13000 Ft and a Day trip to Oamaru

Well I'm not entirely sure what to say other than wow. I went for my final flight test on the Twin Astir. Called a BFR or Basic Flight Rating. Which turned into a very hard work trip of 3.5 hrs and 13,200 ft.











( If you click this image to enlarge it, and look closely you can see us going up at 2 kts, 105 kts airspeed and 13,000ft)





The first few hours was spent scratching around below 8000 ft, mostly thermal lift and a few bits of hard earned ridge lift in the wonderful mountains around Omarama here.


( This image is just coming into and area called hugo's elevator. The ridge worked very well here. This was taken at around 6000 ft and we gained around 1500 ft on the ridge.)








The last bit of our flight paid off however as we finally had stayed up long enough that Wave managed to set itself up and we finally hooked into it around 8700 ft. I quickly learned what all the commotion is about this wave thing as we quickly found ourselves rocketing up to 13,200 ft, and we still were getting around 8-10 kts up ( 800 - 1000 ft/min) Unfortunately we were not oxygen equiped so we couldn't keep going higher. On the same note though, it is amazing to be blasting around the sky in a glider with no motor at 100-115kts at 13,000ft and staying level. It was amazing to say the least.



( Open this image and save it as an amazing background. This is 13,000 feet NW of Omarama looking west, oh yeah and -10C)







And Yesterday, Britt and I took a day trip to a place called Oamaru. For those of you following along on the map, that is straight east of Omarama about 105 km. Along the way we saw some amazing sights. Benmore Dam, Aviemore Dam, a beautiful hiking trail and some Maori Cave Drawings. As we got closer to Oamaru we were also priveleged to see some of the landscape that they used for the movie "The Chronicles of Narnia" which was absolutely amazing. We will post some pictures here however there are far to many to put up here alone.

Once In Oamaru we went for a walk along a Tramping Trail ( hiking ) which overlooked the coast. Absolutely breathtaking. The last part of our evening saw us in a very interesting sitting theatre and just as dusk rolled along, We witnessed 195 little blue penguins coming out of the Ocean and into there nesting burrows. Unfortunately we have no pictures of this as it's a conservation area and we were not allowed cameras.

(The Lancer overlooking Oamaru and the Coast)

Once home we found that we missed a very interesting soaring day that saw Our CFI, Chris and our Equipment manager, Rod in the Wave in the Duo with a ground speed of 180 kts or 330 km/h. They had an 80 kt tail wind to get that.

So for now that is all the adventure we have to offer but today promises some big winds, So i'm sure that we will have plenty more to come

Cheers, Ryan and Britt