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SEQSA September Aerotow Report

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BrianF
Posts: 111
Joined: 19 Mar 2018, 09:36
Location: Brisbane AU
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SEQSA September Aerotow Report

Post by BrianF »

Neither weather nor COVID lockdowns could stop us yesterday. It turned out to be a cracker with great weather, lots of strong thermals, ten top pilots, many gorgeous models, a bit of drama and a bit of comedy.
We had a visitor, Trent, who just moved to the area from Mackay, he is a very experienced pilot and has a few scale sailplanes.
Kris and Mick did all the towing but one which Karl did. Thankyou for your accurate flying.
The field looked nice, there haven't been too many cattle around lately and the main strip was about as good as we have had.
Certainly much better than when we started.

Two incidents stopped flying, so apologies for that as I was involved in both. The Minimoa suffered a wing joiner mount failure within the fuselage, just as I started a loop. The model entered the earth just south of the dam wall. The ply plate that the wing rod locks attach to failed. If you have a High Ridge Soaring glider that uses the wing rod idea I would reinforce that part ASAP. Very little survived. Flying stopped as our tug pilots went to retrieve it for me. Thanks for that. Jilles was filming and managed to catch the crash on the camera.

The second was when my Salto was being towed, Karl's X-cub flies nicely, but is not very fast, so the flying speed is on the low side. On the downwind leg of the tow, the Salto began to catch up to the tug. Instead of using airbrakes and potentially stalling the tug, I released. Karl thought I might fly into the towline so released his end of the line as well. It landed somewhere in the owner's Barley crop to the north of the field. Our tug pilots immediately went off to look for it. Unfortunately that search and two more later on, failed to find it. The farmer has been informed, we have around 3 weeks to find it before the crop is harvested.

That was the drama, the comedy was varied consisting of situation jokes and good natured banter. There was one magnetic cow pat on the strip that seemed to attract almost every model on landing. Bets were placed to see who would be first to hit it. See if you can see it in the video.

I'm pretty sure everyone enjoyed the day. A couple of models didn't get to fly, but better safe than sorry. I'm probably the one who really should feel bad about the day, however I had a great time.
On the negative side, I'm sunburnt, my metal filled legs are killing me today. The positive? I have a spare storage spot to put another model and I finally captured one of my (rare) prangs on the camera. Regarding the camera, thanks Jilles and Trent for doing some filming for me, Kris for the crash stills. Must be getting better as I used about 20% of the footage this time. Sometimes 95% gets deleted.



Lastly, the planned October aerotow clashes with a long weekend and it seems a number of you have other plans. We might move to Saturday the 9th October. It doesn't clash with glider comps or warbirds. I hope you can make it to the next one.

Regards
Brian
Der Himmel ist blau und die Luft ist gut!
www.seqsa.net