Photo Paul jackson
A TALE OF Paul Jackson and Dom Stevens, with Jill McCaw
In November of last year, two cross country courses were held at opposite ends of the country. One was at Matamata the other at Omarama.
Photo Dom Stevens
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COURSES
Both were held the week before the local Regional Contest and both had participants who wrote up their experiences to share with SoaringNZ readers. Their stories were the same but different so it made sense to put them together. Our correspondents are Paul Jackson from Canterbury and Dom Stevens from Piako. Jill McCaw links their stories to show the similarities and the differ-
Central Otago, Canterbury, Blenheim, Nelson and two Aussies from the Mt Beauty Gliding Club. Both courses made the assumption that the participants already knew how to fly a sailplane. The courses focused on the best and safest way for the students to fly further than most of them ever had before. The Matamata course had six twin-seat-
ences they experienced. In Matamata Dom Stevens was one of fourteen students, believed to be the largest number of students since the cross country course there was introduced. The Matamata course had seven instructors, six twin-seaters and loads of enthusiasm, producing a course that ran like clockwork. The Matamata group came from several different gliding clubs throughout the North Island. They had varying levels of experience, ranging from newly qualified QGP’s, pilots who had flown several competitions, some who were instructors themselves and one who held an ATPL. However, Dom says, qualifications didn’t seem to matter as they were all present for one purpose: to make their gliders go that extra bit further as safely as possible. In Omarama Paul Jackson found a similar situation. The participants had a wide range of skills from cross country novices like himself right through to competition pilots building up their currency
ers so participants brought single-seaters to fly on the days they weren’t physically flying with an instructor. In the south participants also flew solo although in Paul’s case he was flying Canterbury’s Janus. “It was decided that I would fly Canterbury’s Janus all week due to my currency; a double edged sword, as I am still very wary of the thing close to the ground.” Most of the week he had company, on Wednesday Frank Saxton from Nelson took the back seat and on Thursday he flew with Ian Cohn one of the Aussies and was given a thermalling lesson. On Friday the other Aussie Mark Bland kept him company. The program for each course was similar. At the Matamata course mornings were to prepare the gliders, attend briefings, weather reports and lectures, the afternoon was to fly the task, (retrieve any land-outs) and at the end of the day have a flight debrief. Dom reports: “Each morning a student was paired with an
for the following week’s competition. Clubs represented were
instructor. We got two of these flights each in the twins which
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February 2008
