It was a beautiful and busy Saturday at GGC. First, I'd like to thank our tow pilots, Jean-Marc Chadourne (morning) and Tom Hastie (afternoon) for the great tows and sometimes helping push gliders around.
There are 7 students flying, and they're all keen to progress, and doing well. We could have kept 2 two-seaters flying continuously all day, had we had the instructors to do it. Claude Poulin had 3 flights, Jeff Schneider, Derek Casselman, Dan McDonald (after good work in the morning as assistant field manger), Norman Wong, and John Schmidt doing 2 instructional flights each, and Robert Pelly doing one flight in TR. IFX did 13 flights, BQN 3, and JCZ 7. Thanks to Remi for the morning's instruction. In the afternoon, Paul Goyette really helped by dedicating his afternoon to instructing, on short notice, and Wolfgang and Ulo also helped out. Neither M7 or RM flew, since those who could helped instructing. I know the students appreciated it. Also, thanks to Abagail for doing great work on the log sheets, ropes, etc, as the Assistant Field Manager.
We had 3 passenger rides in the Puchacz, Doug flying Christian, and Karl flying two of our neighbours from Curran (thanks for the help).
Private owners also had a nice day, with Roger in AT (fresh from a podium finish at the Canadian National Soaring Championship at SOSA in club class) flying for two hours after assembling AT, Ulo, after instructing, flew almost two and half hours, Bill Park flew the batplane for a short flight, and Remi flew three and a half hours in KB (an ASW20 shared with Karl). Gord flew OR for 3 hours and 9 minutes.
For those who like their Earth 'up there' rather than the more normal 'down there', Wally Wilson did some aerobatics instruction with the chief flying instructor, and took the Puchacz up for aerial daring-do later in the afternoon after being signed off for basic solo aerobatics. What a smile after!
Martin did good work fixing the vent window in RM, with a more robust version. Great work in the background, which is usually not reported or noticed, but always is appreciated.
So, there is instruction, cross-country, passenger flying, towing, aerobatics, mechanical futzing, and post-flying, a swim in our popular Olympic pool, sometimes RC aircraft flying, and a nice dinner at the club... Plus, it's healthy being out on a nice day, getting some exercise. As my flight surgeon says, "exercise is medicine".
What's coming up? Our annual Fly week kicks off on the Monday of the Civic Holiday long weekend. We should be blessed with good weather, and the chance for students to make much more rapid progress in their skill development, for cross-country pilots to chase that elusive 300 km flight, and spend a week with friends. Tenting is very pleasant this time of year. Your Board of Directors will be doing an update on how the year is going after the kick-off day - more details on the club members' Yahoo Group shortly.
October 4 -14 will find much of the club in Lake Placid New York, to try to fly a glider in the mountain wave, where some members have flown as high as 27,000 feet... A very nice, close-by, site with very different gliding conditions. Expand your horizons with a bit of mountain flying, at the peak of the fall colours (or colors, should you hail from south of 49).
There's always something different at the club!
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