Gliding Manawatu – Kawhatau Camp 2011

John Brooks

I had been looking forward to the Kawhatau Camp all year. Leave was booked, the glider was serviced, accommodation was booked and the weather looked good. In the last few days before the camp, the weather forecast looked less and less promising, but I headed down from Auckland with the trailer on the back and kept my fingers crossed.

Driving to Kawhatau on the first day, the wind buffeted the trailer and the sky looked threatening. From the shearers’ quarters on Finn’s Farm, we saw Ross Perry arrive in the Twin Astir behind ZK-CIG, the Pawnee towplane. “Glad it’s not me flying today,” I told Ossie Fargher. During the day, other hopefuls arrived with their trailers, but nobody rigged, not wishing to collect wings and other bits from various parts of the farm.

Normally, we have an alternative strip on a lower part of the farm, but this year it was in crop, so the Summit Strip was the only one available. We went up there on Day 2 and rigged about 10 gliders.

After the gliders were pulled to the launch point, everyone sat around in the shade talking about gliding, but nobody wanted to be first. Eventually Mike O’Donnell took off in his Libelle and struggled, but this gave everyone else the encouragement to commit aviation. There were some good flights, but personally I found it rather trying, with cloud down on the ridge and fairly bumpy conditions.

Mid week, the rain and low cloud returned. This stopped us flying, but was not the end of the world – the shearer’s quarters became a meeting point and we entertained many visiting pilots for chats, or watched gliding videos in the Old Farts’ Club. Each morning I looked out of my bedroom window, hoping that the weather would improve and totally enjoying the change from looking out at 4 lanes of traffic passing my apartment in Auckland.

When the sun did shine, it was all on and pretty hot. Ossie’s umbrella was pressed into service to keep pilots cool before takeoff. On this day, half the fleet headed down the ranges to Wharite. Not a world-beating distance, but a good flight, given the general conditions. I had a flight in the DG 1000 with Michael and we climbed to about 8000 ft on the ridge. We decided to fly out to Rangiwahia. I set the

Purity Hut, DG1000 closer in

Ian Poppins

The Kestrel used its secret weapon for a short landing

speed at 115kt, but we didn’t seem to be making more than about 30kt over the ground. Ross later told me that he and a pupil had the GPS reading 30kt into wind but found cloud forming around them. Closer examination of the display showed minus 30kt!

Our last flying day was Friday. The wind was quite strong; we normally land uphill out of wind, but the first landing showed the folly of that. We changed to landing downhill into wind, but even so, some gliders ran out nearly to the end of the strip. The Kestrel used its secret weapon for a short landing.

The forecast for the weekend suggested that we should pack up and call it a day. Most pilots thought that this was too pessimistic, but I derigged. The following day dawned wet and horrible. I turned on smug mode and rated the day officially R.S. When we got to the strip, it was clear that bringing big trailers down the slippery road from the summit strip using normal cars was going to be dangerous. While we derigged all those wet gliders, Ross Perry headed down to the farm sheds and commandeered a tractor (thanks Campbell) and we spent a couple of hours bringing trailers down to the new trailer park at Base Camp, from where the cars could take them out to the road.

I hooked up the trailer to my trusty Camry wagon and headed off to meet Ayesha (long suffering darling wife) at Taupo. The irritating thing was that as soon as I hit Taihape (about 20km north) the sun was blazing and I drove the rest of the way with the air-conditioning on. I had a swim in Lake Taupo later in the day.

It was not the best flying camp I ever attended, but still great to meet up with old friends from Gliding Manawatu and Wellington GC. And I do now have confidence that the Kestrel will not fall to bits in really rough air!