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GNZ Newsletter

July 2018


From the president


Well where to start...

Welcome to my first attempt at the GNZ newsletter.

I think the format of this newsletter will evolve with time as it already has. With the use of a bit of modern tech, hopefully I can up the entertainment and engagement factor.

So, perhaps before I get onto some of the more mundane aspects of the GNZ AGM and conference weekend just gone, let's start with something really awesome...

from Youth Glide New Zealand

In case you have been hiding under a rock somewhere and have not yet seen this. Brought to you by the amazing, talented team at Youth Glide New Zealand with support from the GNZ Umbrella Trust this is a must watch!

Beyond the sheer joy of its entertainment value this video was produced with a definite purpose in mind. It is a recruitment and fund raising tool for use by all gliding clubs in New Zealand. It is part of a larger presentation package designed to be delivered by youth to youth or potential funders of youth events. The package includes a word document that covers how to deliver the presentation with notes for each of the power point slides. This is an opportunity that your club should not let pass by! Grab a youth member or two from your club, contact a local school, ATC squadron or scout group and organise a time to present to them.

The video, word document and power point presentation can be all downloaded from the below link.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eM3jSlXp5fIh1BKUK-bXAaQy2aQ7um8J



So what happened at the GNZ annual conference / AGM weekend?

Rather than indulge you with my optimistically biased opinion I thought a sample of a few of the independent views and reports from club newsletters, from around the country might be a good way to go. Just click on the foldable below to read more...

Taupo Gliding Club

President’s Report by Hugh de Lautour

Welcome everyone, and thank you for coming. I think it’s a great idea to have our Club AGM the weekend after the Gliding New Zealand AGM, because I always leave the latter all fired up and enthusiastic about our sport and what we should be able to achieve. This year is no exception - and I now have a new definition of what it is that we should be achieving and delivering - I quote - “gliding experiences delivered brilliantly, with skill and passion”!That comes from Hamish McEwen - Research, Evaluations and Insights Manager of Sport NZ - who was behind the Voice of the Participant survey which you all participated in two years ago - and was passed on to the GNZ AGM by Brian Sharpe who is in a similar role with GNZ. Our continued success will depend on each and every one of us doing our bit to delivery that “brilliant experience, with skill and passion”. PLEASE make our new members welcome and make them feel that they are what they are - the future of the club. It can be done. Total membership of GNZ has increased this year (over the previous year) for the first time in five years. Fielding have recently had a big upsurge in membership, and Wellington have so many new students that they cannot satisfy the demand. We can be in that situation as well. The economy is sound, so there is still a certain amount of discretionary dollar out there, and the sport of gliding is gaining a more prominent profile each year, so let’s get on the bandwagon and be a leader in the sport for our area. It is in our hands - GNZ have put out good initiatives and suggestions - it is up to us to make them work. Some of those initiatives, which came out at the recent AGM are worth a quick mention here so that you will know what to expect. In no particular order;

1. The Soaring magazine will continue to be a compulsory part of your subscription. Thank you to those of you who made your feelings felt to Trace and myself as delegates - we did take those on board, but in the end the vote was an overwhelming 37 to 4 to retain the compulsory aspect of the magazine. Concern from the membership was noted and changes and improvements are promised, but at the moment the majority of opinion was that it is still an important part of the gliding community, being interesting, informative, and a good promotional tool.

2. QGP holders can now apply to CAA for a PPL (Glider) under certain conditions…. (CAA Part 61.153) (c) A person who holds a current glider pilot certificate issued by a gliding organisation under delegated authority from the Director is eligible for the issue of a private pilot licence (Glider) if the person— (1) is at least 17 years of age; and (2) holds a flight radiotelephony examination credit; and (3) holds at least a current class 2 medical certificate issued under the Act.

3. A “Membership Development Committee” has been established.

4. A series of “Hangar meetings” has been scheduled for the next 18 months to share knowledge and best practise between clubs.

5. The monthly newsletter from GNZ will be continued and refined.

6. The revised Training Program has been, and is being, trialled by Wellington and Canterbury clubs. By and large they love it. As it is completed and tweaked it will be introduced nationwide, but in the meantime please note that the existing requirements of the MOAP are still what we have to work to. For those of you who don’t know about the “new system”, I think it would be appropriate for me to take just a little bit more of your time to give a very quick summary of what it is all about, as it may be that some students, and hopefully some instructors, will start dipping into it in parallel with their existing training program. That is not only OK, but to be encouraged. Probably the biggest difference you will notice is the amount of work you will be able and required to do off airfield. As you work your way through the new progression of Solo Pilot - Soaring pilot - Cross-country pilot - Task pilot and Alpine pilot, you will have your own copy of the syllabus - whether electronic or hard copy or both -so you will know exactly what is coming up on your next lesson, and you will have been expected to prepare for it. All the material you need will be provided to you, a lot of that being links to existing websites or articles or manuals or even YouTube clips. There will still be check boxes to be filled in, but there are notes associated with each one, so you will know what is required to get a pass mark for each. There is a lot more I could tell you, but now is not the time or place. Let me just say that with the new training program and a new attitude of pride, passion, and positivity around our sport, I am excited about the future. Oh - there is one thing more I didn’t say, and I didn’t say it for a reason. I didn’t say “professionalism” amongst all those “p's" - it was also mentioned at the AGM that we should not ever lose sight of why we all are here as glider pilots in the first place. Why do we do it? We do it FOR FUN! We are not going to turn the gliding clubs into military colleges. We are not professionals - let’s have fun along the way, and let’s encourage the guy or girl, 12 or 102, who just wants to learn to fly a glider well enough to take his or her mate for a jaunt around Mt Tauhara, to do just that. That’s great - that’s what it’s all about - it's about getting as much enjoyment as you want and going just as far as you want. It’s just that when you think you might be ready to go that little bit further, the system - the club - will be there to support you to do it safely and enjoyably. And believe me - it IS worth going that little bit further! So thank you all for your support over the last two years, let’s go from here today united in our love of gliding, united in our support for all our fellow glider-lovers - ready to help with a friendly word or a helping hand, proud to be the Taupo Gliding Club, and ready to deliver "gliding experiences brilliantly, with skill and passion”! Thank you. Hugh.

Auckland ASC

GLIDING NEW ZEALAND ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

Peter Thorpe represented us at the meeting

A couple of Saturdays ago I flew to Wellington to attend the GNZ AGM as our club’s delegate. If you have read the GNZ Annual Report 2018 located on the GNZ web site you will be aware of most of the agenda items and topics of interest but a summary of the highlights will perhaps be of interest. The AGM itself was fairly routine with no major items of concern. You will be pleased to know that there will be no change to affiliation fees for next year and the remit to allow gliders unable to be flown for maintenance or refurbishment reasons to be exempted the Participation Levy was passed. The remit proposing that the Soaring NZ magazine no longer be compulsory was lost by a significant majority because reducing the number of subscriptions would have made the magazine uneconomic to produce and the majority felt it was important that we retain a high quality magazine to show case our sport. A very small increase in membership of 12 was recorded for last year but of note was a significant increase in female pilots under the age of 26 over the last three years. A positive trend although there is a lot of work still required to significantly raise our membership. The GNZ Executive has three new elected members being President – Steve Wallace, Vice President - David Hirst (Wellington) and Executive Member - Tim Austen (Omarama). It is great to see that ASC is continuing a long tradition of active participation in national activities. I was not able to stay for the full evening programme as the last flight back to Auckland departed at 7-45pm however I heard most of the guest speaker who was Bob Henderson talking about his experiences introducing aircraft type check lists for use in operating theatres during surgery. The major annual award The Angus Rose Bowl was awarded to David and Marion Moody of the Auckland Club and the Friendship Trophy went to Brian Sharpe (Wellington Club) for his work as Chairman of the Membership Development Committee. FAI Paul Tissandier Diplomas were awarded to Tom Davies and Gavin Wills. Most of Saturday afternoon was spent receiving an update on progress of the evolution of the proposed Pilot Training Programme and discussing the results so far of the trial being conducted by the Wellington Club. Two or three years ago the Executive tasked Martyn Cook with reviewing the current pilot training syllabus with a view to making it easier and simpler and more relevant to younger student pilots. Martyn has developed a programme that changes the old A Cert, B Cert, QGP, Advanced Training into Solo Pilot, Soaring Pilot, Cross Country Pilot, Task Pilot and Alpine Pilot. The syllabus content has been revised to move things about and introduce cross country flying earlier into the syllabus because it is believed that cross country flying is the way to encourage pilots to stay in the movement longer and reduce the number of pilots who gain a QGP and then fade away. The system requires students to prepare for training flights by self-study using on line links to a huge amount of study material. In this way students will be prepared for each stage in the syllabus and will not need extensive briefing on the field. The Wellington Club has been trialling the new system for the last year in parallel with the existing syllabus and they are extremely positive and keen that it should proceed. Several young students spoke at the AGM and all agreed that they found the new system really easy to use and the self-study worked well. The Canterbury Club will be trialling it this year. All the clubs represented at the AGM endorsed the continuation of the trial and further development of training aids, instructors manual, trainer pop-ups for quick reference, schedule of ratings and endorsements. Results to date have shown that web based learning is not for everyone and there remains a need for paper based information. The concept of student self-preparation was slow to start with but students soon got the message and embraced the concept. The addition of a dual soaring flight to the pre solo syllabus (A Cert), a 90 minute solo soaring flight to the Soaring Pilot (B Cert) syllabus and a 50km flight to the Cross Country Pilot (QGP) do not fit comfortably with our club because we only have one 2-seater and cross country from WP is not for newbies so we have made our thoughts known to Martyn but I did not get much support from other clubs when I made these points at the AGM so I suspect we will eventually have to go with the flow. The proposed syllabus is all online and I would encourage you all to study it. There is a huge amount of very useful information hyperlinked to each step in the syllabus and we need as much feed back as possible so that we can propose amendments while the system is still under development. You will find it at moodle.gliding.co.nz – set yourself up with a log in account and start browsing.

Omarama Club

FROM THE GLIDING NEW ZEALAND AGM – report by Sheena Naughton At the GNZ AGM there were two remits. The first remit was carried i.e. no glider fee for inoperable gliders. The second remit was defeated by (from memory) 37 against, 4 in support. I voted against on behalf of our club. So we still have a magazine that's compulsory for members. The general tone of the AGM was that the Soaring NZ magazine serves an important purpose for the movement:  Maintaining a sense of community,  Marketing for future members Roger; to his left is "Wiggie" Tony Hansen and Eion Coutts tucking in to the abundance of food and two birthday cakes!  Dealing with the distribution of safety critical information which is a mandatory requirement under the MOAP. Whilst it was accepted that anything urgent would be distributed by email, there is still only about 85% of members with current email addresses, so the paper process (whilst seemingly old fashioned) is still necessary. There was general recognition that we probably do need to move to more on-line comms and indeed the magazine will be posted on line for its next issue (after the one that is coming out imminently). However there is still a cost to producing the content and that needs to be paid for by the membership one way or another. Finally on the AGM formalities, we were very proud that Tim Austen was voted on as a full member of the GNZ Executive. Many congratulations Tim - well deserved recognition for everything you do for gliding. Other Items on the Agenda for the week-end: Brian Sharp talked about a plan to keep supporting clubs with the concept of growing membership. He is planning on running 'hangar meetings' with various clubs - based on concept of toolbox meetings. Based on Wellington Club’s amazing success at attracting and retaining new and younger members, we need to keep learning from those clubs who are leading the way in our sport. I look forward to learning more from Brian in due course. Martyn Cook did a really good session on the development of the training syllabus. There was some good discussion around the pros and cons of some of the structure that he's proposing but overall very positive. Martyn is pretty clear it’s still in “trial” phase at the moment in order to get it right but those clubs that are using it (including Wellington) are finding it really good. They are parallel running it with the existing syllabus and finding it transfers across really easily. With a big emphasis on the student planning and prepping for their training flight, the students are putting more in, therefore the instructors are also, so instructional flights are all becoming a far more positive experience for everyone. Google - moodle.gliding.co.nz if you want to see more. We saw the Youth Glide video which will be distributed to clubs with a Power Point presentation. It’s intended as an aid to present to young people to encourage new membership. There was a couple of hours’ general discussion led by David Jensen on where each of the clubs was at. I was reasonably upbeat about our club as I think we have every reason to be, but did stress the biggest challenge with anything we do is around instructor and instructor succession. So this needs to be a topic for us to put some time into at our next Executive meeting. Finally Bob Henderson gave a really great talk at the cocktail evening about taking the verbal checklist from aviation into hospitals.

Meet our new faces

Joining the GNZ Executive as a committee member is Youth Glide President Tim Austen



So what does the GNZ do for me?

Sometimes we hear grumblings along the lines of "So what does GNZ do for me?" and "Where does my money go?". Fair enough too. As the member of an organisation that charges you to belong you are entitled to know. This is of course transparently laid out each year at the AGM with audited accounts, approved budgets for the year coming and strategic plans outlining what we are trying to achieve. In this section, to further inform and hopefully not bore you too much I will provide a snippet of one thing that the GNZ has been doing for you.

CAA Audit

As part of the maintenance of our Part 149 certification, GNZ undergoes regular audits by CAA flight operations inspectors. In these audits we are required to provide verifiable evidence of our compliance with respect to the conditions of our certification. This time around, to save on costs, CAA kindly agreed to do the audit on the Sunday of our conference while all the right people, with the right pieces of paper, were in one place. As we are due for full Part 149 recertification next year this audit was fairly limited in scope and concentrated on our own internal audit processes. Thanks go out to our Quality Manager (Terry Jones), NOO & NAO (Martyn Cook), EO (Max Stevens), the previous holders of some of these positions and Club CFI's, for their exemplary record keeping. We were found to be compliant against the 8 rules tested, meaning we all get to keep flying in the cost effective manner to which we have become accustomed.




Thanks for reading

If you have a photo, video, article or burning issue and you think the monthly GNZ newsletter might be the place, feel free to make contact.

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