Blog January 2009
  Approaching Mount Aspiring
John Gorringe arrived in December intent on a UK 300k triangle speed record. The first try had him beat the time by half a kph – insufficient to claim the record. But a subsequent blistering attempt and beat the record by 20 kph. John now anxiously awaits ratification.
Many familiar faces made their annual pilgrimage to GlideOmarama to coincide with the National Contest held over the 1st 2 weeks of January. Graham Paul flew the contest with G, Craig Melvin with Lemmy and Garry Wakefield flew his Ash 25 with Mike Oakley. Dr John arrived from Michigan to compete in his Ventus and Gavin’s son George flew EE for his first National.
GlideOmarama staff involvement and commitment to the contest was significant with G & Gavin as task setters, Lemmy on weather, Hugh working the grid of 40 odd gliders and Ash and Annie flying tow planes. The weather was not easy to forecast which made the task setters job difficult but in the end 10 out of a possible 12 flying days were achieved helping make a challenging and very successful contest. Full details including pilot traces can be found on the Gliding NZ website. We congratulate Gavin’s son George Wills for a creditable performance flying EE on his first National contest.
Of comedic note we can mention that on one day with soft conditions around the northern turn being Mt Sibbald, both Task Setter G & Weather Guru Lemmy landed out at the same beautiful but distant Godley Peaks airstrip. On the same day a number of other pilots splatted around the McKenzie strips and tow pilot Ash clocked several hours on retrieve duties.
 
Lenticular clouds in the sky and adventure in the air! Note the orange Spot tracking device that displays a new position report every 10 minutes on Mandy’s computer back in the office. A great way to live track our fleet of 7 Duo Discus’s, a DG 1000 a Grob 103 and numerous single seaters through the mountains.
Josef Tornyai from Hungary and Jochem Fredrich from Switzerland on holiday with his family had extraordinary flying with Phil in the DG1000 and avow to return sooner rather than later. Martin Katschner from Austria escaped dire European weather for a month taking a mixture of dual and single seat flying and Alfons Enhsen from Germany disovered the joys of southern hemisphere soaring during a European winter.
 
The Tasman Glacier and the Tasman Ocean from 12,000 feet
David Bargainnier found having his son Devin working with GlideOmarama too much of an allure and took a mountain soaring course himself while daughter Tessa joined Devin for a day with the whole family being treated to an extraordinary flight around Mt Earnslaw and then north of Mt Cook. What a way to experience our mountains and lakes and see them at their best.
We congratulate Jenny Wilkinson on achieving 2 world record flights within 1 week – the Women’s 300 k triangle and Women’s 500 k Out and Return. A remarkable achievement of which we are all very proud.
 Richie McCaw, Hugh, Bo and film crew
relaxing in the Kahu Cafe.
Just before Christmas the Discovery Channel descended on Omarama to film a documentary about Richie McCaw, Captain of the NZ All Blacks, introducing his passion for gliding to Australian super star Andrew Ettinghouse. Despite dodgy weather they got some great footage and we look forward to the film’s release in October this year. It should be an excellent promotion for gliding and for Omarama.
 Lenticulars above the Benmore Range and Gavin’s house at Omarama.
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