Sydneysiders are growing weary of hearing about the disruptions that will happen when APEC hits town at the end of August. It seems that the massive security precautions that will be in place for the event will touch every part of our lives.

According to today’s Daily Telegraph, mobile phone service will be blacked out in [...]

(It’s not like this in Australia, folks…)

I wrote recently about my attempted 500km glider flight. The proposed route was: Cootamundra – Grenfell – Peak Hill – Condobolin – Cootamundra.

I didn’t make it.

Due to inclement weather, I landed in a paddock about 35km south-west of Forbes. Here’s a quick snapshot of the flight:

You can view the flight in detail by downloading this [...]

I’ve been back for a few weeks now, and have finally had time to add some more information about Gliding Camp to this site. Here are some photos:

This photo shows the disused terminal at Cootamundra Airport. The local Council allowed us to use this building as a base for operations during Gliding Camp. (Like many [...]

When I drove into Camden Airport to drop off a glider after Gliding Camp, I noticed that a new windsock had been installed. Here are a few interesting photos…

This picture shows a general view of the Holdenberg.

My gliding exploits last week brought home to me very clearly the desperate situation facing farming families during the current drought.

From 8,000’ in the air, you can see a long way (especially from the excellent vantage point of a glider cockpit – much less restricted vision compared to a passenger window in a normal aircraft). [...]

In this post I described my failed attempt to fly a glider 500km around central western NSW. Due to inclement weather, I ended up landing in the ‘front paddock’ at Bergen Park, a property 35km to the south west of Forbes.

I didn’t have a camera with me, but I did take a couple of (sadly) [...]

Today’s weather forecast suggested pretty good flying – we expected (and got) thermals marked by clouds in the area, and storms developing in the afternoon.

We (club member Bill in one aircraft, me in the other) laid in plans for a 500km flight: Coota – Tichbourne Silo – Wallendbeen – West Wyalong – Coota. We took [...]

(Edited and re-posted from the SCGC camp blog…)

Today’s flying proved that looking out the window can sometimes provide a better forecast than looking at reams of charts and diagrams.

The forecasts didn’t look too good – suggesting a blue (cloudless) day of around 6,000’ thermals. A quick look out the window at 1200 showed cumulus clouds [...]

A tough day in the air – hot, hard work.

I set a course for a 500km flight and took off just before 1300.

Two hours later I had travelled less than 100km, and it was obvious that 500km wasn’t going to happen. I picked up a nice line of clouds (at last, some shade and decent [...]

I’ve arrived in Cootamundra for a few days’ flying.

Fortunately, the potential explosion in the town’s silo has been averted, so the locals have moved out of the motels – leaving a room free for me!

Initial reviews of the weather forecasts suggests that the next three days could be pretty good. I’ll post each day with [...]

Southern Cross Gliding Club’s annual Christmas Camp is currently taking place at Cootamundra, NSW. I’ll be there next week.

The club has set up a blog to report on happenings at camp. So far, I seem to be just about the only person posting on it – and I’m not even there! Feel free to visit [...]

Not much happening on flyingnerd.com lately. Sorry. Been busy. And distracted.

Nice photo: the Holden blimp, flying over Oran Park last weekend. Photo taken from Southern Cross Gliding Club’s DG-303 glider.

A few weeks ago, one of the marketing reps for Ulead Systems, a maker of video editing software, was in Australia to launch a new version of one of their apps. Tobie (the marketing guy) participates in a video editing discussion list that I read, and I met him on that list. As a former [...]

Here are a couple of quite frightening flying videos from the Flying Nerd’s eclectic collection of video snippets.

The Southern Cross Gliding Club’s DG-1000 two-seat glider did some acrobatics the other day. Count the loops on this video. (Warning: 5MB download. Biassed opinion: worth it!)

Hint—you’ll need more than the fingers on one hand!

Screen shot (that’s the ground at top of pic!):