SAFA Skysailor Magazine

7 January | February 2024 SKY SAILOR Later, my flights – though longer than many – required little effort and seamed a bit flat. All the excited talk was about who got to goal, or who flew the longest, staying up by knowl- edge and skill alone. Deciding to add the aerotow option I will keep flying powered into the future, it makes any low wind day into a flying day and no support is needed, but the idea of aero-tow training had been firmly planted – it was the next step to more thermal chasing. I contacted Peter Holloway at Locksley, just off the Hume Highway, close to Puckapunyal, and organised to do a course. Once the weather gods aligned the conditions a few weeks later, the course was on. I packed my gear, taking a Fun-190 and a Gecko, hoping to fly both. While loading the Gecko, it slipped and while I slowed its fall, the X-Trail’s left mirror was neatly removed. I drove off in a fit of temper soon after. The trip was a pleasant four podcasts long, through an amazingly green Australian countryside. One phone call to Pete corrected my navigation to Locksley field which had a full grass runway, several hangars for GA and other aircraft, a large hangar for the tug and hang gliders and two buildings for us, along with an amenities block. Pilots are interesting people Only two of us were doing the course, I and Robbo, a farmer with an interesting history. He’d taken up hang gliding in the late 1970s, and recently returned after a few check flights with Pete after a 31-year break from the sport. He told us about a project he’d taken over after the original owner had crashed it: a plywood rigid wing called a Mitchell wing, part hang glider, part two-axis control, designed by an ex-Northrop engineer. Robbo had rebuilt the wreck, put an engine in it and got some useful flying out of it. Powered hang gliding All photos: Andrew Berenyi Bill Moyes with the Forbes Tow Weekend 2023 group