A FINE WEEK OF SOAR By Oliver Winkler
Every year the week preceding the South Island Regionals marks another important date for aspiring and experienced cross country pilots alike. Pilots from all South Island clubs and even some pilots from the small neighbour to the North-West make their way to Omarama to join an ‘Advanced Cross Country and Mountain flying course’ – often just referred to as ‘Jerry’s Course’. Well known Canterbury and Nelson Lakes member Jerry O’Neill has for quite a few years driven the Cross Country flying training in the Canterbury Club and by organising ‘Jerry’s course’ opened his training to all New Zealand pilots. The course is not a beginners course, some previous cross country experience (i.e. Silver C) is desired. The course aims to train pilots up to complete a 300km flight. As well as trainees a lot of experienced pilots come back year after year just to enjoy the social flying, the interesting and challenging tasks or to get current again for the South Island Regionals.
28
December 2010
After the general weather briefing at the Omarama terminal we would meet in the camp kitchen for a lecture. Jerry involved other experienced pilots in his lectures to get across more than just one opinion on certain matters. The lectures’ topics would range from general cross country flying, mountain flying safety rules, Omarama specific weather patterns, ridge flying and of course wave flying. After the lectures we would usually prepare the gliders and then discuss the task that Jerry would set for the day. What would be the most likely way to get to this turnpoint, which land out option will we have on this leg etc. On most days we did not fly in a typical lead and follow style, which would have been hard to do with more than 15 gliders participating. Everybody tried to get around the task, communicating with each other which places worked well or what areas to avoid. Sometimes we would meet up with some fellow course gliders and tag along for a while and then separate and go slightly different ways again. We are not sure what sort of deal Jerry has with the weather gods but year after year his course is blessed with great soaring weather and not just that, they also provide a variety of weather patterns so that we could experience everything that Omarama has to offer. In just one week, we had excellent thermal days with high cloud bases, convergence days, a blue wave day and a proper Omarama wave day! Out of the six course days we had six soar able days!
