http://www.dc3-antipodes.com/

On the 31^st of December I caught up with my friends from the Canterbury Gliding Club, the amazing Yvonne Loader and Alex McCaw whom I first met at the Walsh Memorial Scout Flying School in Matamata that year.

On my arrival Alex already had a glider booked and with great conditions we took off at about 2pm. First off to ‘Little Ben’ for a photo shoot, circling around the mountain where Jill and John McCaw along with my family took fantastic photos.

From the Ben Ohau range our flight took us over to the Ahuriri River. On a rather interesting note, the ending to our flight was not where it had started! Just under 2hrs after launching out of Omarama, we rolled to a halt on a little farm strip called Ben Avon. It goes without saying that I really was getting the full gliding experience, a land out with an aero-tow out of a beautiful strip.

The aero-tow helped us climb out of the Ahuriri Range after an exciting day, finishing up with some aerobatics on the way home. This exhilarating end to 2011 was followed by lovely New Years Eve celebrations with many new friends from the gliding community.

On the 1^st Yvonne Loader literally took me under her wing. She booked us a Duo Discus and for the next two days I had the most amazing experiences. Nothing I had ever imagined doing when I hopped onto the 737 to enjoy the South Island’s weather just a day ago.

Our first flight started with a thermaling lesson on the foothills of Mt Horrible, working our way up we crossed over to higher mountains just south of the field where I was very excited to climb through 10,000ft for the first time! Yvonne is such a fantastic friend and instructor. She explained to me the underlying importance of always having more than one escape route and a possible paddock or airstrip within reach of the glider’s range. I was very aware of this after my land out experience the previous day.

As time went by I became more comfortable with the feel of such a beautiful machine and how through real intelligence and knowledge Yvonne helped me learn to soar higher and higher, until we could make the jump between many mountain ridges. The journey through the stunning mountainous country east of the Mackenzie Basin took us to the Mt Aspiring National Park.

Playing with nature you can always expect the unexpected, and on the decision to call it a day and start our journey home we encountered a significant amount of sink. It was an experience in itself to see Yvonne in her element working the glider with every ounce of lift we could find. With the Makarora strip in sight and a nominated minimum altitude to make the call, with my encouragement and Yvonne’s incredible skill we managed to slowly but surely crawl up the sunny side of a small ridge leading up to the high tops of the towering mountains above!

As we reached a much safer height it was now my turn to take control and bring us home. It is such an amazing feeling to pull a glider into a thermal that goes up like an elevator, climbing purely through the phenomenon that is rising air. After a significant height gain we turned the glider back home toward Omarama and began the glide home. It really is something else, when your airspeed indicator is hitting 90kts and all you can hear is the airflow around the cockpit – no engine required.

As if the first flight – almost four hours wasn’t enough, I was really in for a treat on the next day as we did another three hours. We left a bit later for my second flight with Yvonne. The day was not as strong as the previous had been and we really worked hard for every 100ft we gained. This flight was more about learning how to find the thermals on Magic Mountain and playing along the beautiful snow capped Barrier Range. Yvonne taught me in such a way that after I had an understanding of the tricks and tips, she let me search for the thermals and if I dropped down it was up to me to get myself back up in the rising air. It was such a valuable learning experience, and once I had cottoned on to where the best thermal was, it was an even more exciting situation when a couple of gliders came to join the strong updrafts.

I am so grateful for all the knowledge and time Yvonne passed onto me over those two amazing days, and also to Alex, for making my first glider flight such an enjoyable and adrenalin filled one! I am looking forward to returning to the South for Youth Glide this year.

Gliding in Omarama beats anything I have ever experienced. Even after a successful international sailing career, competing on the world stage sailing all oceans, there is something very special about the stunning scenery when soaring from the McKenzie Basin. Especially when you meet people who are so friendly and happy to freely pass on their knowledge!

Many thanks to Yvonne Loader and the McCaw family for making gliding in Omarama such an unforgettable experience!

Bianca Barbarich-Bacher

Women of Aviation Week check it out…

Your support is appreciated!!

Email aviation photos for addition to our photo display.

Your support is appreciated!!

Email aviation photos for addition to our photo display.

AND

2012 Rally Registration Masterton

Rally Update

1. Book accommodation asap as there are limited rooms penciled in.
2. There are limited aircraft on the airfield available for hire (One Cessna 172, one each of a Tecnam and a Rans S6 and one Piper Cub). Any other aircraft type will have to be flown to Masterton, so please make arrangements for this.
3. The Friday evening meal will be a BYO drinks.
4. Drinks for Saturday and Sunday evenings will be provided through a CASH bar.
5. The Winter Navigation Competitors will be required to use VNC C2, so make sure you bring this along.
6. If you have entered the Pacific Wings Writers Competition – let the Secretary know prior to the Rally.
7. If you are planning on competing in the Airways en-route competition ensure you notify Flight planning one hour prior to departure and inform them of the competition entry.
8. Remember to bring your photos for the photographic competition.
9. Study up on your WWI theory, costumes and “Women Firsts”!!!

We look forward to seeing you in Masterton, Kerry- Organiser

2012 Rally Masterton Programme

Come join us through our rallies, we encourage you to extend your knowledge and experience in your chosen sport or profession.

You have access to a great network of women who are involved either professionally or recreationally, in a wide range of aviation activities.

You will be inspired by the enthusiasm of our members and can draw on the knowledge and skills of women aviators who have many years experience or share ideas with other women just starting out.

See you there!

Take-off for these celebrations was in the August week in which a hundred years previously Old Bird had become the first English woman to get a pilot’s licence.   And Brooklands in Weybridge, Surrey was where she had confounded her detractors and become an accredited pilot and in partnership with Blondeau run a Flying School.   It was, therefore, natural for Brooklands Museum to join with the BWPA to organise a ‘Hilda Hewlett Centenary Weekend’.    Included among the events was a twice-daily talk on Old Bird.

My reason for agreeing to speak had more to do with a fierce possessiveness about my work than any ambitions as a speaker.    However, to my amazed delight, I found that I began to enjoy myself.    True, a wee shut-eye after lunch overtook one or two elderly listeners and, true, the numbers who attended were hardly boast-worthy – there had been one nasty moment when it threatened to be an audience of two – my husband and my cousin – but a laugh here and there, and thanks afterwards was heady stuff.

On the Friday prior to this weekend I had been interviewed for Woman’s Hour for a special about a hundred years of women pilots that was to go out on the August Bank Holiday Monday, which nicely coincided with the date on which Old Bird’s licence was issued, 29^th August.   Strangely enough, I think sitting on my own in a studio in London in front of a microphone covered with a red baffle was less terrifying than if I had been face to face with the redoubtable Dame Jenni Murray in a Manchester studio, where the programme is made.

The raft of questions that the producer of the programme had asked me in advance had me re-acquainting myself with what I had written, rather as if I was revising for an exam!    I needn’t have bothered:  the questions were few and new.    I tottered out into the London sunlight not at all certain what it was that I had said.  Listening to the broadcast, I reckoned Old Bird would have been unsurprised by the achievements of the women pilots interviewed.;  she would have rather envied the ATA ‘girls’;  and, although she would have approved of the American aeronaut, I am not sure she would have wished to have been one.   Weightlessness she might have found a bit of a lark, but being shut up in a capsule she would have found very trying – no fresh air.

Unfortunately, the BBC TV South in their ‘Inside Out’ magazine programme did not do Mrs Hewlett too proud.   They kept referring to her as Mrs Hewett despite introducing me as Gail Hewlett, her granddaughter-in-law.   Disgruntled by such slipshod work, I was also appalled by my wrinkles:  positively crevasse-like!

Invited by Clare Walker (Chair of the RAeS Committee of Women in Aviation and Aeronautics) to speak at the ‘From Pioneers to Presidents.  Celebrating a Century of Women in Aviation’ conference held at the RAeS in London in October 2011 was a particular honour, as I was an amateur in seriously impressive professional company.   My piece about Old Bird with emphasis on her life in aviation was, in comparison to the scientific, practical and motivational contributions, ‘light entertainment’.  I told it like a story, which seemed to go down well.  In fact, two dear elderly ladies, in thanking me for how interesting they had found it, remarked on how much they realised that they loved being told a story.

Being asked to stand up to make ourselves known by Clare Walker when she gave the vote of thanks to the Chief Pilot & Director of Training, Boeing Commercial Airplanes, tiny blonde dynamo and guest lecturer at the RAeS ‘100^th Wilbur and Orville Wright Lecture, was not what Anthony and I had been prepared for!  Thankfully, we were reasonably tidily dressed:  in our ignorance we had not realised the significance of the occasion.   Capt Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann had begun her fascinating illustrated talk with a picture of Old Bird.  Later, when we were properly introduced to her, I did suggest that, should she ever need to refer to Old Bird again, not to misrepresent poor Maurice Hewlett, who was endlessly misquoted about his wife’s flying (Wikipedia, I am sure, is to blame.   I must learn how to correct it).  Conferring on us undeserved status with her inscription, ‘To the fabulous Hewletts’ she autographed our Programme.      We’re not complaining, even if our exaltation is only by association!

And now to the cup!   The Brabazon cup.

FOR OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENTS IN

AVIATION

Presented to the B.W.P.A. by

LORD BRABAZON OF TARA

1960

In all, with stand, it is 10 inches high and handle-to-handle it is 10 inches wide.   Among previous winners are the names of two who, in 2011, were so influential in setting the stage for my unexpected fun:  the aforementioned Clare Walker and Caroline Gough-Cooper, president of the BWPA, international helicopter champion and owner of a little red helicopter which, when I saw her be the last person to fly out from Brooklands, was the coolest thing I had seen.

As guests of the BWPA at their Annual Award and Christmas lunch, Anthony and I were each in for a major surprise.  Mine was that, literally, at the last-minute I became the replacement for the scheduled guest speaker, who was unable to attend and, in that capacity, I was also tasked with handing out the winners’ trophies.   Anthony’s surprise was that he was once again singled out because of his grandmother!   For the BWPA to recognise and honour her achievement, thus, was a fitting and very happy finale to the centenary celebrations.

Thanks to Old Bird.   The Irrepressible Mrs Hewlett I have done things and met enthusiastic and lovely people from worlds far removed mine, both in the UK and New Zealand.  And, last year, I particularly enjoyed my little flicker of limelight.