Flight for Sight

To say the event was a success is an understatement as this year's tour raised more than A$100,000 for the Royal Blind Foundation Queensland with all of the funds going towards services to aide people who are blind or have vision impairments.

As always the team from the Royal Blind Foundation supported our aircraft by providing a ground support team. The deputy CEO of the Royal Blind foundation, Mr Gerard Gosens, was again the precious cargo we transported around Queensland. Gerard, who has been blind since birth, continues to amaze us by not letting his disability slow him down. We were kept amused at the various events throughout the tour with Gerard’s stories of his recent attempt at climbing Mount Everest and the other adventures he has undertaken.

Being a Para Olympian Gerard still trains every day and on some mornings when we crawled out of bed at 6 a.m. he had already returned from a 30 km training run. Fortunately none of us pilots had to go with him on this run as he used a number of sportspeople from the towns we visited as guide runners. When he wore one runner out they would then pass the lead to the next person and off they would go again.

This year our team was made up of Phil Allen from Canberra, Charles Dalglish from Lithgow and myself, with two Sinus aircraft and one Virus aircraft completing the event. Conditions this year were almost ideal however we still had many testing situations which really showed the potential of the Pipistrel aircraft over a wide variety of terrain, weather and other conditions. Our only casualty for the event was two punctures from taxing on grass with large burrs which punctured the tires. Other than that, all three aircraft performed faultlessly.

Our thanks go to the sponsors this year who included the AMP Foundation, Telstra, BP Air who supplied all the fuel for the aircraft, Caltex who supplied the fuel for our ground support vehicle, Transfield services, XCOM Avionics and Ford Australia through their dealer Brian Burt Ford.