The Grampians Soaring Club is holding its annual “wave” camp at Jalukar over the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. While they haven’t had much “wave” in recent years, it’s still a great weekend with the possibility of ridge soaring, and local thermalling, as well as good company. And who knows … this just might be the year for some good wave flying.
During those cold winter weekends volunteers from GCV will be holding various courses and activities, that all GCV members are invited to. The objectives for the weekends are to:
Share and learn new skills
Gain qualifications
Stay current, both in the air and on the ground
Meet up with your mates that you normally only see during the summer
Increase the bar profits!
During the weekends, catering will be provided by various members. We aim to plan for at least one weekend of each month to be utilised. Even if you are not interested in attending a course, come down to the airfield anyway, and have that currency flight, and share stories over a beer during the evening!
Please advise the organiser of each weekend if you would like to attend and if you require catering. If you have any ideas of courses/activities that you would like to attend and/or would like to run over the winter, please let Louise know via email to ogradylouise@gmail.com
Expressions of Interest required for the following:
The gliding simulator is available for use for members every weekend and weekdays. Please contact Graham Garlick, birdmanoz@bigpond.com to ensure that there is a suitable instructor around to ‘check you out’ if it is your first time. Please note, there no ‘bottle to throttle rules’ apply, however, we do ask that all liquids to be kept well away from the equipment! The charge for the simulator is $10, and all additional donations would be greatly received!
May 12/13Schedule 8 of CAR 1988 Course
Guidance for Pilots, maintenance that may be performed of class B aircraft by private pilots. This course is aimed at GA Private/Student Pilots which of course includes our Tuggies! The course will contain both theoretical and ‘hands on’ activities. Please express your interest – email Steve Hobby.
June 23/24 – Gold for soaring Pilots
The course is pitched towards pilots with limited or no cross-country flying experience. A new course format is being introduced to include:
An introduction to the downloading of weather and soaring forecasts from the internet.
The uploading of loggers.
Flight analysis.
The demonstration of soaring techniques and cross country flight using the new GCV simulator.
Briefings on weather, Mc Cready concepts and soaring techniques.
Each course will be limited to 4 pilots under the direction of Graham Garlick, Alby James, and Tim Shirley. The cost of the course will be $50.00. Please advise Graham Garlick of your interest via birdmanoz@bigpond.com
July 21/22 – Gold for soaring Pilots – see above
August 25/26 – Logger familiarisation and Official Observers Course
Logger familiarisation (Saturday 25th): A similar course has been run by John Millott in the past. The aim will be to talk about loggers in general – how they work, what they do, as well as some practical things about how to connect to software and upload declarations and download flights. It will cover Flarm as well as Volkslogger and other logger types, and I will be happy to have people bring along their own devices if they wish.
Different levels of logger approvals (they are not all the same…) will be discussed, and also cover how to make sure a badge claim actually succeeds! The course will suit members who are planning to do their first X/C flights in the coming season, or those who have some X/C experience but want to know more in order to go for higher level badges or enter competitions.
Official Observers (Sunday 26th): The OO course will in some ways flow on from the logger course. People attending the Logger course on the Saturday are welcome to attend, even though you are not interested in becoming an OO. It is recommended that people wishing to become an OO should attend the Logger course on the Saturday
The course will start with revisiting the discussion of logger approval levels, because this seems to be poorly understood and has often caused problems. The different types of evidence that are needed and accepted, how to make declarations, how to fill out claims forms will be discussed. Official Observers should know whether a claim will succeed, so that only properly validated and documented claims go to the FAI Certificates Officer. The ‘badge lady’ (Beryl Hartley), receives far too many claims signed by OO’s that have to be knocked back!
For anyone who wants to gain an OO rating I will have the exam paper for a test on the Sunday afternoon. For this, candidates will need to have read and understood the relevant parts of the Sporting Code, Tim Shirley will advise closer to the date.
The course will also be interesting for existing OO’s wanting a refresher as well as prospective OO’s.
This course is aimed at all recently trained pilots, especially those looking forward to their first cross country season, when they would like to fly away from Benalla
September 22/23 – Spring Equinox – Start of the cross country season
A prize of GCV’s finest Red wine, for the first to complete a flight of at least 100km on sat 22nd or sunday 23rd!
P.S. Charles Day will be donating the wine, which means that he cannot win it:-)
October 6 – GCV celebrates 60 years at Benalla
Hangar dance in the Aviation museum hangar, with a 15 piece big band! Details to follow.
November 11-17th – Cross country coaching week
Held by ‘Gee Dale’ – British and Omarama super coach! Contact Tim Shirley tshirley@internode.on.net for details.
Glenmaggie camp 10-12 Mar
GCV is planning an away camp at Coongulla on Lake Glenmaggie (just North of Heyfield in Gippsland) on the March Labour Day long weekend. The site is a private field on the lake edge with excellent onsite accommodation (bring your partner) and plenty for the non-flyers to do. Being close to the hills, there is good wave in any wind; we had 12,000’ last time and the site record is 22,000’. Thermals over the farmland and hills are great and sea-breezes, convergence zones and power stations make for interesting flying.
Solo pilots do need to have an Independent Operators rating and site familiarization flights are available in a locally-based Ximango.
Aircraft: the eTug will be towing the Duo Discus down there and we’re looking for someone to bring down a club single-seater, perhaps “pony express” style. It’s an easy 2.5 hour drive East of Melbourne with freeway for 75% of the way. You might wish to fly down; it’s only 150km with out-landing spots along the way and easy to do if lift goes to 7,000’. There is a site limit of ten gliders.
Accommodation: there is fully catered 4-star private accommodation on-site for about 20-22 people at a nominal daily cost. Rental accommodation is available within 1km and camping grounds and B&Bs within 6-8 km. Generally, most people stay onsite; some on-site camping is available.
