Morten W. Haugen, a RMIT student, is a young photographer who took an AEI flight with the Geelong Gliding Club a few months ago.  Below you can read his account from his visit to Bacchus Marsh and the AEI flight .

Click on the thumbnail to see the full size picture in the gallery.  To see the entire gallery, please follow this link. 

You can view Morten's professional Gallery via this link . 

It is early Saturday morning. Too early, in fact, but I need to get up and catch the 8.08am train for Bacchus  Marsh, a small town outside the city of Melbourne. Bacchus Marsh is by some of my class mates characterised as ”where the beautiful Australian outback keeps its trash”. I’ve been told by a Mr.Buchanan at the Geelong Gliding Club that they will be flying today, and that I’m more than welcome to pay them a visit. Hungry for visually intriguing adventure, I can’t do anything but humbly accept his offer.

After an one hour train ride, I find myself at Bacchus Marsh station. With nothing but my camera and a poorly printed Google map in my hands, I find myself a taxi and a nice Indian who tells me he knows where to go. The scenery of the Marsh is just like I’ve always pictured Australia to be, with long red dirt roads, a bright blue sky and a low haze hiding the horizon. A nice day for flying, I think to myself, and decide to use that phrase as my icebreaker for the day. It’s always a bit frightening when meeting people you have never met before, so such an opening line is good to have in your back pocket. A quick and pleasant introduction is beneficial when you got only so many hours to photograph someone’s story. To my embarrassment I’m soon to find out that my opening line give me away as somewhat of a dilettante, as it is not a good day for gliding. Quite the opposite, in its mere absence the wind is being highly uncooperative.  

The 2008 edition of the Horsham Week competitions has ended on Saturday, the 9th of February 2008, after five successful and safe flying days. 

 
Rolf Buelter was the Comps Director, John Ashford and Ross Birch were the Safety Officers and Zygmunt Naharnowicz flew the SSO tug.

Eleven Geelong Gliding Club pilots competed at Horsham achieving the following results:

Sports Class (out of 12)

Jarek Mosiejewski (with Ken McAnnaly, Caleb

White and Adam Webb), 1st, Puchacz, OWL

Hans Prem, 6th, Janus A, GWQ 

John Ashford, 12th, Janus A, GWQ

Standard (out of 10)

David Meredith, 1st, Jantar Std 2, GZT

Wayne Mackley, 2nd, Jantar Std 2, IUD

Olgierd Szemis, 6th, LS4a, UKA

Andrew Grocholski, 7th, DG300, GDH

15 Meter  (out of 8)

Alan Dean, 7th, LS3, UKC

18 Meter / Open (out of 7)

Simon Brown, 7th, Discus 2/18m, IUO 

"If you want to feel what flying actually is, not just get on a plane and arrive somewhere else, gliding is magnificent. It made me feel alive and brave, neither of which I am." 

This is an excerpt from the article On a wing and a prayer published in the Selector magazine, Autumn 2007 edition.

To read the entire article click on the picture (PDF, 530KB). 

The 27th Australian Club Class Championships are hosted by the Kingaroy Soaring Club between 7th and 19th of October 2007.  GGC is represented by Simon Brown and Rolf Buelter (picture).

In just completed Gliding Queensland State  Championships Simon Brown took 8th place out of 17 in the club class.  

"A repair shop received a DG-300 with severe wing root damage following a landing accident. During the repair process they exposed both spar caps for inspection. At this point they discovered a manufacturing flaw of the spar caps: Instead of being absolutely straight, the rovings of one spar cap showed a slightly wave-like pattern. Alarmed by this discovery we investigated the spar caps of several other DG-300 wings, which were in for repair in our factory or other approved maintenance shops. We found a similar, but less severe pattern at some of these wings too."

More on the DG Flugzeugbau GmbH website.

The associated DG Technical Note limiting DG300 operational parameters can be found here.

The relevant GFA Airworthiness Alert can be accessed here.

All gliders flight manuals are stored as PDF documents.

• Alexander Schleicher AS-K 13 (0.46MB)
• SZD 50-3 Puchacz (3.16MB)
  
• SZD 51-1 Junior (0.94MB)
• SZD 48-1 Jantar Standard 2   (1.18MB)
  
• Rolland Schneider LS4a (0.59MB)
  
• Glaser-Dirks DG 300 Elan (1.52MB) 
• Schempp-Hirt Janus A (2.07MB)
• Schempp-Hirt Duo Discus (1.25MB)

Recently the Porepunkah Airfield Information Sheet has been published on the website for downloading.

Further to this sheet I suggest you read the hill soaring section pages 118 - 121 in the book supplied to you by the club entitled Basic Gliding Knowledge.

The Special Rules for Hill Soaring mentioned in that section is very important, so I will repeat them below.

1. All turns must be outwards, i.e. away from the hill. 
2. A glider overtaking another glider when hill soaring shall do so by passing between the overtaken glider and the hill.
3. If two gliders approach each other head-on while hill soaring, the glider which has the hill to its left shall give way by turning away from the hill.
4. When hill soaring, a glider shall not be flown lower than 100 feet above ground when within 100 metres horizontally of a person, dwelling or public road.