WEEKEND REPORT: Rain & Boomers

I suppose the highlight of the weekend was when Mark Siegelberg drove onto the airfield at 7.30am on Saturday morning with his “new” glider in tow ….ZS TIM! His Nimbus 2C. He had driven through the night from Magaliesburg.

Now, for those of you that don’t know, this glider is only one of two that have monogrammed registrations. The other is ZS- BOB – owned by Ed Verpraet. Tim Biggs owned ZS -TIM and flew many records with her. (Maybe we will see ZS -BOB in the skies above Worcester one day soon, too.)!!! I wish Mark many happy soaring hours with her.

Saturday was 8/8 cloud and rainy. There was a strong SE too! It was good to see Peter Wooley who came out to do some maintenance to his property on the airfield and brought Susan along, too. Unfortunately the weather was none too pleasant and many, who did drive out for the day, returned to Cape Town early. Nicky test flew the Rotax Falke and later did some cross country training with Jacobus Hartman, but that was the only flying that was done on Saturday.

Sunday was a completely different story, though! Post- frontal and great thermals everywhere. Ari was positively exhausted when he had finished tugging for the day! Congratulations to William Whittaker on his newly acquired PAX rating!! Coen Marais, Frieder, Helmut, Hubert and Martin, Tom,Trevor as well as Mark (in his NEW glider) all had fantastic flights. GOK was kept busy with paxes with both Boet Coetsee and Phil Surridge instructing and Bryan Dean had a fantastic long flight in GHB. All reports were that” they could not come down!” Johan Gericke and Kevin Mitchell excelled as the “A” Team of duty pilots and were ably assisted on the admin side by Marianne Verpraet. A really nice atmosphere prevailed at the launch point and thanks to all for all the effort put into the smooth running of the operation.

I would like to wish Herbie Oberhofer a very happy 70th birthday that he celebrated this past week as well Trevor Johnson who celebrates his birthday today!! (Keep believing in that Tooth Fairy, Trevor)!

This will be the last weekend news for this year and the next will be after the weekend of the 6th January, 2007.

Duty pilots for that weekend are as per the draft roster posted on the 18th November:

Sat 6th Jan Penderis/Heaslip
Sun 7th Jan Pruter/Rens

I would like to wish everyone a safe and happy festive season and thank you for all your support during the past year.

ALISON

Weekend Report: Heaven & Hell

On Friday we were very sceptical as to whether we would be able to transport the wing of GZF back to Worcester but Johnny phoned Trevor at 6.15am on Saturday to tell him that there was virtually no wind and that he should get moving with the wing from Stellenbosch to Worcester. There were cheers all round when he arrived at 10.30am with the wing in tow!! Thanks to those who helped rig her – Johan Gericke, Wally Tamsen, Johnny, Ari, Rudi and Craig Fussel. Special thanks to Rudi who did a very neat repair and Johnny for spraying her and the use of his facilities at FASH.

Jerry Betbeder was on duty on Saturday and got the show on the road nice and early and was very ably assisted by his assistant for the day – by special request – Demi Holmwood. Thanks Demi!! The winch team – Rob K, Chris Ludolf and William Whittaker, began to set up the winch – a job which took a great part of the day but the team were rewarded by a stunning launch…..at 18h45 they launched Ian Forbes and Kevin Mitchell and stayed up for 45 minutes!!! Incredible!! And the rope did not break, either!

Briefing for the Gauntlet was at 9.00am in the Clubhouse and was well attended, and again well presented by Alan. At 11.20am was our first launch and after that was hectic and reminded me of the contest days at Vryburg!! You will read all about the Gauntlet in the Blogspot! We managed to launch all 10 contestants within 1 hour with 1 tug. ("Heaven", Ed.) To see them thermalling in a gaggle over the red hill also brought back memories! Congratulations to Peter Farrell in ID who was the overall leader in this season’s Gauntlet. Well done to all those pilots who took part .

Garth Milne outlanded near Pikernierskloof and was retrived by Rico Suter and two of our visiting pilots from Austria. Rico, you are fantastic!! I think that was your third retrieve this season?

To make things even a little more complicated for the day we had to change runways to rwy 33 and move all the cars that were parked at the 15 side. We were a little short of hands and many of the paxes and visitors were roped in to help drive. Then MIV’s starter motor broke and we had to get NIG out, cleaned, DI’d, filled with oil (she is using oil more than usual) and Mark continued to tug with her and then Ari took over so that Mark could fly a pax. We will be getting MIV repaired hopefully this week.

Saturday evening was very jolly with the celebration of the wonderful flying day and the end of the Gauntlet! Incidently, for the first time in a while (excluding the courses) we had to begin a second timesheet! Well done to everyone.

Some of you may have noticed the computer in the clubhouse. Thanks go to Kevin Mitchell who was assisted by Nicky Oberhofer in getting the system set up. The new clubhouse Computer has a dedicated broadband internet connection. It is for the use of all CGC members to upload flights to OLC, and do flight analysis with SeeYou, SpePla etc. It also includes cables and software utilities for upload/download of tasks or waypoints to our various loggers.

At the moment Sven is flying in the qualifier for the gliding Grand Prix. We wish him everything of the best.

Sunday, as many of you may have realized, was Blown Out!! The wind on the ground at Worcester was in excess of 75kph.! ("Hell", Ed.)


On a more serious note, Dave Starke is not feeling very well at the moment and we wish to let him know that he and Shiela are in our thoughts.

Remember that next weekend is our last rostered weekend. So make the most of “organized” flying – the next rostered day will be the 6th of January.

Until next week……

Alison