News

This is a reminder to all members that when conducting a private passenger flight, which may also be known in the club as a family and friend flight, they are not permitted to touch the aircraft controls while the aircraft is flying.  During AEF flights the Air Experience passenger is not permitted to touch the controls when the aircraft is below 800ft AGL  The difference between an AEF and Passenger flight is that the AEF has completed the GFA AEF form and the pilot is AEF rated. Noting the GFA AEF forms cost $30 each.

Please refer to section 11.1 and 10.5 of the GFA operations manual for more detail.

Running a gliding club takes many people and a diverse range of skills, everyone needs to do their bit. The club has just published a central list of roles and responsibilities on the members web site.  If you know of any roles that may not be listed please email info@vmfg.org.au so we can add them.

The club is currently looking for people to help with Grants, Bacchus Marsh Airfield Management (3rd representative), and a Bacchus Marsh Gliding representative.  If you are able to help please contact the one of the committee members

Around 50 hours of flying by approximately 20 club members took place at the Bendigo GC in Raywood from 29 October to 1 November, making it one of the most successful camps for MGC in recent years.

Although the weather could have been slightly more cooperative, we flew on three days out of four, with many members achieving good early season cross-country flights and gaining much needed currency. Of note, Richard Traill flew 226km on the Saturday (in his new ASG 29, Caleb White 204km on the Monday (in the White's new DG-200/17), and many members cracked 100km multiple times.

Best of all was the great social atmosphere (only slightly dampened by the mosquitos!) and seeing members working together to make the weekend a success. On that note, thanks to all who towed gliders there and back, to Ben and Paul for ferrying the tug and NDG, to Ben, Steve and guest tug pilot Peter Summersby (who visited in his RV-7) for the towing over the three days. And a special thanks to the crew at the Bendigo GC for their hospitality. We look forward to being back there for Christmas.

All gliders and equipment are now back at Bacchus Marsh (tug and NDG arriving Thursday) so please get out there on Saturday if you can to help rig. There's only 7 more weekends until the Christmas camp, so get out to the Marsh to keep (or build) your currency.

The Club's AGM for 2015-16 was held last weekend - 22 October. Thanks to those members who attended. An enjoyable dinner in town was held afterwards, where much of the discussion was about preparing for this weekend's expedition to Raywood.

At the AGM, the Committee for the coming year was elected as follows:

Role	Member
President	Ben Loxton
Vice President	Tighe Patching
Secretary	Michael Aldridge (NEW)
Treasurer	Tony Carling
Committee member	Paul Spooner (CFI)
Committee member	Steve Coulton (Tugmaster)
Committee member	Mark Hunt
Committee member	Ian Northey
Committee member	Bob Hickman

The club now accepts credit card payments for flying invoices directly, instead of making credit card payments via PayPal.

At he bottom of your invoice select Pay online now you will be taken to an online invoice. At the top left of the screen, click the green button that says Pay with Credit card or PayPal, a new screen will appear where you can make the appropriate selections and provide your details.

Please note the financial transaction fee will be added to your invoice total.

The club introduced the PayPal payment option a few years ago, to provide an alterntive method of payment for flying.  At the time the financial transaction fees from the service provider were deducted from the member payment, and the remaining funds credited to the members invoice.  The process for deducting the transaction fees was laborious and time consuming, it was also confusing to members as the invoice they thought they had paid was a few always dollars short, as a result of the service provider transaction fee.  When the PayPal processing workload was combined with the work that was required to straighten out the clubs accounts, it was decided to stop the process until a simpler solution could be found.

Recently a new service provider was identified that automatically processes the financial processing fee, at the time of payment.  As a result the club is in the process of changing over to the new provider, and plan to roll it out during Oct. - Nov.  The new service provider is called eway and is based in Australia, 

Once operational, members choosing  to pay via credit card or PayPal will have the financial processing fee added to their invoice total at the time of payment.  The service also simplifies the processing of credit card payments, compared to PayPal.

Details on how to pay can be found at the bottom of all invoices.If you have any queries please contact  accounts@vmfg.org.au

As I wrote about in the recent Glide Angle, VSA members now have a new Soaring Forecast site for Victoria and Tasmania, and covering much of NSW, thanks to the work of Matt Gage and funding from the VSA.

            http://vicmet.gliding.asn.au/VIC/

            http://vicmet.gliding.asn.au/TAS/

This model is closely related to RASP, but will be upgraded every 6 months as new information is released, which hopefully should ensure a more consistent standard of prediction.

New forecasts are created twice each day and cover the next 6 days of flying. The first 2 days are at a very high resolution (good for wave, etc.), the following 4 days are at a lower resolution (but still higher than the previous RASP). Today’s forecast should be ready by about 7:30am and tomorrow’s forecast should be ready by 7:30pm.

The server will keep about 100 days of historical forecasts, depending on available disk space.

A link to the new RASP site has been added to the bottom of the members web site www.MelbourneGlidingClub.com.au for quick reference.

Club house & North Hangar

The codes for the door locks for the Club house and Nth hangar were changed late Sunday 2.10.16.  All current and paid members received a personnel email containing the new lock codes on the 3.10.16.

MGC workshop

Last year the committee endorsed the purchase of a coded lock for the workshop to make it easier and more convenient for members to access,.  The purchase was delayed until the locks were on sale, as a result we recently purchased one thanks to the MASTERS sale at a 40% discount, and plan to install it between now and Christmas.   Once installed all members will receive an email with instructions on its use, and the code to be used.

The Bus phone and CAM have been transferred from the old bus to the new one, and are now operational.  The CAM can be seen on the main page of www.MelbourneGlidingClub.com.au  and the bus number is 0490 098 529.

Many thanks to John Parncutt, who reinstalled them.