Natural Disaster.

Well as some one reminded me this isn't my first trip to a country during a natural disaster. Although the earthquake in Christchurch didn't kill as many people as the floods did when I was in Rio this is the worst disaster this country has ever seen.

Not every one has been found yet they do think their are more people trapped alive under collapsed buildings. The quake registered 6.3 on the rictor scale. They were in the process of rebuilding after a 7.1 in September. That quake did not cause as much damage and I don't think any life was lost. This time the tremor was not as deep, 5km compared to 33km deep in September. It was also closer to town and during a busy time of the day.

I heard one story of a woman working on the fourth floor of a building that was standing on the street after the quake hit. About 70 people have died and many more injured. I've heard of people having limbs amputated to free them from the rubble. Constant after shocks, one reaching 5.7, have made rescue dangerous.

New Zealand is a small country with 4 million people. Christchurch is one of it's largest city's at 4 hundred thousand. It seems every one around me has friends or family that live there. It seems as every one was affected.

Australia, Japan and the US have sent people to help in the rescue. People here are opening their homes to strangers to give them shelter after they have lost everything. The entire country is pulling together to help Christchurch get back on it's feet. This doesn't really seem like any thing new here. From what I've seen in my short time here they all treat each other pretty well on a daily basis.

Kicking off the rust.

I've lost my camera but I will try to get a new one so I can post some pictures.

We had a few windy day's here so not to much flying was happening when I got here. The temps. have been great for getting my tan on tho. When the wind backed off I did a bunch of tows with Guy, one of the other tandem pilots. The first couple felt pretty rusty. It really sucks going so long with out being able to fly at home. Even after three months you feel rusty. It's been even longer since I've Areo towed, three years! It's great having some coaching from some one who does it every day.

Today Guy signed me off on my New Zealand ratings and I took my first customers. Two tour buses came in at 4:00 and we had four micro light flights to do and five tandems. Wouldn't you know my first passenger was Canadian! A girl from Toronto who giggled pretty much the entire flight. Also my good luck the airport was busier than JFK at that time. Trevor snuck out on grass strip next to the paved run way with the micro light and I had to wait for 4 planes to land before we could go.

Once we got threw a bit of turbulence for the first few hundred feet the air was butter smooth. Then I here some one calling me on the radio. It's the sky dive plane asking me to move a bit to the west as he was dropping off some sky divers. I moved over a bit but I don't think as far as he would have liked. I was staying super conservative and with a good sea breeze blowing in I didn't want to wander too far away from the strip.

Trevor my boss is very safety conscious and I'm staying extra Conservative until I become comfortable with all the action we have here. Looks like we have five great days of weather ahead of us.

Endless Summer.

After a poor summer flying season and an early start to winter again I just couldn't stand to go an entire winter without flying again. My first thought was to try and find a job in New Zealand flying tandems. After sending an e mail to Jim Ronney he suggested Sky Adventures. I sent them an e mail and they offered me a job. After learning the process and getting my Visa I finally booked my plane ticket for the 3rd of Feb.

I had a three hour flight into San Fransico from Calgary and then a 12hr flight to Auckland. The flight was uneventful and I managed to get enough sleep on the plane that I wasn't too tired when I arrived.

My job is near Nelson on the south island so I figured I'd spend a day in Auckland as I didn't think I would be back unitl I headed home. Auckland has a feel much like Vancouver. It seems the economy has hit the young girls here hard. They can't afford skirts that much more than cover their butt's. I rented a car to explore the town. Auckland wasn't really the best place to try and get used to driving on the left side of the road. I didn't have any problems but I constantly have to think about where I am and need to be on the road.

From Nelson I rented another car to drive to Motueka and get myself familiar with the area. We operate out of a busy little airport with a pit special that does scenic flight. A sky dive out fit, and a flight school with cesnas and helicopters. The place is beautiful right near the ocean and on the edge of the Tasmin national park. This is going to be a great place to spend a few months.

Late Starting.

Well it seems summer has arrived in Golden. The Forecast was for 30c light winds and high cloud base. Finally they got it right. Turned into a great day!

A few hang glider pilots on launch and we all got a very late start on the day. I was the first to launch at 4:00. Down low the lift was strong enough but broken and disorganized. Getting high at the start was a challange. Leif launched a bit after me and was working to get up as well. I headed over MT7 and finally hooked up with some good lift and climbed out to 13 000'. I search to find Leif but just couldn't spot him. The top sail is really hard to spot from a distance. I headed back to launch and spotted him still working his way up. Not finding any lift I headed back to MT7 and still had trouble finding lift.

Instead of Leif climbing up to me I sunk out to him. As this was the highest he had been he headed off for pagliaro. I just lost 5000' so I wanted to get up before making the crossing. After struggling for a bit I finally got back to base before heading out. Once at cloud base It was easy going. Good glides under the cloud street. I hit the core of a good thermal at Pagliaro and climbed back to 13 000' From there I never made a turn until I spotted Leif at Harrogate. I was climbing above him and still managed to loose track of him.

From there I had a couple more climbs before a long glide into Edgewater. This was the first time from leaving Mt7 that I got below 10 000'. Again the lift was broken down lower but I seemed to be getting the hang of it and made my way back up with out taking too long.

Stopped to climb a couple times on the way to Invermere. The plan was to fly to Invermere but I was in orbit and it was a fast trip down. I figured I'd fly to Fairmont and make a new plan there. I got high at Fairmont and I thought it was still early enough to keep going. I didn't realize my insturment had the wrong time on it. I found a bit of lift on the way to Canal flats but didn't gain much. The low hills at Canal flats were buoyant but not producing much n the way of lift. It's about 30km to the next landing Field so going any further was out of question. I burned off the height I had and landed in a large Field south of the high way.

I was desperate for some food but it was 8:30 and the streets roll up here 7:00. I found a pub in town that was open and they were kind enough to find me some left overs to eat.

Leif stuck with the plan and landed the airport in Invermere. Then had to suffer through retrieving me. Thanks to Lauren for coming to get us!! Looks like another good day.

Mara fly in.

leif and I hit the road on Friday planning to fly in Golden in the afternoon before pressing onto Mara to fly Saturday. It looked really bad in Golden so we didn't even slow down. Just kept pressing onto Mara. The sky looked great when we got to Mara and we thought we had missed a really good day there. As it turned out we didn't miss much. The wind wasn't really cooperating that day.

Some one tell me what these two are thinking?

I can't figure it out.

Saturday I didn't get out of bed in time for the first trip up but some paragliders went up and did some tandems and sledders. We went back up in the afternoon and things were looking good. Nice looking sky and the winds appeared to be light. The wind was cross a lot but some really nice cycles would blow in regularly. A few of the paragliders got off and were up but not really high. I was getting ready to take off in a nice cycle when I saw Tonya dropping like a stone from a 1000' over and ended up landing. This didn't inspire me so I waited for the next one. Once the wind started blowing in nicely again I figured I should get off the hill. I flew threw what seemed like pretty good lift right in front of launch but just wasn't on top of it. A little further out I found enough to get me above launch. The lift was disorganized and hard to follow. Good climbs just suddenly stopping or moving. The wind was stiff out of the south and it was a struggle to make progress. I didn't think anyone else would bother trying to fight into the head wind so instead of waiting for friends to join me I headed out on my own. As the day wore on the lift got a little better and I was getting a little higher. As many who have flown here will tell you the Enderby cliffs look like a great place to find lift but never seem to work. You need to try and get high here as you have to jump a bit of a gap in the range. Knowing all this and fighting into a head wind I tried to get as high as I could before crossing the gap just behind the Enerby cliffs. When I felt I couldn't get any higher I press on. I found a bit of lift and a lot of birds on the other side but just didn't have the Patience I needed to get up again. I pressed on and soon landed before getting to Armstrong. It was a fun flight and I was happy to get some air time.

Our new paragliding friend Amine from Vancouver.

Tonya stylin in her new shades.

Sunday the paragliders went up early again and drove down as the wind was cross all morning. Not being inspired we headed home early. It was great meeting some new friends and hanging out with other friends we don't get to see often enough. Looking forward to some better flying days ahead.

Canadian Nats.

Not much to report from me on the nats. Due to some poor weather and poor flying on my part I never got on course.

The highest scoring day the forecast winds were light out of the west. This means the wind comes over the back and you need to get off launch when you can. The first few pilots took off when the wind would cycle up. It's a fine line between launching too early and sinking out and waiting too long and not getting off. I watch the first few go and was dressed and ready to go myself. Just standing beside my glider checking on the progress of those in the air. Several pilots were standing in line so I had six in front of me. When the wind started to blow in Dave Scott was at the front of the line and took to the air. I turned around put on my harness and helmet. When I turned my glider around the whole field had launched. I walked to the edge of the hill as the wind started to die down. Then it blew down and the last six of us were stuck on launch.

Turns out the first turn point we had was 20km back into tiger country and no one was willing to fly back there. A few pilots thought the day should be scrapped which would have been great for me but in the end it was scored and was the highest scoring day of the meet.

The only other day with any sort of points was the last day. I was one of the first few off and didn't hook into the thermal right in front of launch. This mistake put me on the ground and was the end of the comp for me.

Ross did a great job on the last day and is this years national champion. Congratulations to Ross and Milko who won the king posted class.

Randy did a great job promoting the event and had some great prizes. Ross got a new North wing freedom 170 single surface glider for winning.

Hopefully we'll be onto better weather and flying for the rest of the summer.

Lumby Air Races

Sorry for not keeping up to date. I'll try to keep on top of the rest of the events for this summer. The spring has had plenty of rain but the good days have been very good.

The Lumby air races started off sitting on launch all day with out getting in a task.

Day two was much better. Good lift forecast, light winds and a 10,000' cloud base later in the after noon. Winds were light and we had strong lift but it was disorganized and you had to search for it every few hundred feet.

I start off typical for me at coopers, I never got over launch and headed down the ridge low. 400' below launch I finally found broken lift and started working my way up. Once I got to the top of the lift at 5000' several pilots raced towards me and we headed off on the task. Three small laps around Lumby followed by three bigger laps for a total task of 98km. I started out following Jeff Shapiro but soon let him go. He was pushing hard and I just wasn't up to the challenge. I lead Ross Hunter, John Orders, and John Mclintock around for a couple laps before I really lost my drive and just started flying with them. John Orders pushed out in front of us as we started the big lap and John Mclintock took a left as he still had a small lap to do. Jeff had lapped us once by this point. Ross and I caught up to John at the satellite turn point much higher than he was. Ross and I managed to get to 6000' before heading off to camels hump. John never found the lift we did and headed out lower. This turned out to be his death and he landed before getting to the turn point. Ross and I got over the turn point at Camels and worked with a couple paragliders to get back up to 6000' before heading back to launch. We topped up in the reliable lift over saddle that had been there all day. I should have notice not many pilots were in the air and several were just heading in to land. We rounded the turn point over launch and the ridge that had been working all day was now shutting down. This was the end of my flight as I gave up and went out to land. Ross worked a little harder and made it a few more km than I did. John Mclintock managed to get around after us and was the only one to make goal. Jeff Shapiro push too hard and ended up landing just a bit short of goal but was way ahead of every one.

Turned out to be a challanging fun day. With the low top of lift it was good for the crowd at lumby days as you could see lots of pilots all day racing around town. Many people in town were commenting about it. The town is very supportive of the event and is very welcoming. I love coming here when the weather works for us.

Today was blown out. A few flew and said it was unpleasant. Looking forward to some good flying and weather ahead of us.