Wednesday. The soaring forecast is not brilliant so I talk to the instructor here, Bill Nixon, about getting checked out to fly the top-of-the-range two-seat aircraft, the Glaser-Dirks DG1000. It’s an elegant aircraft with long, slender wings which give it an extremely good glide ratio of 46 to 1. We had a fun flight in nice easy thermals.
Bill in the back of the DG1000.
I had to be checked out with spinning the plane and (more importantly) recovering from the spin.
Then we had a little cross-country flight up to Parkes and Bogan Gate when Bill talked me through the workings of the complex and rather old-fashioned flight computer fitted to this aircraft. I managed a safe approach and landing so passed my check. Now I can fly all the fleet in the Southern Cross Gliding Club. Yay!
