Bonjour Montreal

Waipukurau has an excellent reputation for settled weather in January with thermals and convergence predominating. It is an ideal early level competition with plentiful safe land out options. The CHB Aero Club provides camping/caravan accommodation at the airfi eld with good clubhouse facilities at $15 per person/night. The entry fee has been set at one hundred and seventy dollars ($170) reduced to one hundred and fi fty dollars ($150) for early entries before 1 January 2013. Please pay Entry fees to HBS bank account 031355 0690287 00 or by cheque to Gliding Hawke’s Bay and Waipukurau, 204A Knight Street, Hastings 4122. We look forward to seeing you there David Davidson Contest Director

Photo Graham Palmer

During this last Kiwi winter I had the opportunity to spend six weeks in Montreal Canada. It was summer and the weather was gorgeous for a frozen Kiwi. Some years ago, Montrealers Gerry Savey and his wife Christiane made a number of winter escapes from Canada to the soaring summers of New Zealand. I was fortunate to have met them on a number of occasions. The most memorable being when they came to the PW5 Nationals in Masterton (Note: That was when we had ten or twelve PW5s competing). Gerry will be well known to a number of Kiwi pilots as the loveable Frenchman from Canada, with his adorable wife.

Let’s not dwell on how fantastic the city of Montreal is in the summer; it has fi lms, comedy, fi reworks, Grand Prix, dance and almost continual festivals.

The most impressive thing for this grumpy old glider pilot was the GLIDING CLUB! Aeroclub des Cantons de l’Est has 15 members but their club rocks. The two seat trainer is a DUO DISCUS XLT, which they use for ab initio training, as well as a cross country trainer/fun machine. The US Border is only about 25 km to the south but it’s about 1000 km north before you run out of land, so 300 and 500 km afternoons are not rare events.

Needless to say, they are a cross country club and have two LS4Bs, one ASG29 and also have an ASH31Mi on order. As a note, they have trained 4 ab initio pilots on the DUO who then converted on to the LS4B. To help these babies get in the air, they use an HK36 Super Dimona with a retractable tow rope, so that after towing duties are complete, its towpilot can relax with some soaring time.

A relatively short drive on the freeway from Montreal, the Club resides on the Aeroport Bromont, where they have a nice hangar setup, beer fridge included.

The offi cial language of Quebec Province (i.e. where Montreal is) is French, but everyone at the club speaks English. Even though Marc, Chief Pilot, gives his briefi ngs to the team in French, I could follow the basics. Of course he would have briefed me in his impeccable English if I had asked for it. The airfi eld at Bromont has a fl ight information service but they use either English or French, as a number of US pilots hop over the border to deliver corporate guys and girls to the nearby IBM plant. One of the members, an F1 8 pilot, had even put an F18 in there for a promotional day.

I can’t sing the praises of this club highly enough - warm, friendly and helpful, each and every person I met. No club politics here. They are solely concentrated on how to get in the air and enjoy their passion for soaring.

My fl ight with Fred was fantastic. It was very easy to map read, as on the fl at land there were clumps of hills every 30 kilometres or so.

Now, where did I leave my Canadian passport application form?