Well this is the time of year when the weather is mixed and the agents for advertising circle like Cessnas while revenue and flying are both limited.   Sunday was brilliant blue and I took a ride as a passenger in the back of an Eagle owned and flown by a past student.   How great it is to see someone become a pilot and enjoy the skies as a direct result of your efforts.

Today was grey in two senses, yes it was overcast but I also learnt of the passing of Alf  Crow a couple of weeks back.  A true piece of New Zealand gyroplane history Alf was known to me more by reputation than in person, however I was most impressed by the effort that he put into producing a gyroplane training manual and by his ability to survive the exploits for which he was famous.  I have taken the liberty to add some articles about other ancient pillars of the worldwide gyro community who have taxied clear without major mishap.  These can be found under the resources tab and articles from the Gyrate home page.

I also heard that Murphy caught up with another ex student (If it can go wrong it will).  He conducted a successful engine out landing (in his own made machine) without power but no matter how often you tell people it seems that the rate at which Airspeed vanishes when the engine stops comes as a complete surprise!  I have just finished a piece for Kiwi Flyer which may help refresh some basics but having a large enough margin for Murphy is the best insurance, whatever you fly.

We placed an order for a customer for another machine to be delivered from Germany in February, the major difference is that the colour is yellow.  Should we call this a Golden Eagle?

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Gyrate Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.