All those in the north island are saying, 'thank goodness for the Indian Summer!'. Not so much in the South where the first snow has arrived.
def: An Indian summer is a period of unseasonably warm, dry weather that sometimes occurs in autumn in temperate regions.
So while the days are noticeably shorter and daylight savings does end this weekend, this period of lovely mostly settled weather is long overdue for many pilots.
Clubs have been busy flying their socks off and the last comp of the year, The Great MSC Grand Prix has just come to a successful close.
This month we have two long weekends with Easter and Anzac (especially if you take the Monday before ANZAC off!).
Amazing flights will favour those who give it a go.
So what are you waiting for?
Enjoy the Indian Summer.
Steve Wallace
GNZ President
Congratulations
BEN GAMBARO
First solo, well done to a wet Ben!
CHEYE MORAN
First solo. Age has its privileges. Flowers instead of a bucket of water.
KEVIN BROWN
First solo. No water here either. Just high fives from the WWGC President Simon Casey.
NIGEL CAIGOU
First solo! Nigel (centre) only started his training at the beginning of this year.
ANGELIE MADSEN
Single seat conversion and just turned 16. Well done Angelie!
JOHN TURNBULL
Re-solo after 23 years away from gliding. Welcome back John!
HARVEY BELL
GNZ's youngest member at age 10!
MICHAEL STRATHERN
For competing in the Club Class Preworlds, Narromine, Australia
BRETT HUNTER
Winner of Open Class (A) at the Great MSC Grand Prix
ANTON LAWRENCE
Winner of Racing Class (B) at the Great MSC Grand Prix
Yaw Strings
Tim innovates the future
Tim's winning secrets revealed
Ever wondered why Tim is able to fly so much faster and in perfect balance compared to the rest of us? It turns out he is a mere mortal but he does have a secret competitive advantage. Tim reveals all in the video below.
Juniors and Novice Event
An event just for you!
Have you always wanted to enter a cross country flying event but felt these are only for very good, experienced pilots. Well now there is an event just for you.
Junior and novice pilots only
Held during the school holidays
Each glider must be supervised by a mentor/crew
Tasking over landable terrain
Simplified contest rules
Airborne coaching encouraged
Winch launches to keep costs down
Having fun compulsory
Block these dates out in your calendar: Monday 8th Jan - Friday 12th Jan 2024 at Papawai
Thanks to Will Verland at Piako G.C. the MSC has a new online booking system for their bunkrooms
From the home page of the gliding.net.nz website select 'Matamata Soaring Centre' from the club list, then 'Book Accommodation' or go to the msc.gliding.co.nz website.
No excuse now not to get your digs sorted early.
From around the clubs
Steve Foreman - just happy to be at a contest that wasn't cancelled!
Craig Best - land out under a great sky (we've all been there)
Craig Best and retrieve crew Iggy Wood - land out under a not so great sky
Steve Care appealing to the weather Gods
New snow down South. Torlesse Mountain. Photo by John McCaw
The boys with their new toy. Hadleigh Bognuda and Conal Edwards with their new Arcus M.
How Ben Gambaro got to be so wet.
Waiting for the grass to grow or is it thermals to form?
Tim Bromhead secretly tests out his newly installed warp drive but is caught out by his own tracking program. This was a quick trip to the Indain Ocean and back while on task at the Taupo Contest.
A local farmer tries Trace Austin's landed out Discus on for size.
Would you trust this to take your glider to the grid?
Want to do an OE instructing in the UK?
Expressions of Interest sort for an opportunity of a lifetime!
Andy Parish a UK instructor currently flying in NZ has offered to help GNZ with matching up of NZ instructors, with suitable gliding clubs in the UK.
Details are TBC and will depend on the location, but preliminary indications are something similar to what Papawai offers their summer crew could be arranged.
Some GNZ and UT funding may even be possible for young instructors who would bring back a wealth of experience from full time summer instructing in the UK.
The soaring season vario still continues to sing a merry song with a net gain of a further 5 members this month bringing the annual result to a healthy +12. Well done to all those clubs that bringing in new members and are working hard to provide a great environment for our existing members.
From the SRC
Competition Bids
The SRC would like to remind all competition organisers that in preparation for the upcoming AGM / Contest Pilots meeting (June 10th -11th, 2023), bids for 2024 / 25 season events need to be populated into the GNZ Event Calendar asap. The 'Add to Calendar' button can be found at the bottom left of the page.
Can parties interested in bidding for the:
2024/2025 Club Class Nationals (one bid already received)
2024/2025 Northern Regionals
2024/2025 Central Districts Regionals
2024/2025 SI Regionals (one bid already received)
Please either populate the GNZ calendar with your bids, or email me, [email protected] details of your bids and I will populate the GNZ calendar on your behalf.
Timely response appreciated, so as to give the SRC time to consider/sort potential conflicts, and if any decisions are required enable the SRC to rationalise the options and then organise a poll for pilots to vote between the various options before the upcoming AGM.
Selection for International Contests
Pilots considering representing New Zealand at any upcoming international events need to be aware of the selection and application process including cut off dates. These can be found in the MOAP on page 26. Umbrella Trust funding should aslo be applied for asap post any successful selection.
Check out the events page of the GNZ website for all upcoming events.
It is worth noting that there is a possibility that the 14th FAI Junior World Gliding Championship 2026 (Club, Std.) may be in Australia...
Incident Reports
We're out of cycle for reports this month from the Ops team.
You can access all back copies of the Ops Team Talking newsletters.
Do you need to file an OPS-10 as well as CA005? This question comes up a lot. The CAA must be
notified immediately by phone after an "accident", along with the relevant CFI (MOAP Ref page 61
& 62). A Form CA005 Occurrence Report must then be filed with CAA within ten days.
The view of Gliding NZ is that every incident or accident is also an opportunity to learn something
that could prevent a similar occurrence in the future, and for this reason an OPS-10 report should
also be filed with the ROO even though this is not explicitly requested in AC 2-08.
A link to the GNZ incident reporting form (OPS 10) can be found in the very top menu bar on the GNZ homepage, just to the right of the 'Classified Adverts'. You can now fill this form out on your phone at the airfield so no excuses.
