TARANAKI 50K FLIGHT By Tim Hardwick-Smith
Cross country flights out of Taranaki don’t happen very often; Tim Hardwick-Smith decided to have a go at breaking the drought. He introduces himself and then tells us about his flight.
Taranaki summit, Ruapahu in background
I started gliding in the early ’80s while doing a mechanical engineering degree in Christchurch. My flatmate’s boyfriend, Jim Rankin, took me for my first flight. I learned to fly with the Wiggies, Canterbury and Taranaki clubs. After doing 50 hours gliding, I got distracted by microlights before returning to gliding in the late ’90s after watching the Wild South videos Lucy learns to fly and the ’95 worlds at Omarama. I am now a sheep and beef farmer in Taranaki and I started instructing before doing any cross country flying – ever heard of that before? I had a bit of the ‘go for it’ attitude instilled in me when Roland Van der Wal dragged me around for 175 km on an ‘off’ day at the Taupo competition last November. You probably didn’t realize how much I needed that Rolland. No one has done much cross country flying here, so even relatively short flights are something to talk about. This was written to show other Taranaki glider pilots it can be done and one way of doing it.
Thursday 26 February looked like it should be a good day. The previous two days had been a bit too good with instability extending well above cloud base making the clouds tall and overdeveloped with a few showers. For Thursday the tephigram showed the instability was still there but a light northerly was forecast along with high cloud coming in, preceding the tropical depression which should hit over the weekend. The northerly and the high cloud should tone down the overdevelopment – if they don’t kill the thermals altogether. The task was to start overhead Stratford airfield and head north-east to the first turnpoint where York Road meets the bush line. From there east to Whangamomona for the 51 km leg (the extra kilometer is to allow for the 500 m radius beer can turnpoints) and then back to Stratford airfield. Since the whole task was a little more than 100 km and I was going to land where I took off, using the 1% rule I could take a maximum 1000 m (3300 ft) tow. Ralph Gibson towed me to cloud base 2500 ft above the airfield, a little to the east. After sampling a good thermal near 28
June 2009
Toko I crossed the start line and tried to get to the first turnpoint by using thermals and avoiding the big mountain convergence that had set up to the south. The convergence draws all the warm air from a big area making it hard to get away from. Anyway the thermals weren’t working and I had to retreat to the power station thermal which gave me a 1600 ft 3 knot climb. (We’re lucky to have that.) This got me into the convergence which allowed an easy run into and out of the first turnpoint. After leaving the convergence I got a 1000 ft 3.3 knot climb between Toko and Douglas. At this point I was really going to give up local flying and commit myself to going for it. Another spur was that Peter Miller, my glider syndicate partner, had just presented me with his new medical so this might be the last time I got to fly the Discus for a while. Peter had a bit of catching up to do. So off to Whangamomona. The next decent climb was just to the south of Te Wera where it had worked so well on our camp. Then a long glide to Whanga in the blue. Turning there, the GPS said I still had a 15:1 slope back to Te Wera airstrip which was reassuring. I took a 100
