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Sailing in NZSI


bernd1151

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There are two places in the world that are famous for flying in sailplanes, one is the „Wasserkuppe“ and is located in Germany and the other one is „Omarama“ and is located on the South Island of New Zealand. There might be other ones as famous, but these two are the ones I know.

I am here now in Omarama. It is my job to help renowned NZ geologist Trevor Chinn to gather important information about the glacier changes caused by global warming. He is not new to this, he collects such data for the last 40 years already.

The beauty of flying in the mountains are the constant winds that give us the desired lift to stay up in the air almost as long as we want. Combine that with an almost soundless flight, great all around visibility and my guest will have excellent photo shooting opportunities, while I sure will have a ride of my life.

Our tow plane will lift us to around 6,000 ft over Lake Pukaki.

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We have now reached our desired altitude, have said “Auf Wiedersehen†to our Maule tow plane and are finally on our own. Trevor, are you ready?

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We have reached the Mount Aspiring range and decide to head South

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I can’t believe that I get paid for this

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In the distance one can see Lake Wakatipu

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Trevor wants me to fly along the Eastern shore of this lake. Our final destination for today will be Queenstown

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At around 50 kts it takes some time to reach your destination, but we have all the time in the world

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We have reached Queenstown

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I am allowed to use the grass-strip right next to the runway for my landing

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Wow, what an experience

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