I thought the flight scenes in the movie Avatar were extremely cool and well done, but that was until I saw How to tame your dragon today. I saw both movies in 3D theaters. Avatar had some jawdropping visuals, and as a pilot I did enjoy all the small realistic details that were put into the flying craft and animals in Avatar.
But the pure joy and feel of flying was so well done in How to tame your dragon it made me laugh and cry at the same time. There is a great scene with the hero “Hiccup” on the ground after his first real flight, with wild hair and a stunned look on his face – He looks just like every new hangglider student after his first high flight off a mountain. It’s a great movie for kids who like the new Monster High dolls and want to see a cute cameo, as well as adults, I really wanted to go flying after seeing it!
After one more check flight in the two-seater I got the chance to fly a single seater, a Jantar Junior. Nice little plane,with sensitive controls and good handing, not exactly open class performance but it’s better than my Litespeed anyway.
I took it up for a three hour flight around the area, I was told to stay withing gliding range of the airport, so I had to behave and not go too far. I got to take a look at Mt Borah and saw a lone hangglider struggling low on the west launch. The conditions were good, cloudbase at 8000 feet early in the day, and rising to 10k later. I had to go down to pee, as I have not learned all the tricks of the trade yet. In a hangglider it’s relatively easy to “get it out”. I will bring a empty bottle tomorrow :-)
Some pictures;
The Ozzie killer toilet frog
Close to cloudbase
A layer of smoke blew trough, looked like a gustfront.
It was quite gray skies at Lake Keepit this morning, which was perfect for doing a few tows to train aborted tows. Apparently I did well as the instructor got out and asked me to fly solo. I did four solo flights, the first two was just a landing circuit, then the weather cleared up a bit and I stayed up for about 1 hour in weak thermals. The electronic variometer with audio stopped working after about 10 minutes, I could look at the mechanical one to stay up, but it’s a lot better to fly with audio. After landing and getting some water I took the last flight and stayed up for about one more hour.
Tomorrow I will fly a single seater Jantar Junior, should be fun!
I finally got to take another sailplane flight today. I drove up from Sydney up to Manilla last night and went to the Lake Keepit club this morning where I got to fly the Puchatek 2 seater, as it will actually spin and I needed to practice spin recovery. That exercise went well, and we boated around in some good thermals for 2 hours and landed before the kangaroos come out in force. Dave Seib also came out and I saw him come gliding underneath us in the LS6, we met up for dinner at the Pub in Manilla.
Tomorrow I have to practice aborted tow, and then I hope to go solo, should be fun!
Some pictures from today;
Daily inspection, my plane in the middle
Looks like a good day, tug gets fed.
Kangaroos mobbing the airstrip
Kangaroos mobbing the airstrip
One roo is shy and tries to hide from the paparazzi
It’s been really heavy rain in southern Queensland with some massive flooding in some areas. The competition in Dalby have been postponed due to the floodings. Dalby itself was not too bad hit so far, but there is more rain to come in the next few days. The new dates are 18 to 24/3. It’s a long drive from Sydney at around 1000km. Atilla said he used to do the “Queensland run” in one day, but I think I might want to stop in Manilla to maybe do some Sailplaning at Lake Keepit.
Blog, pictures, videos, and articles from my flying adventures aound the world. Content in English.
