nose & belly hooks parachute, tandem trailer.

Soaring Australia 45

Classifieds

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

$24000 ono. Email for photos <dougcoac@bigpond. net.au>. Ph: 0418 777480.

Ventus 2cx VH-ZKT, built 2005, approx. 600 hrs TTAF. Current 18m National champion.

Beautifully maintained, wings recently reprofiled & finished in polyurethane. Fresh seals. New panel with Cambridge 302/303 & HX4700 PDA plus Winter basics. Fuselage plumbed & wired for jet installation. Avionic trailer with all ballasting & towing gear. Great value at $150000. Ph: Bruce 02 67787345 or <brucetaylor10@bigpond.com.au>.

Two-seater Sailplanes Twin Astir VH-KYM, Mfg 1978, 3474 hrs. Microair radio, basic instruments. No accident damage, not flown for three years. Enclosed tandem axle trailer is serviceable but needs some work, $40000. Winch – 313 cub inch Chrysler, new rings & bearings, valve grind & running. New winch brakes, new cable drums. Work still to be done on winch & prime mover. Dodge truck (1959) is a good restoration project in its own right. Best offer (as is where is) Ph: Dave AREA CODE? 86411525.

Self Launching/Motor Gliders

season of fun. For another $1.2mil you can own a 300 acre property, two hangars, 700m strip, cattle, olives & holiday resort pictures & details, only three & a bit hrs from Sydney. Ph: John 0413 963438 or <adshedsyd@hotmail.com>.

Super Ximango Plus. A true touring motor glider.

Excellent condition. Just completed 600 hrly & Form 2, $165000. Fully equipped & tooled. Details & photos: Paul <energy@whitsunday.net.au>.

Wanted Discus A or B. No preferences regards instruments, oxygen, chute or trailer. Ph: Paul Rose 08 94674241 or <paulrose_frankfurt@hotmail.com>.

Instructors wanted. Sydney Gliding Club is seeking instructors for our weekend ops. We are self launching club with Super Dimona & soon ASK21 Mi in our fleet. Self launching experience will be an advantage, however, we will offer conversions to suitable candidates. Ph: Bill Wotten 0412 23 897.

Instruments & Equipment Wing Rigger™

Dimona H36 Motor Glider 2000 Limbach. 2500 hrs TT, Form 2 in 12/09, 238 hrs on factory new L2000 motor, 30 hrs since prop & magneto o/hauls. Recent new battery. At Bordertown, SA $75000. Ph: Peter 0409 693027, 08 87565019 (h) or <brookman@ activ8.net.au>.

Discus-2cT

18m Mfg 2007, approx. 290 hrs TT, 7 hrs on turbo.

NDH. PU paint, tinted canopy, disk brake & all other usual options. Avionics included (but optional): LX8000 computer with remote stick & integrated Flarm, Becker radio & transponder, Tru-Trak T&S. Cobra trailer with SL package. Always hangared with Jaxida hangar covers. Brand new condition.

Located NZ. Will assist with shipping. NZD$195000 (approx. A$149000 + GST at current exchange rate).

Contact: <hunter.b@ihug.co.nz>.

Duo Discus T VH-JSR best Duo in Australia, like new, beautifully finished, meticulously maintained, winglets, handles like a Duo X, low engine hrs, complete package with parachutes, instruments, oxygen, trailer. Ph: Shane 0418 759310 or <mac53@ecn.net.au>, or Ralph 07 38436178 (h), <rhenderson@iinet.net.au>.

Grob Twin III 103 Self-launcher. Very low hrs, refinished; delight to fly. $125000 fly away. $135000 with trailer tow away. Ph: Mark Rowe 0403 307363 or <justsoaring@gmail.com>.

Silent Wings Aviation

Silent Targa Fuel Inject (www.alisport.com).

Highly optioned new demo unit, <6 launches & test hrs for CofA only. One-man self-rig package (20 min), steerable tail wheel, super Cobra trailer. Pure fun & independence. Price neg. Ph: Greg 0400 114747 or <gregdoyle1@me.com>.

How Many More Summers Have You? Sinus motor glider, 700 hrs, 912, just the perfect MG for Australia. This is my third & by far the very best.

Carries more, travels further & very cheap to maintain. $120000 gives you ownership & a guaranteed 46 Soaring Australia

With sliding axle for lateral adjustment. Gas spring lifting assist. All Terrain three-wheel stability. Quick breakdown. Versions for all gliders, even two-place. Sturdy, TIG welds, Powder coat. [www.wingrigger.com].

Winter, Cambridge & NK Soaring instruments, boom microphones (>2300 made), Xcom transceivers (>100 sold) & gliding tyres. [www.mrsoaring.com] <mrsoaring@gmail.com> Ian McPhee 0428 847642.

Gliding Publications

Airborne Magazine: Covering all facets of Australian & New Zealand modelling. The best value modelling magazine. Now $60pa for six issues.

Plans & other special books available. PO Box 30, Tullamarine, VIC 3043.

Free Flight: Quarterly journal of the Soaring Asso­ ciation of Canada. A lively record of the Canadian soaring scene & relevant international news & articles. $US26 for one year, $47 for two years, $65 for three years. 107-1025 Richmond Rd Ottawa, Ontario K2B 8G8 Canada, email: <sac@sac.ca>.

Gliding International: The new international gliding magazine edited by John Roake. Specialising in being first with news from every corner of the soaring globe. A$60 p.a. Personal cheques or credit cards accepted. Contact: Gliding International, 79 Fifth Avenue, Tauranga, New Zealand. Email: <office@glidinginternational.com>.

Sailplane & Gliding: The only authoritative British magazine devoted entirely to gliding. 52 A4 pages of fascinating material & pictures with colour.

Available from the British Gliding Asso­ci­ation, Kimberley House, Vaughan Way, Leicester, England.

Annual subscription for six copies £17.50.

Sailplane Builder: Monthly magazine of the Sail­ plane Homebuilders Association. $US29 (airmail $US46) to SHA, c/o Murry Rozansky, 23165 Smith Road, Chatsworth, CA 91311 USA. Soaring: Official monthly journal of the Soaring Society of America Inc. PO Box 2100, Hobbs,nm 88241 USA. Foreign subscription rates (annu­ally): $US43 surface delivery; $US68 premium delivery.

Technical Soaring/OSTIV: Quarterly publi­ca­tionof SSA containing OSTIV & other technical papers. c/o T U Delft, Fac Aerospace engineering, Kluyerweg 1, NL-2629 HS DELFT, The Netherlands.

Vintage Times: Official newsletter of Vintage Gliders Australia, edited by David & Jenne Goldsmith, PO Box 577, Gisborne VIC 3437, Mem­ber­ship $20 pa.

H G FA Classifieds are free of charge to HGFA members up to a maximum of 40 words. One classified per person per issue will be accepted.

Classifieds are to be delivered to the HGFA office for membership verification/payment by email <office@hgfa.asn.au>, fax: 03 93362177 or post: 4a/60 Keilor Park Drive, Keilor Park VIC 3042.

The deadline is 25th of the month, for pub­li­cation five weeks hence. Submitted classifieds will run for one issue. For con­secutive publication, re-sub­mission of the classified must be made, no advance bookings.

When submitting a classified remember to include your contact details (for prospective buyers), your HGFA membership number (for verifi­ca­tion) and the State under which you would like the classified placed. (Note that the above does not apply to com­mer­cial operators. Instructors may place multiple classified entries, but will be charged at usual advertising rates.)

All aircraft should be suitable for the intend­ ed use; this includes the skill level required for the specific aircraft being reflective of the pilot’s actual rating & experience. All members must adhere to the mainte­nance requirements as contained in Section 9 of the Operations Manual & as provided by manufacturers. Secondhand equipment should always be inspected by an indepen­ dent person, an Instructor wherever possi­ble.

Advice should be sought as to the con­di­tion, airworthiness & suitability of the aircraft.

It should include examination of mainte­ nance logs for the aircraft. It is unethical & a legally volatile situation for individuals to provide aircraft which are unsuitable for the skill level of the pilot, or aircraft that are unairworthy in any way.

Hang Gliders & Equipment New South Wales

IGC Datalogger Volkslogger, excellent condition with SW, manual and cables. $900. Ph: Grant Heaney 0419 485681.

Litespeed S5, carbon LEs, inners & outers, carbon sprogs, carbon battens. Zoom frame, Zoom basebar (aerofoil aluminium). Carbon basebar optional for extra $400. Smoke inlaid sail. Current design, manuf.

1/07, 130 hrs. Beautiful glider to fly. White/red stripe/ grey. $7000. Ph: Bruce 0417 467695, 02 93654635 (Bondi) or <bwynne@bigpond.net.au>.

Moyes Matrix harness, suit person around 178cm tall, of regular build. Blue, $1300 ono. Ph: Peter 0417 751099 (Sydney) or <mpsmart@live.com.au>.

Sonic 165 good cond, 70 hrs flying almost all inland flying, two spare DTs, $1500 ono. Ph: 0418 437365.

HGFA Schools VICTORIA

Queensland

VICTORIA

Airborne Edge Executive T2-2423, Streak wing, 582 engine, 510 hrs, lcom radio, Raptor headset & helmets, customised trailer, $10000 ono. Ph: 0429 653391.

Victoria

Airborne XT 582, Cruze wing, 110 hrs, new trailer, new full cover, training bars, bar mitts & more. Ph: Ron 0433 551103.

Paragliders & Equipment New South Wales

Flyke as new, 5 hrs used, $4300, costs new $5500.

PG APCO Thrust, large, 2009 model, zero porosity, free-flying, 95 to 120kg, motoring 120 to 172kg, 120 hrs mainly free-flying $1800. Harness UP large 120 hrs, incl. large reserve $500. Ph: 0429 891856.

General Kangook

The latest range of Kangook paramotors, Dudek Reflex paragliders, trikes, flight decks, spares & your reserve parachute equipment all on our website for your inspection with prices. Ph: Ben 0418 753220.

Poliglide

PARAGLIDING CENTRE We are based in Bright, NE Victoria, widely renowned as Australia’s best flying region.

Bright has been host to numerous Australian & international competitions.

Feel confident that you are learning with the best, our CFI Fred Gungl (six times Australian Paragliding Champion) has been involved in paragliding since 1990 & instructing for over 10 years.

Courses • Introductory & HGFA licence course • Thermal & XC clinics for all levels • SIV courses • Tow courses • XC tandem flights • Equipment Sales We are now conducting SIV courses.

See website for details.

Dealer for all major glider manufacturers, Charly reserves, Insider helmets & various accessories.

Active Flight Fred Gungl, ph: 0428 854455 www.activeflight.com.au High Adventure’s Pilots Beach house

Has now been fully renovated. Come & take advantage of not only the great accommodation we offer, but also over 15 take-off locations with quick & easy access, mainly two-wheel drive to all our flying sites.

Double rooms available & group bookings welcome, bring your club here for some great flying. Camping available also, theater room & wireless Internet all provided free of charge. For more details contact Lee at High Adventure <fly@highadventure.com.au>.

established 1988

Why come to North-east Victoria to learn with Eagle School?

• A part from being fortunate enough to have the most consistently reliable weather for training in Australia…

• Australia’s longest running Microlight school.

• Our person centred approach means that we value feedback and individually tailor our training methods to suit the student’s needs.

• We specialise in remedial training when you get stuck in your present learning environment.

• We are interested in seeing you achieve your goals and make your dreams a reality.

• You will receive ongoing support after your licence • We aim to shape you into a safe and confident pilot by encouraging you to challenge yourself in a safe and supportive environment.

• If you are already a Hang Glider, Paraglider or Glider pilot you’ll learn for half price!

We look forward to assisting you to master a new set of skills which will take you to new heights in every respect.

Concertina Bag

PARA SUPPLY / Cocoon3 concertina bag, PARA SUPPLY / Cocoon3 concertina bag, PARA SUPPLY / Cocoon3 concertina bag, PARA SUPPLY / Cocoon3 concertina bag, www.parasupply.com Press To Talk System

PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, PARA SUPPLY / PTT sys, www.parasupply.com

NO PRESSURE SALES!!! BUY IN YOUR OWN TIME

Feel free to contact us, we are happy to chat with you.

STEPHEN RUFFELS CFI Mail address: 16 Hargreaves Road, Bright, 3741 (03) 5750 1174 or (0428) 570 168 email <fly@eagleschool.com.au> Look up our website: [www.eagleschool.com.au] download our’Learn to Fly’ brochure for what’s involved, plus costs.

Microlights & Equipment New South Wales

Airborne Classic Edge X 582 Streak wing, always hangared, nil accidents, new mast, new basebar. TT 724 hrs, engine 247 hrs. Incl. spare 582 engine with 380 hrs, still running strong with regular bearing checks. Two helmets & headsets. $17500. Ph: 0409 318230.

Self launcher Mitchel U2 three-piece wing, Skylark 320cc twin, basic instrumentation, open trailer. Was registered HGFA, alternate RAA/GFA registration. A very low hour aircraft. I need shed space & it needs a home where it can be used for soaring adventures. $1900. Ph: Scott 0425 847208.

June 2010

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June 2010

Soaring Australia 47

HGFA Schools Queensland

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • New south wales

New south wales

RAINBOW PARAGLIDING APCO AUSTRALIA Offering the full range of APCO equipment APCO Aviation three years/250 hours warranty for porosity. Gliders that are made to last unique in the industry. Customer service and 100% satisfaction guarantee.

Test centre for APCO gliders [www.apcoaviation.com].

APCO Australia and PWC winner of the Serial Class 2000 Established since 1996, Rainbow Paragliding is based on the Sunshine Coast and Hinterland. The school has access to 25 sites and holds a permit to operate in the Cooloola National Park including Teewah and world famous Rain­ bow Beach. In the Sunshine State, we fly all year round, 60km cross-country flights have been achieved in winter!

FULL LICENCE COURSE – Strictly only four stu­dents per instructor, for quality personalised tui­tion at your own pace, between eight to 10 days.

REFRESHER COURSE – Groundhandling, top landing or asymmetric recovery techniques: Come learn with the experts.

INTERMEDIATE, ADVANCED, TANDEM OR PARAMOTOR ENDORSEMENT – We have the sites, the weather and the knowledge.

SALES AND SERVICES – New and second-hand, trade-in, maintenance and repairs.

YOUR INSTRUCTORS: Jean-Luc Lejaille, CFI and senior safety officer, paramotor pioneer (first licence issue in Australia), over 2,500 student days’ experience, instructing since 1995.

Jean-Luc Lejaille CFI 45192 Rainbow Paragliding – APCO Australia PO BOX 227, Rainbow Beach 4581 Ph: 07 5486 3048 – 0418 754 157 Email: <info@paraglidingrainbow.com>

[www.paraglidingrainbow.com] New south wales

Professional Paragliding • • • • • •

Tandem Introductory Flights Paragliding Courses and Certifications Pilot Development Clinics Free Introduction course Tandem Endorsements Sales and service

Dealer for Advance Charly Flytec Icom Adventure Plus Paragliding Pty Ltd Stanwell Park, Sydney Ph: 0412271404 <fly@adventureplusparagliding.com.au> [www.adventureplusparagliding.com.au]

48 Soaring Australia

Western Australia

Australia Wide Services HGFA Approved Paraglider Testing & Repairs

Advertising Index – June 2010 • C omprehensive testing and repairs to all paragliders • Fully equipped service and repair agents for: Advance, Aerodyne, Airwave, Bio-Air, Gin, Gradient, Mac Para, Niviuk, Nova, Ozone, Paratech, Sky, Swing, UP • Full written report • Harness repair and modifications • Certified Australasian Gradient Repair Centre • Parachute repacking • Orders taken from anywhere in Australia, New Zealand and Asia • Prompt turnaround PARAGLIDING REPAIR CENTRE

Airborne Darling Downs SC Eco Watch GFA Form 2 HGFA Merchandise High Adventure – Trango High Adventure – Bali Kangook Lake Keepit Gliding Club Manilla PG – Accessories Microair Avionics Mountain High OAMPS Poliglide

IBC 21 36 11 BC 15 35 IBC 11 7 IBC 8 17 BC

Paragliding Repair Centre 93 Princess Ave, Torndirrup, Albany WA 6330 Mob: 0417 776550 Email: <fly@waparagliding.com> Web: [www.waparagliding.com]

Boonah Gliding Club's K13 Photo: Courtesy Rob Izatt

June 2010