Monday, September 25, 2006

Final Dadswells For The Year

The last flying weekend at Colefield was held from Thursday 21st till Sunday 24th September. On the Thursday Viv Drew ferried the Twin to Dadswells behind the Pawnee and had a couple of hours soaring after bunging off over the ridge at Briggs Bluff. Meanwhile Gary Allbut motored down to Colefield in the Janus and also had a couple of hours over the Grampians. A number of GCV pilots also had good soaring flights on the Thursday. Your reporter was not able to attend on the Friday, but about six aircraft were launched in very windy conditions. Meanwhile at Horsham the winds reached almost 50 knots at the aerodrome. Saturday was still windy, but a number of pilots launched and achieved some reasonable flights. With rain forecast for Sunday the Twin, Janus and Pawnee returned to Horsham later in the afternoon. Saturday nights BBQ at the Dadswells caravan park went off well and John Switala was presented with the trophy for the best climb for the year. Again I didn't get to Dadswells on Sunday and with no tow plane, the final day was a non event flying wise. So that was it for for the 2006 Dadswells wave and ridge flying season, maybe next year the wind will blow in the right direction and we will get better than 7000 foot climbs.

Monday, September 18, 2006

New Photo Gallery on Club Web Page

The clubs web page at www.vicnet.net.au/~wimmsoar has a new Photo Gallery that members may be interested in viewing. The new gallery is provided via Google's photo organizer Picasa.

You can visit the clubs Photo Gallery via the link on our home page or you can go directly to the Photo Gallery at http://picasaweb.google.com/horshamflyingclub

As updates are made to the Gallery, members will receive notification via a Blog alert.

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Jabiru J160 Proposal

It is proposed to bring a motion forward for discussion at the next club meeting (Saturday October 14th) to order a Jabiru J160 to replace our little Jab. If members are not aware, the J160 is the latest model of Jabiru and factory built version is certified for training. Our Jab would be put up for sale and we will be looking for around the $48 - $49000 mark inc GST, negotiable.

We will only part with it when we get the J160 providing of course that the club approves the move to the J160. So why a Jabiru? Why not something else?. Max hedt on the club's behalf has spent many recent hours going back through any and all the aircraft that would fit our requirements. Surprisingly there are not very many that are certified and that are not limited by the European 450 kg MTOW and stress requirements which is just too light for some of us fat bastards! Alternatively other suitable LSA's ie. Tecnams, are in the $110,000 on up price range which is totally out of our reach. A few east European types fit into our price range but their parts and repair and dealer situation are always going to be suspect.
Quite simply, Jabiru, in the Australian context, provides by far the biggest bang for the buck! We have one already and everyone likes it.

Details on the J160 are available at Jabiru's web site at http://www.jabiru.net.au/ Now to the price. Jabiru J160 basic, certified and RTF = $74,450 inc GST. Additional Options recommended by the President and assorted hanger ons; Adjustable rudder pedals (must have) = $250 Landing light (for aircraft visibility purposes) = $180 Strobe light (Again visibility) = $550. Total inc GST = $75,430 . As the HFC is registered for GST we can claim the GST. So the purchase price would be less GST = $68,570. With the sale of of 55-0933 for about $49,000 we would be up for about $200,000 from club funds.

If the order is placed by mid October then we would have a delivery spot for June 2007. The price is fixed when we place the order. A $1100 deposit is required with the order and a progress payment of $10,000 is required when the aircraft build is commenced, usually some 2 months before delivery. Prompt ordering is required as the delivery spots are filling up well into next year.

So come along to ther October meeting to have your say on this proposal.

This Blog entry was submitted by Max Hedt and any further queries should be direct to him.

Friday, September 15, 2006

Had A Check Flight Lately?

A reminder to all pilots, both RAA (Jabiru) and GFA (gliders). If you have not flown within the last 90 days, then you are required to have a check before going solo again regardless of your experience. (In the past the WSC use to have a 30 day rule for these checks.) The club also requires all pilots to have an annual check flight.

Experienced pilots are very aware that if they have not flown for as little as a couple of weeks then that first couple of hundred feet in the climb out are needed before you really get right back on the ball again.

If you are suffering from a cold or slight illness or the remnants of a hang over then the judgment and reaction times are way off so get checked if in doubt and be careful. If you are flying the Club's Jabiru or gliders then you also have the responsibility to all of your fellow members to bring it back in one piece and in top condition.

Contact Peter Wiessenfeld to arrange a check flight in the Jabiru or the Twin Astir. Remember some members will require a check flight on both types.

This entry was submitted by Max Hedt.

Do You Smell Gas?

We have had a bad gas leak in the club rooms for some time which smelt fairly bad when you walked into the club rooms. This leak was eventually pinned down to the second hand gas stove that Lorelle had acquired. It turned out to be a pin hole in a pipe down in the guts of the stove.
Problem was fixed with a new pipe and some money for the gas techs.

During the process of finding of the leak, the gas tech checked other bits and pieces but did not want to know about the gas hot water heater in the toilets. It turns out that this type is well and truly illegal so it is about to be removed. The replacement is to be a Rinnai 26 litre / min instaneous gas water heater which has sufficient capacity to run both showers and the hot water for the kitchen sink as well. We have been told that this heater is very reliable and puts out a lot of very hot water. The current hot water heater in the kitchen will also go.

An executive decision has been taken by El Presidente and a couple of committee members to go ahead with this heater and the fitting there of. We did not have any other options. The cost of the Rinnai is a $1000 plus fitting and piping; $500.

But it all got worse all of a sudden. On Friday we run out of gas even though the big gas cylinder was refilled only a couple of months ago! It seems that there has been a slow leak in a line fitting and that the big old yellow gas stove, despite being checked a couple of weeks ago, had sprung a bad leak in one of the valves. Again the gas boys weren't really interested in fixing the old stove!
So we will be up for a new or replacement gas stove and oven. Dimensions; 900 mm long and about 550 to 600 mms deep if you can help.

We are getting prices on a new stove as well but the prices are in the $1800 to $2000 mark at present. The kitchen needs a set up like this both for Horsham Week, and we don't know how long that will continue, but also for the various Fly-Ins that we hope will eventuate in the future.

We are now playing catch up for a long period where we made do with what we had and it was all slowly deteriorating, so it is going to cost us regardless. It should be remember that the kitchen has returned us a lot of money over the last 20 years or so and a bit of money spent on it for the kitchen staff is well and truly justified.

This entry for the Blog was submitted by Max Hedt.

Sunday, September 10, 2006

Club Withdraws From Fly-In

The club at its September General Meeting (held on Saturday 9th) decided to withdraw its support of the 'Horsham Bonfire, Beer & BBQ Fly-In' which is being held on Saturday 21st & Sunday 22nd October. Responsibility for running of the 'Fly-In' is now solely in the hands of the Horsham Aero Club.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Joe English Has Past Away

It is with great sadness that we have to report the passing away of Joe English at 3.30pm on the 8th of September 2006.

Joe was a foundation and life member of the Wimmera Soaring Club (Horsham Flying Club) and a good friend to many members of the club past and present. Joe has not been well for a while and his passing has come as a shock to those who were unaware of how ill he was. The whole club extends its sympathy to Norma and all the family.

Goodbye 'Uncle Grumpy' we will all miss you.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Jabiru Maintenance Matters

The Jabiru has recently had some work done on its engine. It seems that one of the cylinders had developed a crack and has been replaced. This work has been performed by Cliff Banks of Sun Centre Ultralights of Swan Hill.

So the important thing for Jabiru pilots to remember is that for the next 30 flight/engine hours we MUST use mineral oil in the engine. So if you need to add oil to the Jabiru use the oil that is in the "Black" containter rather that the synthetic oil in the "White" container.

If you have any issues or doudts about the right oil to use then contact Phil Colquhoun at work on (03) 5389-1541 or at home on (03) 5389-1812. The other alternative is to contact Peter Weissenfeld on 0419 137 129.