This year’s event
was organised by Gliding Hawkes Bay & Waipukurau and held from Waipukurau
Airfield. This event is run as a friendly, low key regional championships and used
as a training ground for new competition pilots.
The final entry
list was 22 pilots over the Open, Racing and Sports classes. The Sports class
was competed in with two PW5s and a K6CR with a wide range of gliders in the
Open and Racing classes. There was a good mixture of regulars and new faces for
the competition period of Sunday 18th to Saturday 24th February inclusive.
John Etches
kindly volunteered to act as Contest Director and scorer. Graham White was
again weather man and task setter. Chief tow pilot was Neil Faulknor who flew
the Lexus powered Skylux towplane being trialled by the Gliding Hawkes Bay
& Waipukurau club. He was supported by Hugh de Latour in TZB, Phil Gray in
the Citabria CPD and various Gliding Manawatu pilots in the Pawnee CIG.
The club
secured sponsorship from Centralines (the local power lines company) along with
Marisco Family Winemakers, SBS Bank and Wrightsons for daily prizes. Publicity
was gained with reports and an interview on the local radio station with the local
newspaper publishing the results and a photo of the winning racing class pilot
and glider.
While the
initial forecast for the week was not great with the possibility of a cyclone
ruining the event, pilots ended up flying on the Saturday practice day along
with four contest days for a total of five days flying out of eight.
Flying had
some of everything with good thermals, convergences and wave on various days.
Unfortunately the wave on the Wednesday was difficult to get into and short
lived which made soaring a challenge. The airspace limitation of 9,500ft in the
main task area dropping to lower levels to the south west and north east added
to the difficulties and pilots needed to be wary of the boundaries to avoid
penalties.
Mike Lennard
improved from landing out to completing his first task and then repeating a
task completion on the final day. Allie Thompson completed her first solo task
on the last day in a Libelle.
Landouts were
few and far between so the plenty of safe landout areas, including some
suitable for aerotow retrieves, were barely used. Mike O’Donnell landed out at
the Kowhai airstrip and also a farm airstrip and was retrieved both times by
aerotow.
The Open class
was dominated by Patrick Driessen with Stewart Barton and Tony van Dyk in a
close tussle for second and third places. Local pilot James Foreman won the
racing class over fellow Hawkes Bay pilots Jason Price and Jason Kelly. In the
Sport class, reigning champion Richard Keir took an early lead but was beaten
by Richard Penman on the last two days to relinquish his title.
After a good
thermal day on Friday, in his jet powered JS1 Revelation, Patrick Driessen gave
a demonstration of its ability with low level passes with the jet going. It was
an impressive and noisy sight.
On the social
side, BBQs were organised on the airfield for the Sunday, Wednesday and Friday
evenings. With flying not finishing until early evenings, these were
appreciated with a good variety of steaks, salads and desserts, including fresh
Hawkes Bay strawberries, provided to hungry pilots under the organisation of
Brian Kelly. Donated fresh Hawkes Bay apples were again popular and consumed
almost as fast as delivered.
Hugh de Latour
entertained with his limericks which included:
What's that
noise? From whence is it coming?
Is there
something amiss in the plumbing?
No - settle
down, boys,
We call that
"White" noise -
It's Graham -
he's started his humming!
Hugh thought
the wave day looked fine
To put a Gold
Badge on the line.
"Today is
the day
I'll do three
hundred K"
But he missed
it by two-ninety-nine!
Michael Cooper
wasn't so bold,
He just wanted
Silver, not Gold.
He got Silver
all right -
Not for
distance or height,
But endurance,
turning 50 years old!
The birthday
cake for Michael’s 50th was cut, eaten and enjoyed after the
Wednesday evening BBQ.
Full details
of tasks and results can be found on Soaring Spot at https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/central-districts-regionals-february-2018-waipukurau-2018/results
Thanks to all
who helped make the event a success.
Next year’s competition
is scheduled to be held from Greytown and all pilots are most welcome to join
us for a fun, friendly contest.
Some photos from the event are on the previous blog post.
Some photos from the event are on the previous blog post.
