Well how do you feel? Ok, well you can do more damage at New Year!  We held the first ever Gyrate Christmas gathering and thanks to the efforts of all involved it turned out to be a great afternoon.  The weather was warm blue skies but with a 30Knot gusty wind the only fly-in guest was Sid Lane who made it in a record time, downwind from Taupo.   We pushed most of the aircraft outside and brought the Gazebo in from the gales and with BBQ venison, trout, prawns and sausages not to mention great dips and salads, we had some 40 people drop by and the chat flowed as well as the vino and beer.  Thanks again to all who contributed and consumed, see you for another one next year if not before.  Flying has been hectic and despite all the commitments of Christmas we have achieved numerous cross country outings in both Xenon and Eagles. Mark Humbke achieved his advanced local certificate and has been exercising the privileges ever since.

We had hoped to have the new school Eagle in the air before Christmas but the CAA failed to turn up to inspect the machine.  This was a let down for Colin Alexander and the team at SoloWings who had strived hard to meet the deadline while dealing with unexpected calls to work on aircraft all over North Island.   We are currently still operating our previous school machine on ‘loan-back’  from its new owner, Hub Hall, this could get embarrassing as Hub is now flying solo and will be spreading his wings more independently as his confidence grows.

I have just returned from a 4 day break and the weather looks set fair for some more aviation and we have new faces eager to join the expanding ranks of gyronaughts, who could blame them as we are privileged to enjoy some magnificent views every time we lift off.  I close with a couple of shots from the Xenon crossing the Kaimai Hills inbound from Matamata, this is a regular training run and it never fails to impress me as we pass over the top of a 2000ft waterfall on the escarpment.

Well maybe just one more point of interest is the regular ground school that we have available and that has helped several pilots to pass the technical exams required.  Peter Rutledge of Aero Hire is holding weekly classes on a Monday night and also offers one to one instruction by arrangement.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 11:35 am 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.