GNZ Newsletter December 2022
From the president
Welcome to the December 2022 GNZ newsletter.
Well Spring started out with some great early soaring weather.
Unfortunately in the North last month it was a bit rainy.
Two out of two first up contests cancelled due to the bad weather.
Luckily Aotearoa has two islands.
Even luckier for those North Island pilots that headed South.
Springfield got in four contest days and had a cross country soaring week with 11,000' cloud bases on one of the days. Now the mountain flying week at Omarama is underway as we speak.
I wonder what summer has in store for us?
Much joyous flying I would expect.
I look forward to hearing all about it.
See you up there.
Steve Wallace
GNZ President
Congratulations
AMY SMITH
XCP complete and a Silver 50km claim to be made. Well done Amy!
GEORGIA SCHOFIELD
Her first 1,000km flight with Captain Mike Oakley
Link to the flight and photos here: https://www.weglide.org/flight/225400
KEITH MACY
C category Instructor Rating
FRANK EXCELL
C Category instructor rating
TERRY DELORE
Winner of the Springfield Soaring Championships 2022
MURRAY WARDELL & DIANE EDWARDS of the Auckland Gliding Club. Just married!
STEVE CARE & JENNY HEALY of the Piako Gliding Club. About to be married!
Tim's Tracking System Goes Global
NZ has the Wild Track App and the GNZ Tracking Website, now the world has PureTrack.io
But what are the differences I hear you exclaim!
PureTrack.io website is Tim’s latest project, that is a more advanced version of the GNZ tracking system, but designed for the rest of the world. And for other types of aircraft, not just gliders.
Not all the data from the GNZ system is going onto PureTrack yet, so NZ glider pilots should stick with gliding.net.nz/tracking. That will remain the GNZ system to use indefinitely.
Currently what is NOT going into PureTrack.io, and only to gliding.net.nz/tracking:
- The WildTrack iPhone app.
- SPOT and InReach through TrackeMe.
- MT600s and Particle trackers.
- Cell phone apps like BTraced and Overland set to send data to gliding.net.nz. Note you can’t send to both, so stick to gliding.net.nz for now.
Things that will work with PureTrack:
- SPOT and InReach through the US service can also set up their devices in PureTrack if they want to.
- FLARM tracking will appear on both sites (including apps that use flarm tracking like SeeYou Navigator).
- ADSB data is only going to PureTrack
Eventually Tim will make sure all data from the GNZ site will also go to PureTrack and vice versa, but in the meantime stick to gliding.net.nz/tracking
From the SRC
Apologies from the editor, this was meant to be published last month.
Links below to fruitfully inform thyself.
Competition Pilots
Rules for the 2022/23 competition season
BGA Glider Handicaps 2022/23 as adopted by the SRC
Contest Organisers
new Contest Management Guide now available
New Levies
Organisers of national and regional competition events for 2022/2023 season please include $10 per contestant and send this to GNZ to fund the purchase of glider scales as agreed at the AGM Pilots Meeting.
Organisers to also ask pilots for a voluntary $10 donation and pass this to GNZ to fund the igc ranking fee for the 2022/2023 season.
Multi-Class Nationals Omarama
Thursday 19th January - Saturday 28th January
Omarama always offers up some of the best high energy competition flying available anywhere in the world. Want to fly a 600km racing task at over 200kph? Omarama is the proven place to do it.
Are you taking your glider to the 'other' island this year? Click on the pic below to get a 10% ferry discount.
Club Class Nationals Matamata
Friday 3rd February - Sunday 12th February
You don't need the latest and greatest to have fun testing your skills against some of the best in this highly competitive class. Indeed you don't even need your own glider as a club glider will do just fine.
Auckland Soaring Championships
Sunday 1st January - Sunday 8th January
From around the clubs
Canterbury Gliding Club. 75th Anniversary. They scrub up nice!
Wellington Wairarapa - Stefano's first flight in a glider
Aviation Sports - Whenuapai. First look at Izzy and Shiv's new glider.
Justin Wills captured by Georgia Schofield heading south.
The Air Training Corps go motor-gliding.
Brett Hunter's JS3 heads south for the better weather.
Kahu Soaring over Glentanner
If you haven't seen it already. Amazing video by Tobias Read flying out of Omarama.
Updated Instructor Training Programme Now Approved!
We've come a long way
On the 19th October 2022 the CAA accepted GNZ's updated instructor training programme (ITP) and on November 30th 2022, GNZ's plan to roll out the new ITP was accepted. Expect to see the consequential changes to our MOAP, AC's and forms appear very shortly. Workshops to up-skill our instructors to the new programme will start this winter.
An enormous amount of work has gone into the development of this updated syllabus and I'd like to thank the GNZ team that worked on this, especially Martyn Cook, Bob Henderson, David Moody and Max Stevens. I'd also like to thank the team at CAA who helped guide us through their requirements.
Suffice to say we've come a long a way since the 1966 one pager you can read below.
Membership
Membership
Still waiting for the stragglers to sort their club memberships out so that a meaningful update can be provided. We'll update you in January. In the meantime Auckland has a novel way to promote gliding and its history to the local population.
Safety Tips
"Today's the Day"
The below article that appeared in Auckland Gliding Club's newsletter I found most appropriate and it applies as much to taking off and landing as it does to being prepared for a land-out. We have most unfortunately had a recent serious winch accident that just highlights, you never know if today is the day that something might go wrong, so expecting that something will go wrong at least means you are mentally prepared to take action.
Incident Reports
From the desk of the NOO (National Operations Officer)
INCIDENT REPORTS FOR SEPT - OCT 2022
- small ring at glider end of tow rope found to be cracked - but not discovered until end of day
- towplane door flew open during ground roll, tow pilot admitted to skipping a few checks
- near miss head-on with a power plane in a climbing attitude - with poor forward visibility
- motor glider circled over owner's house with engine running, neighbour complained to club
- near miss on a local ridge - one glider had Flarm off, other was on wrong frequency in CFZ
- tow pilot turned left when rope went slack at drop height - but glider had not released - upset
- non-standard arrival into controlled airspace while testing new ADS-B installation
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
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.
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)
DISCUS 2T
For Sale
GNZ Classifieds
Jason has his beautiful Discus 2T for sale in GNZ's classifieds. Check out the listed price!
https://gliding.co.nz/classifieds/
If a free Discus 2T is not your cup of tea then below are a few more ideas that might fit well into your Xmas stocking.
Check out the 'merch' from Tim's Pure Glide store.
Or how about Simon Gault's autobiography "No half measures" with guest appearance by Terry & Abbey Delore.
Don't forget, Milan has on offer from his fotorama.co.nz web-shop a selection of amazing high quality printed gliding photos ready for you to frame and hang.
Or if you have always wanted to fly from the incredible soaring paradise of Omarama you can just book a flight with Milan at Kahu Soaring.
Thanks for reading
All contributions, pics, videos and opinions welcome
EMAIL: [email protected]