GNZ Newsletter August 2023
From the president
Welcome to the August 2023 GNZ newsletter.
Mid winter is now behind us.
One more month of winter to go.
Clubs have been remarkably busy though.
The winter thus far has been mild.
And lots of flying has been happening.
In the north instead of just rain, we now have rain and wind.
Wind is good, cause the ridges and wave are working.
Things are changing.
Goodbye La Nina, hello El Nino.
Not long now until goodbye winter, hello spring.
I'm excited by what's coming.
Time to fly.
Steve Wallace
GNZ President
Congratulations
MATT COWEN
First Solo. Nice one Matt!
ANNETTE TEICHNER
First solo and on a beautiful looking day too. Well done Annette!
ANNA GREEN
Congratulations on your first ever glider flight. $25 winch launch to 2,500' agl, then over an hour in wave up to 10,000'. Welcome to gliding! Youth Glide's newest member.
ROB NEIL
Receives the Stu Cain Mug at the Canterbury Club awards night for winning the mid winter fun comp.
Mid Winter Flying Comps
What does your club do when it comes to mid winter comps?
A great way to keep your club members engaged and entertained over the winter months is to organise a mid winter comp. Here are some fun ideas from the Canterbury Club showing what they were measuring in their recent mid winter shenanigans.
• Bombing: distance from a target (closest was 35m, worst was 186m) • Best at estimating heights • Distance from touch down mark (best was 0m, worst was 84m) • Distance from stopping mark (best was 0m, worst was 102m) • Hit the toi toi fence (the list of shame) • Biggest skid mark (and this wasn't the toilet they were talking about)
What it looks like when done right.
And don't forget, to make it a great day out ensure there are activities that involve the whole family.
From our friends at Sport NZ, something clubs should be starting to think about, noting that any changes to your constitution will have to be voted through at an AGM or SGM, so plan ahead.
GOVERNANCE
Incorporated Societies Act 2022 and Regulations
Sport NZ recommends taking a coordinated, approach to the updating of constitutions. There is no need to urgently complete the re-registration process, which opens on 5 October 2023, as it doesn’t close until 5 April 2026. Societies continue to operate under the current 1908 Act until re-registration. There will be more support offered around this including various templates and checklists for organisations as well as webinars (the first of these being held in September) so keep an eye out.
This approach will help us make the most of our collective insights and, where possible, minimise the cost of compliance and providing sufficient time for societies to consider good governance and other changes concurrently.
Please continue to reach out to your partnership managers, or email [email protected], if you have any questions or feedback as we go. We are particularly interested in how we might collectively support our smaller societies including our 7,500 clubs.
GNZ will keep you updated.
A useful link you may want to file is the Incorporated Societies Constitution builder. Once updated this tool will help you ensure your new constitution complies.
From around the clubs
What a great month for epic photos July has been...
Whenuapai double rainbow. But what does it mean?
Springfield Glory
Stunning Kaimai ridge photo by Mr. Pure Glide himself.
Jaco Potgieter. Photo time during a Tauranga pax flight.
Mike Strathern. Double shot of coffee and a winch launch wakes you up!
Nelson Lakes looking moody.
Ollie Roberts doesn't let a minor snow flurry stop him from flying!
Tickling the toi toi's at the Canterbury Glding Club
Awards Officer
GNZ Awards Officer
After 15 years as the GNZ Awards Officer Edouard Devenoges has retired and been replaced by Bruno Tagliapietra. Edouard has meticulously overseen to an exceptionally high standard the issue of many FAI Badges and World Records to many GNZ pilots. He leaves some big boots to fill. To help with the handover Bruno visited Edouard at his home in Tauranga and by the looks of the picture was very well feed! For any awards claims please send these to [email protected] as per usual. You will be hearing more from Bruno during the course of this year as he settles into the job. A huge thank you to Edouard for your years of dedicated service and a big thank you to Bruno for volunteering to take on the role.
Membership
Membership Display Panel
Winter can be a tricky time for finding those membership climbs and this month we have certainly run into a rather large patch of sink! After gaining some nice altitude (membership numbers) over the first quarter of this year we have unfortunately lost half our gained height this month just gone. A set back for sure but this, as all good glider pilots will know, is why we try and bank some height while the going is good, as it allows us to glide through the dead or sinking air with ease. Spring is just around the corner and hopefully some of those closed airfields will be reopening soon and clubs can get back to attracting and flying potential new members.
Autonomous Flight Following
Brian Savage
A serious step forward in safety
Omarama’s Autonomous Flight Following system will soon be available globally
Flying out of Omarama deep into the Southern Alps is a fantastic experience but comes with many challenges. One of which is the lack of mobile coverage, so if anything does go wrong, you have little chance of being able to contact anyone.
Therefore, OGC strongly encourages everyone to fly with a satellite tracker (Spot, InReach, etc.) so they will show up on Tim Bromhead’s excellent GNZ Tracking site.
However, many pilots fly without anyone ground-based to monitor the tracker for them, and as OGC is limited on personnel to do just that, we developed an autonomous flight following system which enables flights to be monitored automatically by computer without real eyeballs looking at computer screens.
The tracking service is instigated by the pilot, any time that day before take-off, using the Omarama Airfield App’s flight following feature.
Should anything untoward happen, such as a loss of signal, or a stationary position being reported, then the system sends text message alerts to the OGC flight following team allocated for the day so they can investigate.
OGC ran this system successfully last season, at times simultaneously tracking over 25 aircraft, and views the system as a major step forward in monitoring the safety of our pilots.
Thankfully, last season, no one had any serious problems, but the system correctly reported loss-of signal and landouts on several occasions all of which were investigated by the team.
Personally, I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasm from pilots for the system, showing an unaddressed need for formal flight following by both the pilots and their families. In fact, overseas pilots expressed keen interest in accessing the system for their home airfields.
Lake Keepit in Australia were particularly interested in using the system. Consequently, a new Global Flight Following system has been developed which is currently in alpha testing, with plans for the production version to be available in the next few months. This new version will work worldwide, not just in Omarama.
The global system uses Tim’s new global flight tracking system - PureTrack – which tracks everything, everywhere!
The Global Flight Following system is designed to be run by a club for its pilots. Once the club is set up, and the pilot has registered their tracking device on PureTrack they can use the new Flight Following app to start the service to follow their flight.
If you want to know more about the new tracking system and how it works, click here.
If your club wants to use the system, and it would be beneficial for more clubs to get involved in testing prior to the production version, please contact Brian Savage.
Finally, Tony Glentworth of TrackMe NZ has several pre-loved InReach Mini trackers available from a client’s system upgrade. These are at a great price! Contact Tony directly or Brian Savage for more information.
Kevin Clark voices his opinion
Letter to the Editor.. and all GNZ members.
I started gliding in 1976, began instructing in 1979, and for years soaked up the contents of our magazines ---The Gliding Kiwi and then Soaring NZ, now sadly gone, financially unsustainable. They were full of entertaining tales of derring-do, amazing flights, ‘how I done it’ badge flights, first solos, fails, interesting yarns, retrieve stories, operational matters, reviews of new gliders, competition reports, controversial topics et al. I stirred up/challenged a few things, - ‘letters to the editor’ was a forum for debate. I produced our club’s newsletter for thirteen years. Same sort of approach. What’s happened ? Most of all that stuff seems to have disappeared, or very thin on the ground. Is the on-line world of Facebook, the Go-Pro together with YouTube superseding the need for written articles of interest in newsletters? Whether they are hard copies or not?
Steve calls for contributions to the on-line newsletter, but usually it’s mostly a parade of Happy Snaps of first solos, conversions, gliders in paddocks, pilots shaking hands receiving awards and whatever. All power to the achievers. There are a few random other items. A bit lacking in meat. How about some contributions from the membership?
To start things off I’ll write that the bit in the Training Manual, re keeping station behind the tug on aerotow by co-ordinated turns is a dodgy way of teaching a rookie. It was apparently insisted on by somebody high up in the food chain, probably not having spent much time, if any, at the instructing coalface. Various instructors have raised this with me, some from other clubs, and we all agree it’s not on, and we wouldn’t teach that method. Regardless of what’s in the training manual, we are sticking to the time honoured proven method of keeping the glider wings parallel with/same angle of bank as the tug and slide back into position with a touch of rudder, if necessary. Co-ordinated turns behind a tug are best left for the experienced pilot.
Any comments?
Kevin Clark A Cat.
WWGC
Incident Reports
No reports this month as we are out of cycle with the Ops Team Talking newsletter so instead please see below a report from Canada on a fatal collison between a tow plane and the glider it was towing. The point is to get you thinking on what procedure do you have in place should you lose sight of the tow plane and the tow plane loses sight of you? Thanks to Gerard Robertson for sending this through.
https://www.tsb.gc.ca/eng/rapports-reports/aviation/2019/a19w0099/a19w0099.html
You can access all back copies of the Ops Team Talking newsletters.
These have been placed on the Gliding NZ web site under News > Safety Bulletins 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.
OPS 10 link: http://gliding.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OPS10v7f.pdf
In the case of an accident, asap please phone: 0508 ACCIDENT (0508 222 433)
GNZ Classifieds
Prices aren't what they used to be but you can buy an ASW-15 for $10K if you go to the GNZ Classifieds page.
Thanks for reading
All contributions, pics, videos and opinions welcome
EMAIL: [email protected]