Introduction
About Gliding
Photographs
Club Fleet
Ararat Aerodrome
Rates and charges
Things to do
Club News
Wave Camp
Publications
Links
Revision Log
Workers
|
|
Club News

Geoff Vincent on State Focus - 2nd September 2007
Events and News
- Our new web site is at www.grampianssoaringclub.com/.
- Geoff Vincent reached 33,000 feet in the Grampians wave.
- Queens Birthday Wave Weekend. Geoff Vincent wrote "Saturday was rained
off and there was flying late Sunday afternoon when the tug was finally able to
make it out of Ararat. The westerly wind shift Sunday evening
produced moderate wave on Monday morning with several climbs to
10-12,000 feet and one to 15,000 ft. However, the cloud mass
developing ahead of the cold front chased us out of the wave and we
were all on the ground by about 1:00 - most at Noelhurst, one at
Ararat A/F and one safely in a paddock at Tatyoon. I'm sure the
story of that event will emerge in due course."
- Our rainwater tanks are full!
- Our rainwater system is installed. Using
a grant from the Federal Community Water Grants the Grampians Soaring Club installed two 100,000
litre tanks to collect the water from our main hangar. This
involved digging trenches along the hangar floor and out to the tanks
for the stormwater pipes. An automatic pump feeds water into the
Club reticulation system. A reticulation system for
glider ballast filling was installed along the side of the 04/22
runway. Taps along the fence line are above ground and those away
from the fence line are in recessed boxes. The overflow from the
tanks (if ever??) was piped to the approved drainage area. See the Publications page for the Ararat Advertiser report and Photographs page for more photos.
 |

|
Laying the stormwater pipes
|
The tanks and hangar
|
- Donald. The Ararat and Bendigo clubs held their annual Labour Day weekend at Donald.
The weather was warm and mostly sunny although some cirrus cloud
partially shaded the Donald area. Geoff Vincent made available a
sheet of tasks and their distances but no formal tasks were set.
Saturday was scratchy with the inversion somehwere near 3,500 ft QFE,
Sunday was better with 4,500 ft and most seemed to fly to St Arnaud and
back. Monday seemed scratchy to the south but there was 6,000 ft
with good climbs north of Donald.
- Horsham Week
was run this year by the Grampians Soaring Club with lots of help from
other clubs and the Wimmera Flying Club in particular. We owe a
great debt to Simon Hackett at Internode
for the generous provision of high speed internet at no cost to
us. This was most valuable for the task setters, enabling them to
download the laatest weather maps. The results of the competition
may be found at http://www.printerschoice.com.au/Horsham2009/
- The
Wave just keeps on coming. On Sunday October 5
Tom had an excellent wave flight. He wrote: Following up on last weekends wave
prediction, Sunday proved to be a
great wave day. Initially the wave was only working to the north and
south of Mount William, triggered off by the Victoria range to the west
of the main range. I used the opportunity to explore the southern
ranges and to fly along the valley between the Serra range and the
Mount William range whilst staying in lift throughout. It's very
strange being on that side of mount william! (see the photo attached).
Later in the day the wind speed picked up and sparked up the Mount
William wave allowing a climb to 24,000ft. It was a text book wave day
- very easy to explore and exploit. Fantastic day.

- Easter
Camp. Friday was not much
use, but Saturday was very good with 4 knot to 8 knot thermals to over
7,000 feet. Ted Gaida found that he could speed ring fly along
the Grampians with very little circling and was able to reach each end
of the
Grampians twice. Sunday was flyable in the morning, but rain
showers and thunderstorms came in during the afternoon. Monday
had a cloud base below the mountain tops so it was an early return to
Ararat. Tom has a nice YouTune video of a glider flight at Mt
William. Look in Links for it.
- Indian
Summer! Saturday
was hot and useless with a cirrus cloud cover and unbroken inversion at
1,500 ft above ground, but Sunday was very different. Harold Page
flew a Diamond Goal distance, Gary Stevenson flew 574 Km, Ted Gaida
flew the Pooch to Halls Gap, Horsham and return and Gerry Elliott
achieved 12,000 feet altitude. The ground temperature was just
over 40 degrees. Unfortunately the heat seemed to deter some
members from coming.
- TV Appearance for
Geoff Vincent SUNDAY 2nd SEPTEMBER
8:30AM STATE FOCUS - Southern Cross Ten Network. Geoff
Vincent discussed the grampians record flight he flew on the 9th
August. The interview covered details of the flight and
provided a good introduction to the theory of wave flying. GFA footage
of wave flying was shown throughout the interview, giving the viewers a
real perspective of the sport. A copy will be available for viewing at
the clubhouse.
- New Grampians
Soaring Record set by Geoff Vincent. Thursday 9th August 2007. Geoff
Vincent has broken the Grampians soaring record (previously 28,400 ft)
after soaring to a height of 29,364 ft. At 11am, Geoff entered the
primary lee wave approximately 10km East of Mount William and climbed
through FL270 and into FL300. Tom Harding achieved a height of 28316
ft in the same primary wave,
achieving a personal best and his first diamond height claim.
Conditions at height were challenging as always, with an outside air
temperature of -45°C and one third atmospheric pressure at 29000
ft.
The australian altitude record currently stands at 33000 ft.
- Weekend
weather predictions now online. Geoff
Vincent will be updating the weather page
every Friday to give the weekend
soaring forecast.
- The
Duty Roster
to 30-03-2008 has been added.
- Soaring
Australia web site. Your attention is drawn to www.soaring.org.au
- Glider
trailer Regulations. Extension of the revised regulations
for glider trailers until 1/12/2009 has been published. Click here to download a copy
in .rtf format.
- Queen's
Birthday Wave Camp (June 9 to 11 or 12, 2007) is on again this
year
with accommodation at Bastin Park. See the Wave Camp page for more information. Please
note the changes to
airspace as shown in the ERC-Low
document.and the Wave Booklet (colour)(3.5Mb).
or black and white(1.3Mb). Please
let John Anselmi at
or (03) 5358 2713
if you
are coming.
- Constitution. The
Club's constitution in Adobe Acrobat (*.pdf) format may be downloaded
here. It is currently under revision.
- Duty Roster. Click
here for HTML format.
Back
to top
|