by Max Kirschner

The Mid-week Operation got off to a slow start this year, but now things are gathering momentum. Let me introduce the team:

The Team

Chris Gough

Chris Gough is a third generation glider pilot. His grandfather Andy Gough was one of the founder members of the Royal Air Force Gliding and Soaring Centre (RAFGSA).  For many years he was the Chief Flying Instructor, so much so that his nick name was “father”.  Andy represented Great Britain in the World Championships. Andy’s son Andy moved to Canada, where he now flies in competitions.  Chris is flying in the Australian Junior Nationals at Benalla this year. Chris has 100 hours tugging and 400 hours gliding.

Anna Sophia Lazarou

Anna Sophia Lazarou (better known a Soph) has a degree in Aviation, is a Bachelor of Technology (Aviation), has 200 hours and a CPL A Multi Command Instrument Rating, a frozen ATPL and a love of aerobatics.  Soph is with us whilst on active hold for Qantas Link. She started Tug pilot training on the 2nd of December.

Bruce Cooper

Bruce Cooper is with us until the end of the Multi-class Nationals and is available for instruction Monday to Friday.

Bruce owns an ASW 27 and flies out of Lasham and Eden Soaring. Last year Bruce flew out of Corowa for 3 months and did 300 hours and 27,000 kilometres. He flies British National competitions and won one day at 18 metre competition this year. Bruce holds a number of British Speed records. So if you want to improve your flying and are available mid week, book him and a glider, be it IS28 or Duo Discus, via the office.

The Mid-week Operation

The mid-week operation is a self help operation,  nobody is paid, so there is no duty pilot, no wingtip runner, no rope hooker on. Its all down to you to act as a team. It has not been unknown for Rhonda or Sue to come out from the office to hold the wings level of the last glider to launch. The aim of the midweek operation is to provide safe, cost effective, fun flying from Monday to Friday. If you have time off mid week or you can see a good day on the horizon, let us know what you want to achieve and we will do our best to help you meet your aims. To maximise your flying, give us a call and we can plan accordingly. If there is nobody booked in to fly, Bruce and Chris will be off flying cross country.

SAR  (Monday to Friday)

Not filling out the Search and Rescue book is the one thing that causes the most problems and stops our flying being safe, cost effective and fun. Each authorising level 2 has a different preference for where the SAR book should be kept. Because we don’t necessarily have a duty pilot or the duty level 2 on the field there is no one person to take the SAR book out to the field or bring it in again in the evening. So it tends to be kept in the clubhouse and people who come to briefing are reminded to fill it in. The problem is that not all members attend the briefing and if it is a nice day and you managed to get the afternoon off  and rush out to the airfield to fly and the SAR book has not been taken out, what do you do? One or two people forget to fill anything in and just go flying, or they put the information onto a scrap of paper which gets blown away. As a club we want to carry out our duty of care with due diligence. If someone out-lands, or worse crashes, and we don’t know they are out there we could be seen as negligent. Please can I ask you to check that the SAR book is in the clubhouse before rushing out onto the field, and remember to sign off when you land back.

Corowa have 15 SPOT locators this year. Pilots with SPOT locators can register that they are safe by pressing the OK button. Francesco is going to insist all pilots operating from Corowa next year have a SPOT, thereby devolving the responsibility for SAR to the pilots.  I don’t believe we can mandate that all pilots have SPOT at Benalla, but I do believe we need to develop processes that enable us to track pilots who have SPOT and ease the burden of SAR.

Have fun, fly safe.