SAFA Skysailor Magazine

26 SKY SAILOR December-January-February | SUMMER 2025/2026 Carties hadn’t been used for years and the launch was completely overgrown. To finalise the mowing plan, we took a tandem wing to the hill and laid it out so council staff could see the actual footprint required for a safe take-off – not just the wing size, but how airflow compresses at the lip, how Venturi forms through the gap, and why the clear zone has to be much wider than it appears in photos or on a map. Once they saw the wing on the ground and understood how conditions work on launch, everything clicked. Within days of CASA issuing the exemp- tion, council contractors had cleared a proper launch area. After a full year of work by the entire SCFF committee (and a few extra helpers), Carties was officially reopened on 11 November 2025. Reopening Carties reminded us how much sits behind the scenes of a flying site. From the outside, most pilots only ever see the launch, the lift band, and the view… not the months of conversations, documents, diagrams, meetings, rewrites, and negotiations that make any of it possible. It’s easy to assume a site is either ‘open’ or ‘closed’, but the reality is far Re-Opening Carties