Johnblog

Had a great flight today. Got all my Silver C gliding tasks in one flight. Five hours duration, a 50 kilometre cross country flight and a height gain of 3000 feet.

I only just made the five hours because the sun was getting low and the thermal activity had stopped. I managed to eke it out to get five hours and 30 seconds! The flight is recorded on a special GPS logger in the glider. The claim has to be signed off by an official observer who checks the logger records.

Near Lake Keepit trying to keepit up!

It was a good day for gliding, but because it is now winter, the thermals don’t start working till about 11 am and stop working about 4 pm. The cloudbase was about 8500 feet at the best part of the day, so I spent a bit of time there and my feet got cold. It was 27 degrees on the ground but only 6 degrees up high.

Thank goodness I managed to survive five hours in a cramped glider cockpit without having to pee! The special arrangements for that involved an empty wine cask bladder – much preferable to the alternative of a male external catheter and a bag strapped to the leg. I had a camelback of water with me and a muesli bar for sustenance.

My task was Lake Keepit, Manilla, Gunnedah and return to lake Keepit. The Manilla- Gunnedah leg was the required 50 k so I did that twice, just to make sure.

It was an exciting experience, but I was getting pretty tired by the end. The flying needs a great deal of concentration and you spend a fair bit of time going around in circles in thermals which can get a bit wearying.

So, a successful mission, I’m very pleased with myself. Who’s a clever boy then?

I’m having fun in the middle of nowhere at Lake Keepit Soaring Club.

The place is very rural and wild. There are several big grass runways running up from the edge of the lake and in the morning and evening lots of kangaroos come out to graze.

People here are nice. I had a dual flight of 3 1/2 hours my first day with an old guy named Garry who is a thermalling guru. I had a thorough briefing first on techniques of entering thermals and finding the best lift in them, then we went out and did that. He taught me lots more about cross country flying, it was a great experience.

The high-performance LS7at Lake Keepit.

Today I flew solo in an advanced glider, an LS7, which is a lovely sleek shiny machine. I had a couple of long flights getting to know the glider and the local area before I set off to try some cross-country flying tomorrow. It’s been good gliding weather with puffy cumulus clouds and thermals up to 8000 feet at times. About 25 degrees in the day but down to 10 at night – quite cool.

I’m staying in a cabin on the airfield – it is very basic with shared shower and toilets – but there’s only one other guy sharing at the moment so it’s not a problem.

I had another 2.5 hour gliding flight in the Junior on Wednesday in some lovely thermals. I used an app on my iPhone (Free flight Airlog) to track my wandering progress and show it on a map. As you can see, I didn’t want to get too far away from the airfield just in case the lift disappeared! They don’t like it if you land in a field in the middle of nowhere and they have to come and get you.

The app takes GPS readings every 30 seconds – that’s not enough precision to show all the circling I had to do in thermals but enough to show my meandering path.

Here’s the map.

View Solo 21 in a larger map

This was my furthest wandering from the field. West to Oakdale, south to Razorback near Picton, and East to the Menangle racecourse. Now I have 11 flights on the Junior and I can progress to the next glider – an Astir – a more sophisticated one with retractable undercarriage.