Welcome to the May newsletter. I know a lot of you like to get a hard copy of the newsletter, so we will send them out to all those that want to receive it by snailmail. If you don’t mind receiving on the net please let me know as it is a lot cheaper that way. Send me an email to dbmcp@xtra.co.nz or send a text to 027 223 1870

What’s happening out there

EZO the club mirage has now been sold. It will be heading down to South Canterbury.

KTO Mikes Karatoo has got a burnt out valve so is in the hospital waiting to be repaired

JOL has the engine off at the moment for an overhaul. Hopefully will be back on line in time for the 1000 hr party

KTP My Karatoo, we are having trouble tuning to get that annoying miss out of it.

Rod Webb has got a nice shiny Corby Starlet in the hanger. A teammate for the flying doctor Terry Salmon.

Sigma There is a rumour that there is another flying egg on the field.

Peter Turvey has a Taylor Monoplane sitting in No2 hanger. It fits pretty well under the high wing planes.

New Club Member - Welcome to Martin Steele.

Reminder

Club members are reminded that if you pay $1000 up front you will get your flying for a 5% discount.

Instructors on duty this month

Day Instructor

5/5 Dave Mitchell

12/5 Mike Small

19/5 Brent Thompson

26/5 Tony Denham

2/6 Peter Small

9/6 Dave Mitchell

16/6 Mike Small

Events coming up

Sunday 6th May

Wheels and wings at Ashburton. I know it is short notice. There will be a BBQ on at 12.00. We are welcome to fly in. Keep a good look out as there will be lots of aircraft about.

Saturday 12th May

1000hr party. JOL will have turned 1000hrs old. Any excuse for a party. We are having a funny hat party (any excuse). Please bring a plate for afternoon tea. A celebration cake will be supplied.

3rd Sunday of the month

We are planning to have a flying event of some sort each month on the 3rd Sunday of each month. Be ready for the briefing by 10.00am.

Sunday 20th May

This month we will fly to Darfield, then for those that want, we will fly on to Horarata. Briefing will be at 10:00am

Easter Rally 2008

Next year’s Easter flyin will be hosted by our club. We are in the process of planning and organising the facilities. We have a site at Oxford that we are turning into an airstrip and camping site. The committee has approved the purchase of a 20ft container to turn into an ablutions block. I am busy doing the site works, trying to make a strip suitable for all the different types of aircraft that we get at the Easter flyin.

We are on target at the moment but will need a working bee or two closer to the time. Les Eade is working on a design for the ablution block and would welcome any suggestions and help that club members can offer.

Our plan is once we get the field up and running properly, we can have weekend flyaways there, offer it to airscouts and to the ATC for flying and training camps.

The site has the advantage of seeming remote but actually being close to civilisation and facilities.

"I learned about flying from that."

It was Thursday and the forecast was good for Friday but "iffy" for the rest of the Easter weekend, so I decided to make plans for Woodbury. Looked at the notice board in the club house to get the co-ordinates and anything that might relate to Woodbury, took note of the phone number just in case!. Didn`t see anything about radio frequency so assumed that it would be 119.1. Set off Friday, and after quite a pleasant uneventful flight arrived overhead at Woodbury, radioed my position and height and intention to join circuit, radioed downwind on 27, then as I was on base leg I saw two aircraft lining up for take off on 09, which meant they would be coming straight at me! As one took off I thought this was not a good position to be in, so turned a sharp left to avoid them and carried on to join 09. It was only after landing that I discovered the radio frequency was 119.5 (same as Timaru). Two lessons learned here, when broadcasting never assume you can be heard, and even if you have been heard, keep your eyes open as to what is going on. With hindsight, I should have phoned Woodbury to find out the radio frequency.

Jeff Bannister (Shadow)

Methven Airfest

Camp Quality Airfest.

The club was well represented at the Children with Cancer fund raising Airfest held on the 21st April at the Methven racecourse.

After a briefing in the clubhouse 10 aircraft set off for Methven some 64 nautical miles to the south. Harry Devonish left from Wigram in his Huges 300. The cloud base was down to 800ft agl in places but with good low level navigating skills by the pilots all the aircraft made it to the racecourse within 30 minutes of each other.

The backstraight was the landing strip for three of the aircraft, whilst the centre of the racecourse was preferred by the remaining four aircraft. A fence had been removed in the inner circle to provide sufficient length for landing. Unfortunately one of the fence post holes had not been filled and would you know it; Jeff Bannister happened to put the Shadow’s nose wheel into it on landing, damaging the nose wheel strut. Full marks to the organisers for providing a covered truck that soon swallowed up the derigged Shadow ready for it to be transported back to Rangiora.

The airfest was action packed, model aeroplanes, helicopters, gliders and hot air balloons and of course our microlights. For the hungry and the not so aviation minded there were plenty of hot dog stands, craft stalls, traction engines and even a bouncing castle for the kids.

The most spectacular sight in the afternoon’s entertainment was a Hughes 500 helicopter racing New Zealand’s fastest Quadbike around the race track. Superb helicopter flying, the four wheeler was clocked at 200kph down the backstraight, would you believe!

Troy took a video of the race and has posted it on Youtube, have a look, you will be amazed!

Search under microlite flying.  [ Ed: I searched but couldn't find it, if anybody has a link to this elusive video let me know james@gogo.co.nz and I'll include it here. ]

Whilst all the excitiment was going on JOL and JOR made a lot of friends giving trial flights. Thanks Dave, Roger, Tony, and Brent for your efforts.

Around 4pm it was time to depart. Harry Devonish left for Wigram in his helicopter. Murray Taylor in his Pioneer 200 led the squadron back to base.

Ross’s Pioneer 300, Dave Mitchell and Buzz Harvey in Karatoo KTO, Grant and Sue Dodd in JOR, Mike Sheffield in JOL, Tony Denhann in his Jodel D11, Russell Wornock and Peter Parkinson in their Fisher Tiger Moths, Stuart Harris in the Turbulent and last but not least Brent Thompson in his Kolb, all landed safely on zero seven.

It was a very enjoyable and satisfying day supporting a great cause. Camp Quality, you will be seeing CRAC again next year.

Ross Marfell

1000hrs

It was late Sunday afternoon April 22nd 2007 

 I punched in * * * * and opened the clubhouse door. "Got much more to do" I shouted; trying to make myself heard over the noise of a vacuum cleaner. "What!" was the reply from Troy as he tapped the off switch with his birthday Vans ."How's your cleaning jobs going?" says I in a quieter voice, "thought you might like to go for a flight in JOL before you go home?" 

"That will be good, I will be finished in a tick" replied Troy in an excited voice.

Now I have to confess that I had an ulterior motive for wanting to get airborne on a dull Sunday afternoon in JOL. I knew that our trusty RANs S6 was a whisker off completing her 1000 hours.

I wanted Fame and Fortune

Can you blame me! At my age opportunities for fame and fortune are running out!

Maybe I should share a wee bit of the fame with Troy?.........Ok;...but not the fortune.

I left the flight preparation to Troy as I sipped on a cup of tea and peeked through the window watching his progress. He opened the hangar doors, manoeuvred JOL out onto the grass, refuelled, water drained and did a thorough walk-around....Troy finished off his walk-around with eyeballing JOL from a wingspans distance. I love it when pilots do this.

One of my early Instructors told me about the pilot who, after he had completed his walk-around and was all strapped in ready to start-up, the pilot had it pointed out to him that his aircraft's rudder was missing!!!

 It had not been refitted after being repaired. Its amazing how you can miss something that's right under your nose. Bent undercarriages, drooping wings, missing fuel caps etc can all be easily seen from a short distance.......but I digress.

"Vacating to the East" was my reply to Troy when he asked "What should I add to my call of   lining up and rolling zero seven?" 

It was a great flight JOL just purred along, the black ball never shifted outside the two lines (how does he do that?) sheer bliss. Down the beach we flew toward Brighton then at a certain distance a 180 degree turn that I calculated would be enough to give us the 1000 hours on the hour meter as we touched down back at Rangiora.

I gave Troy a 10.2 out of 10 for his circuit and landing whilst I got a big raspberry for miscalculating the elapsed time. We only had 999.9 on the hourmeter as we taxied back to the hangar. Never mind, a bit of extra taxiing did the trick and JOL was put to bed with 1000 hours  recorded on the timesheets.

We (Troy can share my fortune)  can't wait for the party on Saturday May the 12th to find out what our prize is!

Will it be a trip to Disneyland or Oshkosh?

Proof for all to see. 1000hrs on the clock. A little hard to see but if you use a magnifying glass you will see the 1000hrs.

Two proud pilots after clocking up 1000 hrs on the club trainer JOL

An adventure junkie widows story

I am going to tell a story - what it has been like as a car, croquet and aeroplane widow!

When we were just married and Peter was teaching, I had to turn the power off in the shed to make him come in at night, and getting him to come for meals was well nigh impossible! If I turned the power off then, he would fuss about me stopping an important procedure, and threaten divorce. If I wanted to go anywhere with him, I had to make a booking and be sure to remind him at least an hour before it was time to leave.

He became a Low Volume Vehicle Certifier, but now that the rules have all changed, and the government elected to adopt the Hot Rod Club rules, he doesn’t do that anymore.

The next obsession was Croquet, and we travelled all over the country in our campervan to attend tournaments. I was the “Parkinson support team” and made innumerable cups of tea and lunches. I cheered and consoled as the occasion demanded! He got good enough to represent New Zealand in America, England and Australia.

Then we designed, and built our house. This ranged from sorting the ordered wood into lengths, to flattening the concrete floor with a roller. My input was to be a mobile vice - this is an activity I am good at. “Hold the end of this tape measure/wood/metal. Divorce was frequently threatened when I took photographs of all the problems. It took about 4 years, but the problems we are left with, are miniscule - like the position of the light switch in the laundry. I still don’t like that, but it is a bit late to change it!

The current obsession began when a motorbike rally he was on, stopped at Ivan Campbell’s and Peter saw Ivan’s Tiger Moth being built and said “If I could fly one of these, I would buy a kit and build one”.

Ivan’s answer was “You can drive a car, can’t you? This is a Microlight, and doesn’t have the same restrictions”. Peter was convinced, and after frequent visits, ordered the kit within a fortnight.

The kit arrived late July 2004 and he began work on August 1st. Some of the boxes were damaged in transit, so he had to ensure that the contents were okay. Then started two and a bit years of always finding Peter in the shed. We had had a very sharing marriage, with him helping to clean the place, and even making meals. Since the plane arrived, we have had no dinner parties (his thing, not mine!) and the house only gets clean if someone is coming. I think I am not the house proud type, and I fail to keep it tidy - there are only two of us, and the cat, so I guess it doesn’t matter too much. Now, Peter is at the Airfield much of the time, and the condition of the house is even less important.

One day last week, he rang from the Airfield and left a message to me to come for a flight. I rang when I got home, although it was not within the quarter hour he suggested, and after stopping for lunch (I was hungry) I put on a jersey and jacket and drove to the Airfield. He had to help latch my helmet, connect the wires for the headphones, and after getting me in, hand me my gloves and camera. We were heading for the beach, and I could already feel the cold through my jacket, so he did not stay up long. A red letter day - there we were in OUR aeroplane, I may not have done much in the building, but I am sure he could not have done it without me! It is really something being in an open biplane - no obstructions to sight, I even twisted round and took this photo - I could not see what I was taking, it was a “point and hope” shot.

A picture taken by Margaret Parkinson, as first passenger in Peter and Margaret’s R80 Tiger. I am sure there is a big smile in there somewhere.

With our helmets we could even talk to each other, but the wind noise does make it difficult to understand. The next day I bought some long johns and an undershirt, but have not had a chance to try them out yet. At least, apart from Instructors, I was his first passenger! How can I describe the wonder of being there? There is all the world spread out for my pleasure, and if I hadn’t been so cold, I am sure I could have appreciated it much better! All the same, there is something very different about being in the open. Peter compares it with the difference between a motorbike and car, and appreciates the freedom of the open plane. If you get a chance to fly in an open biplane, my advice is to get well wrapped up, and take the opportunity. It is incomparable with any other flying that I know of - perhaps a Trike may be similar - perhaps someone who has tried both, would let me know?

All I can say, is that all the late meals, and absent husband seems to be worth it

Margaret Parkinson

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That’s it for May Safe Flying

Dave McPherson dbmcp@xtra.co.nz