And now they look like they're close to a shell.
The weather station that used to be located on the airfield has been moved. Due to problems with reliability of the Internet connection and access to the various components that made up the weather station Gary has found what he hopes will be a better site. It's all off-line at the moment, but it should be back soon.
Fri, 22 May 2009
I've set up a new webcam looking north from the airfield terminal building. You can see the image on the Glide Omarama website. Because it's looking north it tends to get a lot of sun, so the sky is bright and the terrain is very dark. You should be able to see the wave clouds on a wave day though. The image is updated every fifteen minutes.
Thu, 21 May 2009
The pads for the five new chalets have been poured. It's been a bit cold and wet recently, but not enough to stop the builders.
Mon, 11 May 2009
It's been a bit wintery lately, and this morning around 8am started snowing. We don't normally get snow on the groud at Omarama this early in the year.
Sat, 02 May 2009
Well, preparation for building anyway. The ground work for the new chalets has started.
Notice how wintery it's looking. The trees have dropped their leaves in the last week or so.
Mon, 13 Apr 2009
Today the Glide Omarama Grob 103 was damaged in a heavy landing. The wind shear caught out a low time pilot resulting in a heavy landing and the tail falling off. Snapped clean through just in front of the fin. Pilot was slightly bruised.
Fri, 10 Apr 2009
We've had a bit of snow on the tops. The mountains are looking very scenic. It is a little cool though.
Fri, 20 Mar 2009
Lemmy is out of hospital and looking good. He's hobbling around on crutches.
Today was the second southwest wave day in a row. Couldn't go anywhere much due to cloud, but we got to float around in the sunshine above the lower cloud cover.
Sat, 14 Mar 2009
Lemmy is still doing well in Dunedin Hospital. He's had his foot operated on and is optimistic about getting full use back. No-one who knows Lemmy will be surprised that he's already wanting to get out of hospital. He may leave as soon as next weekend.
Fri, 06 Mar 2009
Lemmy is doing fine. He's in Dunedin hospital and is getting a steady stream of visitors. His injuries are healing.
Sun, 01 Mar 2009
The names of the pilots have been released. They where Ichiro Murai, who was doing a course with Glide Omarama, and Lemmy Tanner, who is an instructor with Glide Omarama.
Ichiro had been at Omarama for the week. He was killed on impact.
Lemmy has been coming to Omarama for years and is well known. He's the guy who can do anything. He instructs, flys the towplane, fixes things, and general makes stuff happen. The most visible job Lemmy does is the daily weather forecast. Lemmy was badly injured, but is recovering and should be OK.
Fri, 27 Feb 2009
Early this afternoon one of Glide Omarama's Duo, ZK-GYY, crashed in Mt St Cuthbert. One person was killed, the other was taken to Dunedin and was stable. We've had Police and SAR all afternoon, CAA should be here tomorrow.
Mon, 23 Feb 2009
It's been raining for the past three days. Very unusual for Omarama. We're hoping for a soaring day tomorrow or the next day.
Sun, 08 Feb 2009
The Australian bushfires are sending enough smoke across the Tasman to make it barely flyable here. Today was a good wave day, and several people tried long flights. Adam Dalziel flew 1000km, and Matt Plumridge tried 1000 also. Matt couldn't get to his southern turnpoint because the visibility was bad to the south due to smoke.
Tue, 03 Feb 2009
Since the rush is over things have been quiet at Omarama. We've been having some mixed weather, with several non-flying days.
Even though it's been a bit difficult at times we've still managed some good flights and the OLC has Omarama 7th in the airfield list for most distance flown. Glide Omarama is 11th in the club list. That's 7th and 11th in the world so far this season.
Sat, 24 Jan 2009
We've had a few hot blue days recently. Things are a lot less hectic now the contest is over and many pilots have had their holidays.
There have been a few days that might have turned into good wave days. None of them have delivered, but they've been good enough to keep John Ahearn taking early launches. He's hunting some big flight.
Fri, 09 Jan 2009
We've had a week of the Nationals so far. Only major drama has been GUN crashing after the rudder cable broke. Eric managed an orderly arrival and just broke the front fuselage against a fence.
The weather has been less than great, but they've managed a few days flying.
Canterbury have their winch set up to the north of the runway and have done a little winching in the mornings before the grid gets set up. They've put a lot of work into getting the rough cleared, mown, and rolled so that they have a reasonable surface to work on.
Fri, 02 Jan 2009
It's blowing and raining today. Some rides went up but I don't think any serious soaring has been going on.
Canterbury are down one Grob after OR was broken in a landout in the Lindis.
Jenny Wilkinson flew a 300km speed triangle world record on Thursday. We're working through the paperwork to get the claim accepted. 161kph, up from the previous 153kph.
Sat, 27 Dec 2008
Today was the first day of the post Christmas rush. Canterbury Gliding Club are here in force, there are a smattering of North Island pilots here for the Nationals next week.
The Omarama Gliding Club's Discus, YF, was landed in the riverbed at the base of Magic mountain. The pilot managed to land in a patch of nearly flat soft sand amongst the rocks and uneven terrain that make up most of the riverbed. No injury, and the glider is in one piece. We did have to derigg in place and carry the bits out to the trailer up a 3 meter bank. Two hang glider pilots who've been flying from Magic gave a hand with the heavy lifting.
YF was carrying a Spot satellite messenger. You can see where he landed on the map.
Fri, 26 Dec 2008
The homeless glider pilots at Omarama had Christmas day off and enjoyed lunch at the Kahu Cafe. It was overcast, cold, and damp. Santa didn't bring the new ASG29 I'm sure most people had on their list. Maybe we were all bad last year?
We have quite an influx of campers, and the picket lines are starting to fill up. The weather didn't look great early in the day, but improved as the day went on and delivered some nice flying later in the day.
Sun, 21 Dec 2008
After the recent period of rain we have a nice day. Weak and difficult with light winds and low cloudbase, but nice enough after the rubbish we've been having.
Thu, 18 Dec 2008
Many are cold, but few are frozen
Max launched in XN at 8am today for a big flight. He spent all day on his task but landed out. Max has bought a Spot tracker and used it on the flight. The track can be see at xinqu.net
Lynsey had a bit of drama today too. He had picketted his glider out overnight in the rain, and when he was at 18,000ft his ailerons froze. He's still not sure where the water got in to cause the problem. No damage done, but it is something to avoid. We've had a lot of rain recently and often have gliders picketted out. Normally not a problem in our dry conditions, but with the extra moisture we might see this again if we're not careful.
Wed, 17 Dec 2008
We've had a miserable few days with lots of low cloud and showers. The occasional actual decent bit of rain too. It's clearing now and we should get some soaring today.
Sat, 13 Dec 2008
Glide Omarama have had their largest group ever, with eight two seaters flying all last week. The weather was less than impressive, but we managed to get interesting flying four days out of five. Monday was a washout.
I'm getting the hang of XCSoar on the Binatone. Most useful is being able to load the task at the briefing and take the GPS to the glider for the flight, then pop the SD card to get the logger trace after the flight. It's a pity XCSoar logs aren't accepted by the OLC. I have to get a proper log from the Cambridge 302 or the Flarm if I want points in the on line contest.
The brightnes of the Binatone display is not up to use in direct sunlight, but it is usable mounted on the DG panel as it is shaded by the glareshield. I do have to take off my sunglasses to read the text messages though.
Wed, 03 Dec 2008
As I am unable to afford a flash Altair flight computer I was most impressed when an Aussie hang glider pilot found how to run the same software the Altair uses on a car GPS system. The Altair uses XCSoar software, which runs on Pocket PC systems. Some car GPS systems run the Pocket PC operating system, so all it took was a hang glider pilot clever enough to put it all together. The result is a cheap GPS nav system. All I needed to do was buy a Binatone GPS on TradeMe for $150, follow the instructions provided, and customise with maps and waypoints for Omarama.
Nice wave flight today, saw a funny cloud formation. Maybe the wave clouds are humping?
Tue, 25 Nov 2008
I just noticed in the latest AA Directions magazine that there is a photo of the DG1000 to promote gliding in Omarama.
The Regionals were a success and the contestants have mostly packed up and gone home. It's amazing how much difference it makes to the activity on the field at this time of year. Suddenly it's busy for a week, then it's quiet again.
Sat, 15 Nov 2008
We've been busy with Gerry and Ivan running a course in preparation for the Regionals this week. There have been an extra ten or so gliders operating from Omarama on top of the usual suspects.
The DG1000 has arrived for the season after some drama with shipping. It was coming on Pacifica to Lyttleton, but Pacifica are stopping that service and we got caught up with that. It was put on the Straits Shipping boat to Picton after a week of sitting around getting the run around from Pacifica.
The Regionals start tommoroww, with practise today. Plenty of gliders arriving and filling up the tie down spots.
Wed, 05 Nov 2008
Yesterday evening a DC3 landed at Omarama. If you're quick you can see it on the webcam.
Tue, 28 Oct 2008
It blew hard and dry today. A bunch of farmers fields got blown away, The biggest from Omarama station just upwind of the nursery ridge. In this picture you can see the dust cloud over Otematata, about 15km downwind of the field.
Doug Hamilton flew a 1500km triangle in the ASH25, TF. It took 14 hours and involved considerable character building up near Blenheim.
Sun, 26 Oct 2008
For the least week or so we've had some oystercatchers around the hangars with a chick. It's been entertaining walking out to the hangar and getting mobbed by the two parents as they try to drive you off and/or lead the chick away. They can be noisy and those beaks look pretty big when they come at you.
Sat, 25 Oct 2008
We have the Youth Glide group here this weekend. Today they got a refresher in flying at Omarama. A front came through during the morning and took the day from a pleasant sunny day that was slightly stable to a series on convergences across the basin and surrounding hills. Around midday the wind came up the Waitaki and formed some more convergences and made the Buscot ridge work. This was accompanied by rain and snow on the tops. Next the rain became more general and the day died early afternoon.
Great fun thermalling up into the convergence in the rain.
Fri, 24 Oct 2008
The fatman is back from its winter cleanup and looking shiny.
Sun, 19 Oct 2008
Gavin Wills has shaved his beard for the first time in forty years and had a haircut. He is unrecognisable at first glance.
Thu, 02 Oct 2008
Thermal/convergence yesterday, ridge/wave today. Wonderful spring soaring so far this week.
Tue, 30 Sep 2008
We've been flying every day since Sunday with gentle ridge and thermal mostly, a bit of wave above. It's been mostly local soaring, but cross country is definitely available.
Mon, 22 Sep 2008
It blew today, a nice westerly. A couple of gliders ran up to Mt Cook for the first wave milk run of the season. The wave was mostly blue so there was a fair bit of guesswork involved, and the wind was strong at altitude, 50 to 70 knots. A bit chilly too, -15 at 13,000 to 15,000 feet.
Sun, 21 Sep 2008
This weekend seems to be mostly the pre-season meetings. The Omarama Users Group meeting was Saturday. All the Soaring Centre and airfield company people are here.
Tue, 16 Sep 2008
Southern Soaring have opened up shop and have been busy getting all their gear cleaned up and ready for action. Ross from Sailplane Services is down for a week to get some work done. The airfield is starting to look busy.
Sun, 14 Sep 2008
We had a soft thermal day yesterday, and today we have a soft wave day. A small fleet launched, with five or six gliders up. Some struggled a bit at low level, some transitioned into the wave.
The Hawkdun range looked nice from below or above the cloud.
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