Glider Pilot Flies 185 Miles On Set Course

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29716, 9 January 1962, Page 13

Glider Pilot Flies 185 Miles On Set Course

(New Zealand Press Association)

OAMARU. January 8

A flight of 185 miles in his Slingsby Skylark II glider at the weekend earned for Mr Bruce Gillies, an experienced Oamaru pilot, a Gold C qualification badge and his second diamond badge. These are internationalscale awards held by only a few gliding pilots in New Zealand. To win his third ’’Diamond” and thus reach ■the top of the qualification scale. Mr Gillies will have to fly a predetermined course of 310 miles.

His flight at the weekend began from the North Otago Gliding Club's camp at Omarama and took him over Cromwell and Lake Alexandria in Central Otago before returning to Omarama.

He encounted varied weather. At one time he was soaring at 17.000 ft and another time had swooped down to 500 ft. So high was the wind that at 80 m.p.h. Mr Gillies felt he was hardly moving. He was touching 100 m.p.h. at times, and completed the trip in five hours and a quarter. Because he had nominated his course and taken photographs of the turning points for the records, Mr Gillies

gained his second diamond award in addition to the Gold C badge. A visitor to the Omarama

camp at present is the former world gliding champion, Mr Phillip Wills, of England. He has been impressed with the conditions for gliding in the area, which is nearly 80 miles inland from Oamaru.