Hope you had a nice HALLOWEEN.

——Around November 1 the Namibia- season starts and a huge amount of TP’s have been prepared with help from  Wolfgang Joschko [StrePla] und JJ Logtenberg .Good on them!!!
Kiripotib Soaring; “Great job! Thank you guys!”

Bitterwasser added; “Punctually at 10 o’clock the Golden Karoo has entered the harbor of Walvis Bay. If everything goes normally, we expect the arrival of the containers with our planes in Bitterwasser on Friday” [October 29].
But,..on Thursday afternoon the trucks drove between the Palms and the first 3 containers have arrived.

—–No flying yet in Namibia ,but Worcester in S. A. had several flights between just under 300 and over 400 km.
On the one-but-last-day from October pilots in Australia flew from Victoria and the border of NSW nice distances.
Grant Heany from Tocumwal;580 km in a St Jantar.
Tobias Geiger from Benalla 594 km in a 15 m. Ventus 2AX.

And now it is NOVEMBER already!!!!

—–News from the German Nationals in 2022 published on October 25;
Club, standard and 15 m. class flies from Zwickau between June 6 and 17.
The Nationals for the ladies will be flown from Landau between Mai 19 and 29.
When you wish to participate you have to apply for both before November 15 at Online-Portal COPILOT 
As shared by https://www.segelfliegen-magazin.de/deutsche…/

—–Aerobatic news ;
“29 October 2021.
Birth of a new aerobatic team “SK&TEAM”!
The first team members: Svetlana Kapanina, Andrey Bespalov, Romain Fhal !!!
City of birth: Nanchang , China.”
Romain Fhal shared this news with pictures.
A while ago I wrote about him.

—-News from Richmond Gliding Club down under;
“Saturday 30 Oct was a great day for RAAFRGC and CFI Paul Tridgell with the first areotow behind the new build Bearhawk VH-TGN. This has been a massive effort to get the aircraft to this point, there is more testing to come before the club can recommence normal operations but Saturday saw the first aerotow operations at Richmond since the loss of VH-UPS on December 1 2019.Congratulations and well done to Paul, John and all who have helped make this happen.More photos to come. The first launch.”
GLIDING AUSTRALIA added;
“Congratulations to the RAAF Richmond club for getting their homebuilt (SAAA reg) tug built, certified and now finally towing gliders! Checkout their page history for some pics of the build process.“

——Porta Westfalica…. in Germany, [Nordrhine Westphalia] sounds very familiar for many pilots, certainly also from The Netherlands. When you like racing the ridges, Porta is the place to be, certainly now everything looks fabulous in autumn colors.
A few Dutch mates went there last weekend and dad Rein and son Lars Groot went there with the ARCUS flying a free distance of 452 km and enjoying 6 hours and 32 minutes of pure gliding joy.
WeGlide: https://www.weglide.org/flight/111514#soobock

More members of the Gelderse did the same and here is the photo impression I received.

—–A-real-pity- news; The IS 28 from Tocumwal’s SRGC is as I heard, a “write off” , after it started for a test flight after the annual inspection,[form 2] on October 23.
The more popular version….”When the glider was just airborne, the wings folded up like an aircraft on an aircraft carrier.
The check pilot immediately released and the glider sort of glided/ fell/ crashed back onto the ground, from about 8 feet in the air.
Apparently the glider was rigged without inserting the wingpins correctly.
The 2 pilots were fine and uninjured.”
Thank god!
A REAL GOOD lesson to be learned from this incident.
Here the Airworthiness Alert from the GFA;
An IS-28B2 sailplane had recently completed an annual inspection for the issue of a maintenance release and was performing a post maintenance evaluation flight. The glider was on aerotow flying just above the ground when a loud cracking noise was heard. The flight was terminated and a landing straight ahead was successfully carried out. After landing, the
glider exhibited an exaggerated dihedral. On inspection, the connection between the lower wing spar attachment fittings had failed.
The investigation mentioned;
“The initial inspection suggested the upper tapered bolt had engaged correctly during rigging, but the lower tapered bolt had not engaged correctly. There were less than 14 mm of thread exposed on the bottom tapered bolt. A comparison with another IS-28B2 revealed that correctly engaged tapered bolts had approximately 25 mm of threads exposed on upper and lower threads when both tapered bolts were fully engaged.“

You can find the PDF with pictures from the bolts on….GFA AWA 2021-3 IS-28B2 Wing Rigging Failure 02112021.pdf

No drama, but a pity from the glider AND as said a lesson to be learned for all clubs or pilots flying an IS 28.

That’s it for now.
Cheers Ritz