Gliding Hawkes Bay
& Waipukurau hosted the Centralines 2020 Central Districts Gliding
Championships from Waipukurau Airfield from the 22nd to 29th
February inclusive. The aim was to have a friendly, low key contest with tasks
achievable for pilots of all abilities and glider types. Local airspace is
unrestricted to 9,500ft which minimised potential airspace issues.
With almost 30
entrants, even after some last minute withdrawals, word must be getting around
that the event is worth attending. Task setter Graham White did an admirable
job with a field ranging from a PW5 to ASH25M.
Under the aegis of John
Etches the contest director, things got off to an inauspicious start with
practice day seeing just a ferry flight from Bridge Pa and a local area familiarisation
flight by the Auckland Duo Discus. It did, however, allow pilots to arrive and
get rigged and ready. Sunday then proved to be a damp squib with no flying at
all.
With the positive attitude
of the contest director helping the weather, the next seven days were all
soarable even though it looked unlikely on some days. Pilots enjoyed thermals,
convergence and wave at various times. Mike Strathern also reported doing some
ridge soaring in a Libelle.
While there were
just three contest days, local, no stress, flying was possible on other days
with some notable flights. On the Wednesday with local conditions dying just
after the start of the contest launch, conditions looked great on and over the
western ranges. Taking a long tow in the ASH25M, Graham White and Jason Kelly were
joined by Tim Bromhead in his Ventus CT 17.6m to explore the western ranges area
south to in sight of the windmills and northwest past Taihape at heights of
over 9,000ft.
There were only a
few landouts during the contest with Derek Shipley taking the prize for
achieving the most. He has written a separate article about his exploits. A
longer task and the weather bluing out earlier than forecast on the Friday saw
the most landouts in a day.
Youth pilot Kieran
Cassidy, flying a DG 101 in his first contest, impressed with his flying
abilities to finish 2nd on the 3rd day and 4th
overall in the racing class.
A large contingent
of pilots camped on the airfield and they were well fed with club run BBQ’s on
the Sunday and Wednesday nights. The final dinner was held at a local café on
the Friday evening.
With a cold front
approaching with predicted rain mid-afternoon, the contest was declared ended
on the Saturday morning. However, as forecast, there was good, silky smooth,
easy to get into wave ahead of the predicted rain which allowed climbs to
9,500ft (the local airspace limit) without problems. A number of pilots took
advantage of this while most packed up and headed home after prize giving.
Results, tasks and
flight files are at https://www.soaringspot.com/en_gb/central-districts-gliding-championships-feb2020-waipukurau-2020/results
Congratulations to
the winners:
Open Class:
1 GOP Tim
Bromhead 2,986
2 GDX Nigel
McPhee & Lucas Bottin 2,019
3 GVA Stewart
Barton 1,958
Racing Class:
1 GNM Trace
Austin 2,685
2 GHN Mike
Strathern 2,462
3 GKP Steve
Foreman 2,289
Sports 13.5m:
1 GNR Grahame
Player 1,637
2 GGN Clinton
Steele 1,479
3 GET John
Tullet 1,414
Thanks
must be given to all who helped run the event – contest director and scorer
John Etches, weather man and task setter Graham White, BBQ organiser Brian
Kelly, tow pilots, ground runners, radio operators and flight followers, time keepers
etc. Without your help, contests cannot be run.
The 2021 event is
currently again scheduled for Waipukurau in the last week of February so mark
your diaries now and we look forward to seeing you then.
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