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Waikerie Gliding Club will be conducting the South Australian Gliding Championships between 1 and 7 December.
Competitors will be coming from six gliding clubs.
Sailplane pilots need to have faith in the weather forecast and daily tasks will be set, according to the forecasts, to range as far as Burra and the Flinders Ranges in one direction and Mildura in the other, over distances up to 500 km. The ideal is to set a task that is achievable but difficult enough that someone may have to land out. Sometimes the weather does not develop as expected and most of the fleet land out.
Then the last of the retrieve crews are out with their trailers looking for gliders in the dark.
In the strongest soaring conditions sailplanes carry water ballast. They climb more slowly with ballast but glide faster. If the pilot is forced low on task they will jettison ballast but the civilian equivalent of a victory roll is to finish fast and low with two plumes of water streaming from the dump valves. Competitors do not start together and the first to finish need not be the winner. Finishes can be expected around four or five o'clock.
Dianne Morgan, a registered nurse at Waikerie and Chair of the Social Committee, will be providing lunch at the gliding club for competitors and crews during the anxious time ("Should I take on water? What are the others doing?") between briefing and launching.
John Hudson, Environment, Health and Safety Manager at Santos, is known for his cheerful catering at Balaklava Gliding Club and will be preparing evening meals. Hudson says he does not have any special recipes to share with readers and does not expect ever to have his own TV show but he hopes competitors will be hungry enough to enjoy good plain cooking.
A private pilot with 1000 hours experience and a gliding instructor, Hudson will be in charge of the power aircraft that will tow sailplanes up around midday to begin their flights.
Competitors will start from individual start points. In the first competitions, in the 1930s, observers had to drive or cycle out to turning points and log competitors as they rounded the turns. In later years pilots photographed the turn points to prove they had been there.
This required scorers and verifiers to work late over the photographs but now the aircraft carry Global Positioning System receivers and data loggers.
Maurie Bradney, one-time manager/chief instructor of Waikerie Gliding Club, National Coach and member of Australian teams in World Competitions, will download from the dataloggers to a computer and read off the distances and times.
It is not even necessary for every competitor to round the same turnpoints. When every turn was predetermined, canny pilots would wait for others to start, then follow them into every thermal and it was nearly impossible for the one who started first to win. Data logging and pilot optional tasks make it harder to simply follow the leader.
Club President Bill Mudge, Marketing Manager at Waikerie Producers Ltd, will be behind the bar in the evenings helping the day's stories to get better as the night goes on.
One of the helpers will be Graham Francis, who grew up in Waikerie and began flying in 1955. After following the Bank of Adelaide around the State he is back in Waikerie and on the committee again.
The Competition Director will be Emilis Prelgauskas, an architect who lives beside his airstrip at Monarto. He hopes to leave the detail to the Operations Director Geoff Neely, and fly his aircraft in competition.
Neely is a tug pilot and glider pilot whose co-owner has not yet completed the mandatory annual inspection of their aircraft. Last winter Neely completed a task dreaded by every glider pilot - sanding back and replacing the gel coat on one wing. He still has a sore hand from the sanding block. He has told his partner to wear cotton gloves when he handles the wing.
Many sailplanes have retractable engines for self-launching. Bernard Eckey, after competing in the Masters' Competition at Alice Springs, took his glider by trailer to Yulara airport, assembled it on the tarmac beside the airliners and took his wife Crystal on a flight around Uluru.
Cathy Conway is a telecommunications engineer. She has not flown her Ventus sailplane in competition but she made some notable flights in her old Boomerang. Conway's Ventus won the Grand Prix division of last year's competition at Gawler in the hands of a German pilot.
Agile Communications, a South Australian communications carrier, and Riverland Internet are providing sponsorship.
News and results will be posted at http://waikerieglidingclub.com.au/statecomps
Further information: Geoff Neely 0419 563 233 greely@hotmail.com
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Opening the South Australian State Gliding Championship at Waikerie on Saturday Jan Cass, the Mayor of Waikerie, recalled an occasion when a Japanese man apeared from nowhere, diffidently knocked on the door of their farm near Wunkar and sheepishly said "I have crashed the grader". At least that is what she thought he said, but when she rang around and could not find anyone who was missing a grader she found that the man, a Japanese airline pilot and sailplane pilot on his first flight in Australia, had landed his sailplane in a paddock and run into a new fence that was invisible from the air.
It was her daughter's birthday and the unexpected visitor gave her his pen. Twenty five years later he is still sending refills on the anniversary.
This competition uses Pilot Optional Speed Tasks, POST. Pilots may turn any number of the given turn points as long as they are out for a certain time, usually about three hours. The winner is the one who makes the highest speed over that time. Each pilot must assess the weather and estimate how far they can fly in the time available, and decide where to go.
Sailplanes of different performance are scored on a handicap basis. The first day of competition was spoilt by cloud associated with the cold front that passed Adelaide on Saturday and most pilots were back on the ground in half an hour. Only three left the aerodrome and pilots who had flown 800 km on other occasions were glad to cover 20 km. It was a no-contest day and the venturesome three were consoled with a bottle of wine each.
Keith Willis of Wolseley near Bordertown has flown 80 different types of sailplane but he owns one of the relatively new World Class gliders and is probably the world's leading exponent of the type. The Polish aircraft factory PZL Swidnik won a world design competition for a light, cheap sailplane of modest performance. Willis holds five Australian records in World Class and he established three world records but these have since been broken. The designers never expected the type to fly further than 300 km until Willis flew 500 km from Horsham and again, at higher speed, from Bordertown.
Willis learnt to fly 35 years ago at Bordertown. He says Saturday should have been a PW5 day but he had to land after a short losing battle.
Craig Vinall, a mechanical engineer and partner in a firm of patent and trade mark attorneys, became interested in gliding when his parents retired to Waikerie about six years ago and he saw gliders being towed over the house.
Asked why he set off on task on a day like this, he replied "Because I could." He saw the others landing but decided that if he were forced to land so close to home it would be no big deal. Vinall, an Adelaide member of Waikerie Gliding Club, is flying in his first competition and admits that he thought leaving on task was the thing to do.
Andrew Wright says he got a good climb and "We had come here to fly so I gave it a go. It was a case of just staying up. I covered 11 kilometres in one hour - I could have walked around the task faster."
Nevertheless he relished the challenge of a barely soarable day. One of his most memorable flights was a slow 300 km on a difficult day in a competition at Horsham. When he got back he was depressed to see the others home and tied down and he thought "Oh no, I've been so slow I've come last." But all but three had abandoned the task and when he walked into the bar his crew gave a cheer. They had been waiting for him to ring in and tell them he had landed in a paddock from which they would have to go out and retrieve him.
Wright began visiting Adelaide Soaring Club when he was ten, taking his bicycle on the train to Gawler and riding to the airfield in time for an 8 o'clock start. He went solo on his 15th birthday.
His father flew light aircraft from Parafield when it was an open paddock. He would not fly gliders himself but gave Wright every encouragement.
Sunday's weather was unflyable and the suggested activity was that old standby, out and return to the winery.
On Monday if the low cloud clears as forecast it may be possible to fly in the afternoon but the weather chart indicates improving weather from Tuesday. Four contest days are required for a championship competition.
Further information Geoff Neely 0419 563 233 grneely@hotmail.com
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Day Three - after Monday 3 Dec 01
On Monday the weather was still bad, following the cold front that passed at the weekend.
This was the day we had to have. A day when you know there is not much point in flying but if you didn't launch and seee for youself you would be unsettled all day.
Emilis Prelgauskas, the Contest Director, said "I have seen glider pilots who have not flown for two days - I've been there. We must fly."
Prelgauskas drew first place on the launch grid and led the field off bravely, and was the only one to outland, ridiculously close to the airfield.
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Competition CompleteThe South Australian Gliding Competition at Waikerie, which finished on Friday, was marred by bad weather. Two days out of seven were cancelled. On two other days conditions were barely good enough for soaring and only moderate distances could be flown.
Eleven pilots took part. Sailplanes ranged in performance from Bernard Eckey's state of the art German ASH25P, a two seater with a wingspan of 25 metres, to Keith Willis's World Class Polish PW5, a 13 metre machine of limited performance recently introduced to provide one-class competition.
These aircraft were given handicaps from 0.80 to 1.18 in a one-class competition but the handicaps are based on performance in light winds and the higher performance sailplanes came to the fore in last week's strong winds.
Small, light aircraft such as the PW5 can turn tightly and climb well in weak and narrow thermals but the immense ASH25 is far more efficient in a high speed glide and is capable of high average speeds even in strong winds.
Bernard Eckey won the competition but Bruce Tuncks of Adelaide Soaring Club was only three points behind. Tuncks flies a Mosquito which is no longer competitive without its handicap but in earlier years Tuncks, in this aircraft, was one of the first pilots to fly a 750 km triangle.
The next placegetters were Phillip Ritchie and Cathy Conway.
One bad day can ruin an average score. Tuncks came equal last one day and his close second place overall is a reward for consistent performance on the other days. Apart from Tuncks the top four placegetters were in the top four every day, an indication of either very consistent flying or failure of the standard handicaps in this weather.
Tuncks at one point radioed back that he would like to throttle the weather man but he, Andrew Wright, had just given up and landed. The only pilot to land out was Emilis Prelgauskas, the competition director, who failed by 7 km to get home.
Keith Willis had to work hard to go anywhere against 25 knot winds. Near Kingston he says he repeatedly got low, climbed and set off, only to find he was almost back where he started. Even getting to one of the start points took time.
Craig Ward, a member of the Waikerie International Soaring Centre workshop staff, had an exciting ride in the back seat of Bernard Eckey's sailplane. Ward does not fly: he used to race go-karts, then a drag car, but now he is building a house and flying models. He had a rough ride in gusty thermals. He says Eckey would roll the glider into a turn until the wingtip seemed to be pointing at the ground and pull up into a climb, and Ward found this all too much for his stomach. He enjoys smoother weather than that.
Matthew Learmonth of Adelaide University Gliding Club, with his friend Brett, helped all week by running for aerotow ropes and hooking them on to gliders. Learmonth, a year 11 student, hopes to be a pilot. He flies solo at his club, where he often soars the ridge at Lochiel. He is used to winch launching and had never seen aerotowing before this. They began flying when Brett made a trial instructional flight at Adelaide Soaring Club and, not to be left out, went with him and did the same.
Aerotowing is more expensive than winch launching and Learmonth was happy to see others going off but he says "On Tuesday, the 7000 foot day, I was sort of looking up feeling slightly envious, but them's the breaks."
Mike Brett, the full-time tug pilot for the Waikerie season, learnt to fly gliders in Canada but has been in Australia for 20 years and is now an Australian citizen. He has flown twin engined charter aircraft in the Northern Territory and has flown gliders and tugs in widely different parts of Australia. He loves flying in any form but says he particularly enjoys the camaraderie at gliding sites.
It is usual for the State competition to be held at the same site two years running and Waikerie Gliding Club expects to host the competition again in 2002.
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