Editorial

from the editor february–april 2019

1000m down, contemplating the easy trip

It’s been a great soaring summer. Everyday my social media feeds are full of pictures and stories of great flights. And not just individual flights. There have been a lot of exciting gliding events happening over the season and some of the greatest enthusiasm seems to come from people flying at the non-sanctioned events. Non-sanctioned doesn’t mean illegal by the way, it simply means that it doesn’t come under the auspices of the Sailplane Racing Committee. The sanctioned competitions are the Nationals – multi-class and club class, and the Regional contests.

This season, the fun contests to fly, if social media engagement is anything to go by, were the Canterbury Club contest in Springfield before Christmas, the Auckland Club contest in Drury just after Christmas and the Matamata Soaring Centre comp/Club Class Nationals that has just wound up in Taupo. I’m not saying that the Nationals at Omarama wasn’t exciting, but it didn’t seem to generate the buzz that the other contests did. The North Island Regional contest was postponed due to weather and will now be held mid-March.

Part of that social media content is because the Springfield contest is new, the Auckland contest was incredibly well hyped by Simon Gault on behalf of his sponsors (which is very good for New Zealand soaring as a whole and Simon did an amazing job getting these companies on board) and the Taupo contest had Sebastian Kawa, the world’s best soaring pilot, competing. It’s hard to imagine what the Matamata Soaring Centre can do to top that next year.

The Youth Soaring Development Camp isn’t a contest, but populated as it is by an enthusiastic and young group of pilots who breathe social media, we saw a lot about that too.

We don’t have any coverage of the Auckland contest this issue because for some reason Enterprise contest organisers, North and South Island, don’t seem to send content to SoaringNZ. We don’t let it worry us.* We’ve got a photo essay on the Springfield contest (you probably weren’t going to read the words anyway) and many words about flying with Sebastian Kawa (please read these, they’re inspiring). We have some nice words and some really interesting statistics from the YSDC.

While the Taupo contest was on (it was terrible timing because I really wanted to interview Sebastian) I was walking the Milford Track. Tramping has become my ‘thing’ in the last

few years and my tramping buddies and I have managed to do a Great Walk every summer for the last four years. The Milford was a bit daunting because of the distance (53.5 km) and the infamous 1000 metre climb over the Mackinnon Pass. Not terribly surprising for those of us used to these sorts of things, the up part of the pass turned out to be much easier than the down (it’s the knees). The Milford Track isn’t easy, but it is perfectly doable. I had made the mistake of saying out loud, sometime back near the beginning of last year, “Who wants to do the Milford Track?” and ended up leading a party of seventeen! My party consisted of friends, friends of friends, relatives, relatives of relatives, friends of relatives and relatives of friends. Most people only knew one or two others in the group but by the end of it we were all really close. There is this whole thing about shared experience

which creates bonds and that is exactly what happens at gliding contests, Christmas Camps and the Youth Soaring Development Camps. These events are good for everyone involved – pilots, tow pilots, volunteers and organisers – in ways that go way beyond the actual flying. The feelings of social connection, of like-minded people, of family, tie the gliding community together.

So, support your organisers. Be an organiser. Fly, volunteer and have fun with your peers. Start thinking about what you can do next season and let’s plan to make it as good as this one has been. Stay safe Jill McCaw

*Since writing this Ross Gaddes has promised an article for the next issue.