Blog December

Nov week 4

Approaching Mt Cook at 11,000 ft with the Tasman Glacier behind and Mount
Awful in the Siberia valley.

Bill Lurtz, a retired FedEx pilot from Lake Tahoe and Rico Black a commercial Helo pilot with Heliworks in Queenstown added XC soaring to their set of aviation skills. They both enjoyed the friendly GlideOmarama environment which helped them meet their objectives.

Bill left us with this note off appreciation: “If you are going to fly gliders in mountainous terrain, you need to take this course. You need to take it for theory, practice, confidence, critique and safety. GO’s fleet of Duo Discus’s are extremely well equipped and maintained to a high standard. You will never forget the experience!”

Rico, a 4,000 hour helo pilot whose father (Robin) flew gliders in Nelson, said that amongst the mountains of Omarama, he had rediscovered the joy of flying. In a week he made his first solo flight, converted into a single seater and racked up about 6 hours by himself as well as making several long dual cross country flights. Congratulations Rico!

Dec weeks 1 & 2

Tremaine Callier, Peter Kinsey and Anna Walker from Lasham GC, with Graham Trout from Australia
on his 2^nd visit and Manfred Zinn from Switzerland joined the GlideOmarama team. An ideal mix of weather gave them
all varied extensive soaring.

We congratulate Los Angeles based Indonesian Frederick Nugroho who took time out from his New Zealand back packing excursion to complete a Fly to Solo course with Philip Plane.

As the high pressures at the start of the month blew out eastwards to the Pacific and were replaced by ominous low pressures from the Tasman, they brought with them a contingent of six Australian pilots from the Beaufort GC led by Peter Buskins. They were joined for two weeks by experienced European Alps pilot Frederick Martin and our good friend Hiroko Suzuki from Tokyo on the first of her 3 planned visits for this season.

The Aussie team with GlideOmarama gliders, instructors and single seat pilots. Richie McCaw (on the right, looking fit) was back at Omarama and into his Discus 2c within 24 hours of getting home from his highly successful Grand Slam All Black tour of the UK!

Our team were kept busy with 6 Duo’s, a DG1000, an ASH25 and 4 single seaters lining up on the grid. Trevor Mollard and Justin Wills were welcome additions into the instructing team – we enjoyed their company and appreciated their huge contribution and hope they will join us again.

Despite some soggy weather, extensive sorties into the mountains were made with the last day being memorable for high cloud bases and convergence systems along the Main Divide to add to earlier wave and ridge trips.

Minaret Burn retrieve and convergence line across the Omarama Basin.

Bo, G, Devin & Hugh all landed out in pretty places during the week giving an added dimension to the visitors New Zealand experiences and underlining the uncertain nature of taking to the skies with gliders, even at this Mecca for soaring pilots.

The Thursday night Course and Staff Dinners hosted by GlideOmarama at the Kahu Cafe are now attracting in excess of 30 people each week, keeping Dagmar and her team more than busy. As usual they manage with aplomb and the event has become a feature of Omarama Airfield life.

Dec weeks 3 & 4

The middle of December saw GlideOmarama host its largest block bookings for 2 seaters. An invasion of 6 pilots from Lasham GC, UK, were joined by Philippe Martin from Luesse in France, Nick Constantine and Marianne Bertucchi from California, Hadleigh Bognuda and Geoff Gaddes from Auckland. We co-opted instructing talent from Trevor Mollard, Justin Wills and Jerry O’Neill to keep everyone properly attended to. The Brits brought an unwelcome present to us in the form of a solid sample of UK weather – low grey skies and heavy rain. Not what they were expecting at all, no. Despite this Ray Pentecost and Chris Starkey picked up some useful 2 seat flights on their first week. They were able to add single seat adventures in the second week more akin to their expectations of big skies and expansive flying. The Aucklanders are here for an extended summer stay to revisit and extend their knowledge and competence in this environment as preparation for the forthcoming Nationals contest.

David Rhys-Jones on a 2^nd visit was pleased to complete a Diamond Height claim on his last day while ASH 22 pilot Jack Luxton also from Lasham and on his 5^th visit ended his stay with a satisfying flight in Garry Wakefield’s ASH 25 to save his visit from a total washout, generously taking Rowan Turner, one of our young ground crew, for an adventure in wave.

As we end 2008 we are happy to welcome several old friends to join us for several weeks over the height of the summer – Dr John from California, Craig Melvin from Telluride, Yuji Haguchi CFI from (???) in Japan and Phil Dolan from Bangladesh all making useful journeys into skies over the rich tapestry of the central South Island terrain of mountains and lakes.