5%? Why bother...

A friend of mine refers to Kevin Rudd as 'John Howard Lite'. I have to agree.

Australia is not a police state, yet.

Have been doing other things while waiting (about 7 weeks now) for some flying weather to arrive. Please sign this petition which is an attempt to derail the current initiative to introduce internet censorship in Australia.

Hopefully spring will finish sometime before the New Year and we can start flying.

Shoulda, coulda

From last Wednesday I was keen about Table Rock for today - very light southerly drift getting stronger further north, high base, cumulus all had me dreaming of drifing over Mudgee and flying on into the sunset. Reality really bites hard sometimes. So after and short flight and a long walk back up the hill, I ate my humble pie, climbed in the car and chased Andy and Kacper who had headed (slowly) north. They got to Lithgow and beyond in what was generally light headwind.

I think the forecast was spot on with decent cloudbase and the L&V wind. However in hindsight I think light and variable days are never going to be great for flying away from the Blue Mountains as they suck so much air in on a sunny day that you are always going to be punching a headwind to the W or NW. What will be interesting is to learn how much S or SE influence is required to overcome the mountain suck and if the amount required is more than we can launch in at Table Rock. I'd love to know what pilots in Forbes (200k further west) did today.

You are being watched

Great day at Blackheath, the picture is by Kacper from a few weeks ago but gives you the idea - we got H-I-G-H!! 2900m ASL at launch in possibly the most consistent 5m/s climb I've ever experienced, cloudbase was a few hundred metres higher, exactly what XCSkies predicted. Headed NW towards Lithgow punching slight headwind, we had spoken about the possibility of crossing the mountains to Penrith, a flight that is yet to be done on a paraglider, I was keen and it was definitely the day for it but everybody just meandered off to the North. Of course I followed, bleating in their wake.

I landed with another pilot after flying through a world of sink and less than 20k from launch. The police came along after we had packed up and walked down the road a bit. They asked if in future we could avoid landing where we did as the guy who owns the land is quote "completely Jatz crackers" and he calls the police every time a hang glider lands on or near his property. The nice officer also told us that he (Jatz cracker land owner) also said "he told us he was watching you guys through a scope, but he didn't say what kind of scope"

Apparently it takes all kinds of people to make the world go round, even this kind.

Edit - for non-aussies, a 'Jatz cracker' is a type of biscuit which sometimes goes with cheese and dips. Can also be used as a colloquial term for a person who sometimes goes with a mug shot and hand cuffs.

Late start at Beechmont

Today we got off Beechmont pretty late, launching at the tardy time of 9.55am. Apparently in December there are days where you can get away from launch at 7.30am and be crossing the Kerry valley not long after. Beechmont is a great site, but this also says something about the sanity of the Queensland government in not introducing daylight savings. There are all sorts of reasons why they don't do daylight savings, I've heard the fading curtains and cows producing less milk arguments but until now I had never heard the 'children will be killed if we have daylight savings' argument!!

I flew today with Brian Webb, Middy, Matt Senior and Grey Hamilton. It was a really fun day, wind was more to the NE than yesterday and base was much lower (1500m) but it was great fun to keep pushing on with those guys and just see how far we could get. There were a couple of lowish moments but we all got out to the range, Middy flew onto the range at Carr's lookout and continued on to land at Andrew's house in Killarney. I eventually got high enough to take a committing glide onto the range but chose to fly back and land as I wasn't feeling well. I didn't have coffee in the morning and I know that is a really bad thing for me. Well, at least at my current 'caffeine maintenance level' if don't have coffee I can tell you when it's about 1pm because I will start to get a splitting headache, which I did today, coupled with some nausea while turning in the last few thermals which is a new and exciting sensation for me.

I know I can solve this problem long term by drinking coffee less regularly, but I can also solve it immediately by just drinking coffee. Not a hard call :-)

CC08 Day 8 - Task 5

Geoff climbing out from Beechmont, pic by Hamish

I had planned on not doing the comp task today and launching as early as possible with anyone else who was willing to try and do some long cross country. We decided to hang around and do the task when Enda said it would be a good XC day but not one where you could get away from Beechmont super early.

One of the big items on the the 'the things to do free-flying around Caunungra' checklist is to cross the Great Dividing Range. Today the task committee called exactly that with an 88Km race to a goal paddock Just over Cunninghams Gap and a turn point around Lake Moogerah. It was an almost perfect cross country flying day with all the right ingredients - nice cloud, light wind towards goal and a bunch of friends. Conditions were great all the way out to the lake where things got a bit slower and sinkier except for those who stayed well north of the course line. 35 people made goal including a couple pilots on 1/2 gliders and they don't go over the range very often from what I'm told.

Final scores are here Our team ('Election Fraud' - Geoff, Antje, Hamish, Dave Snowden and me) came second overall, woo hoo! Geoff was 5th overall/1st Serial, Dave was 9th and Hamish 2nd in the sports class after a hard battle with Lindsay Wooten on the last day and Antje was 2nd woman after Michelle. Electing to land on the rainy tasks didn't do me any favours on the scoring front but comp or not, flying in the rain is just playing with fire, well, and water, neither or which is good for paragliders. The next exciting episode will be seeing how the team selection ladder has been shaken after this comp is included. Stay tuned.

Thanks to Matt Rosser in particular for putting in a ton of effort to organise the comp. Looking forward to Killarney already!

CC08 Day 7 - Task 4

Photo taken over launch by Hamish Barker

We flew from Beechmont today under a very cloudy sky though conditions looked much better to the west which often seems to be the case on these moist days from Beechmont.

A 57Km task to Boonah goal was called and for me it was a carbon copy of Task 2 - launch, struggle around the hill for 45min, get rained on, head out to land. Perhaps I need to grow bigger balls to fly in comps because I just can't seem to sit with the idea that it's OK to fly an aircraft made of porous fabric in the rain. I chose to land not so much because I was already getting rained on at launch but because there was much worse looking weather nearby (towards the gold coast). About 9 got to goal. Much of the field flew through heavy rain along the course line with a few reports of parachutal experiences. Somehow most people were OK with that and I heard from several pilots comments along the lines of "Oh I couldn't fly out of the rain because that was the only place there was any lift". Enough said.

Several big names didn't get to goal, Fred, Craig C, Brian Webb so the comp results will be mixed up after today's task. Also the aussie team selection ladder for the worlds will be shaken up quite a bit as several pilots in the top 10 have said they won't be going to Mexico if selected.

Tomorrow is actually shaping up to be a good day for open distance, it's possible to launch at 8.30am and get away from Beechmont so a few pilots who aren't so concerned about a comp result are going to try for some big XC.

CC08 Day 6

Howling wind today so stuff other than flying happened. Here is a video that Dave Snowden made on Task 3.

CC08 Day 5

Windy pre-frontal today so no flying. Pool comp night at the pub was a hit!

CC08 Day 4 - Task 3

First gaggle away from launch with Trelawney front and centre. Thanks again to Hamish for the great pics.

The forecast for today was as poor as the last few but again it was
wrong, fortunately even more wrong than the first two tasks.

We had a 57Km task from Mt Tambourine to Maroon goal via one
turnpoint. Conditions were very light around launch so it took some time to get the whole field off the hill. Antje hung around the ridge just a little too long and was not quite able to glide out to the Cat Motel. Antje made it to a small backyard next to a dragon fruit plantation but both looked bad so she took the safer option of a small tree. The excitement was reported on the local TV news including that Antje was 'found' by the land owners jack russel named Ozzie, not true but it makes a warm fuzzy story for the Tuesday evening news :-) Antje was fine but the wing took a small beating. Some pictures from launch and Antje's glider being mercilessly yanked out of the tree can be found here.

A north east wind on course made the run to the turnpoint fast for those who managed to stay high, and for those who didn't it was an exercise in patience. Base was around 1500m but below 1000m the climbs were broken and about as organised as an explosion in a cat food factory. About half the field made the turnpoint and glided off on a strong crosswind leg towards goal but most didn't survive the glide away from the turnpoint as the sea breeze moved in. 6 were in goal, Fred, Middy then Craig with Ron Mackenzie sliding in fourth less than a minute behind. Day results are here and the scores for the whole comp are now online.

CC08 Day 3 - Task 2

XC Skies predicted a cloud base of around 600m and top of usable lift at around 300m today, the Queensland RASP actually confirmed this so we were less than optimistic.

Johnny Durand played wind dummy on Beechmont and managed to stay up (as he does) so a 50Km elapsed time task was set under a very low, 80% cloudy sky. Some small gaggles dribbled across the plateau only a couple hundred metres above launch while the majority of the field ridge soared around, searching for anything. Much of the field crossed the plateau and landed in the Flying Fox valley. I was around launch with about 20 others when it started to rain quite heavily. I made what I thought was a brilliant strategic decision to land, ride back up in the bus while the sky cleared and then re-fly in lovely afternoon conditions, surfing cloudstreets all the way to goal. Hmmm.

When we got back conditions were nicely launchable on Beechmont so I re-flew, got whacked around a bit then parking into a very strong NE sea breeze and then landed over the back. About 10 other pilots on launch wisely decided not to re-fly. Several pilots made goal and it turns out almost every pilot got rained on somewhere on course. Richard Costa was first with Brian Webb and Matt Senior following up.

Another picture courtesy of Hamish head.

CC08 Day 2 - Task 1

Despite a complete blanket of low level cloud, we headed to the Beechmont launch and had a social morning. When it started raining there was a rush on Alistair's coffee van as nobody was worrying about needing an in-flight pee. The day was cancelled at 11.30, more free goodies from Mr Coffee were consumed and then the day was un-cancelled about 10 minutes later.

We moved to the Hinchcliffe launch where conditions were light/soarable/not raining and a 38Km task was called. People dribbled away from launch in small groups with most not getting more than a couple hundred metre's above launch. Nobody got to goal but Craig Collings got within a few kilometres and locals Jason Turner and Dave Gibbs were just behind. The day was good in that it really showed what you can do on a day that almost everybody had written off at 9am.

Also Hamish got to test his head gear, the picture above says it works ok!

Canungra Cup Day 1

The first day of the comp was rained out so we went on a shopping expedition. Geoff, Antje, Hamish and I are sharing a house in a beautiful spot on Mt Tambourine. I wanted to post a picture of the view but the house is above cloud base today so maybe later in the week. Instead here is a picture of Hamish and his new helmet camera mount he which he hacked up himself. Despite what it looks like, Hamish is not drinking his own brain (though Trelawney wonders), the tube actally activates a pressure switch which fires the camera.

Hamish has so far dismissed the most obvious suggestion of turning it into a dual camera/beer helmet.

Not very amusing

This cartoon was in the Willamette Week right before I left Portland. Some Scary stuff happening in the US right now.

Centre of the universe

I was talking to a guy in Portland and told him in conversation that I was going to Yosemite and saying goodbye he told me to enjoy my trip to the centre of the universe. I think he's right. Katje and I spent a few days around San Francisco and then headed out to Yosemite for 4 nights camping in Wawona. We didn't over exert ourselves, choosing to just relax around the river in Wawona which is a beautiful spot in the southern area of the park. Some pics below from a morning we went to Glacier Point pre-sunrise and a return to the enormous trees I saw here last year. They're just a tiny bit bigger now :-)



Have a look at the picture of the tree with the fire-scar in it - it's called 'The Clothespin Tree'. You can walk through the middle of the tree which is still very much alive and probably will be for many hundreds of years. The almost invisible figure at the bottom of the tree is Katje and you are seeing much less than half the tree in the photo. There isn't any way to describe how big these trees are.

Jon Stewart for Pres

This is hilarious, until you think about it and realise that these talking heads are the people supported by half the voting population of the worlds most powerful country...

Cliffside

Brett took me out to fly a site up the Columbia river, past Mt Hood. The picture is looking back towards Mt Hood to the west. Really dry, hot day with rough climbs not getting us very high. It was good 'get in touch with your glider' air :-) Brett flew about 25Km XC.

I want to ride my bicycle

Portland is possibly the most bike friendly city on the planet. To that end I did what locals do and headed straight to craigslist to find myself a shiny but no so new machine - $60 landed me a neat, 3-speed, coaster brake ultra simple step-thru straight out of the early 70's. Yeah so it's 'girls' bike, that doesn't make it less fun!

It's fantastic to ride around a city where motorists are actually courteous to cyclists and riders are seen as a positive part of the solution to a very big problem. A world away from Sydney where a person on a bicycle is simply considered an annoyance at best or a target at worst.

The day after yesterday

Today's forecast was for a slightly higher base and even less wind than yesterday. We all got excited about it, I was aiming for a 100K out and return but not long into the first climb I realised I was kidding myself. The day was definitely as good or better than yesterday, the air was sporty and I was so tired I was reacting to almost nothing. If you know Gary from Team America when he is 'making the signal', I felt pretty much like that.

I took a glide across the river and back to the nice green soccer fields. Lesson of the day, don't be too greedy. Or if you do plan on flying the day after a 7 hour flap, drink as much water as you can handle the night before and go to bed for 10 hours.

Chelan Open Day 6, Task 3

Well today was as forecast, absolutely astounding. The task committee (Josh Cohn, Keith Macullough, Eric Reed and Brian Webb) did a great job setting a 118Km triangle starting and finishing at the Chelan soccer fields.

A bit of a sink cycle about 10 minutes before the start had much of the field a few hundred metres below base but the glide across the Columbia to the SE is a bit shorter so almost everyone made it across and climbed immediately to 2800m. The clouds out in the flats were excellent and dust devils were going off in every direction, it was a race day for sure. Getting around the first turnpoint and the first half of the leg to Leahy (2nd point) was the fastest part of the day for me. The gaggle I was flying with dispersed and the clouds left us about 15Km from Leahy making that leg very slow. It was after 4.30pm by the time we got the Leahy turnpoint and while the flats will work til sunset the day was definitely slowing down. Regrouped at with Cherie Silvera, Dave Wheeler and a couple other pilots and we spent an hour turning in 1 m/s up or less and slowly pushing towards goal. At about 6pm we glided above a dusty which eventually got us back to 3200m and home with one more top-up on the way. The final glide was fairly tense - even with a 5:1 glide to goal 8Km out you still don't have a visual on it because of the high canyon edge on the Columbia river. Concerned, I grabbed aother 100m in a light climb about 6km out and then flew through lift all the way to goal. Course time was 6 hours and a few seconds for about 7.5 hours total. Over half the field (44 pilots) got to goal - the Chelan regulars said this was a pretty good day, but not the absolute best Chelan can turn on. Wow.

Might flight is here, final results are here.

Tomorrow looks even better than today.

Chelan Open Day 5 and a half

The weather tomorrrow is looking EPIC - light and variable with top of lift just over 10,000ft so stay tuned for reports of an amazing task tomorrow :-)

Chris Galli is here at the comp, one of the founders of the XC Skies weather forecasting service, if you haven't seen it, check out www.xcskies.com - pretty amazing tool he and a couple others have put together.

Chelan Open Day 5

It seems we are alternating, windy and flying days, today is windy.

We are camped out at Chelan airport, it's a reasonable tarmac strip with mostly single engine aircraft but a couple twins flying in and out each day. The airport is up on a plateau above the river and there is a steep ridge at the south end of the runway which is soarable and is actually a free-flying site.

On Wednesday night conditions were perfect and a few pilots had a go at it. You might think soaring in the climb-out path of an active runway a little too adventurous but it appears to be no problem. The Cessna I watched climb out had at least 50 metres clearance above them.

Chelan Open Day 4, Task 2

The launch at Chelan is on the western side of the enormous Columbia river, and the hardest part of most flying days here is crossing the river valley and getting into the flat lands. With southerly wind forecast, oday's task was called as a 70Km race directly up the river to Okanogan in the North and debate raged around one question, to cross or not to cross? Fly the west side of the river in the hills or cross immediately to the flats and get a straighter downwind run at goal? Much talk of how the hills never worked, the early wind techs not getting great height and dusties showing all over the flats combined to make up my mind - cross early and fly the flats.

If you want a succinct and intelligent breakdown of the whole task, I recommend heading over to Brian's blog now. However if you want an excruciating blow by blow description of the first 10Km, by all means read on. Sorry, need to do this for me as much as you ;-)

The majority of the field formed a large gaggle around 2100m a few minutes before the start (the same height we comfortably crossed on Monday) and most pushed to the upwind side of the start gate preparing to cross the river. Then something happened. The race started and a group of about 15 gliders directly upwind from me began to cross, I turned and began to cross the river and a few moments later looked over my shoulder to see the remainder of the field flying directly north to try the west side of the river. I was already downwind of the crossing group and likely to be further downwind, and alone, by the time I crossed, I watched Brian zig and zag working out which way to go and a few moments of indecision later I turned left and went for safety in numbers.

There wasn't any major sink on the first glide but we were flying onto higher terrain so not a huge amount of height to play with. I joined a few gliders climbing away from the main gaggle in what looked to be a much better climb. There was plenty of lift around but it was more a case of averaging out the general area. Back at 1650m I had hunted around for several turns in zero and less when I saw the lead gaggle a short glide downwind and climbing well. I glided in under them, found nothing, flew to a smaller group of pilots circling nearby, found nothing. Even 100m off the valley floor I wasn't overly worried as I'd managed to fly onto a rocky, sun-baked windward facing bowl - the kind of place where you would think the laws of thermodynamics shouldn't actually allow air to go down on a sunny day. Apparently they do.

In the end, half the field of 82 pilots got to goal, including all the pilots I was with in the climb I left to chase the lead gaggle. Brian was in that climb and said it eventually got them to 2300m, slow but it got there. I was happy with all of the decisions I made during the flight, but obviously leaving that climb was what broke the day for me.

The lesson for me was to get established on course before you start racing. Zeroing at 1650m about 1100m terrain doesn't count as established, not enough to go chasing the lead gaggle, especially when they are less than half a glide ahead. Also I should have been positioned better at the start, I wasn't focusing as well as I could have been in the 10 minutes before start which is when the decision should have been made on which route to take.

Results are here

Friday looks like another windy day.

Chelan Open Day 2

Only our captain America could fly today...

Chelan Open Day 1, Task 1

What a learning experience today! We had a 58Km task with a 48Km leg fighting a strong crosswind from the south. Have a look at my saw-tooth tracklog:



The batteries on my new vario went flat about 10Km into the task with no spare so I was flying off the gps altitude only. My fault, I know much better than to turn up to a comp with an instrument that I have previously turned on only once and tested exactly never. It was actually nice to go back to basics and feel out the lift and I had a lot of fun toying with myself in the crosswind - climb high or leave and push back to the course line? In the end some high cirrus drifted over and slowed the climbs down to make the task very tricky for pilots who were behind the leaders and downwind of the course line.

Looking back at my tracklog was a good exercise though - you can see that all the climbs were drifting directly north once we reached the plateau and it was hard work going crosswind like that, but in my last climb the wind hand changed 45 degrees to the south west. I didn't notice this at all during that climb as I think deep down I had convinced myself it wasn't going to be possible to get to the SIMS turnpoint anyway. In hindsight I could have taken a more easterly track on my last glide had I realised how much the drift had changed, covered more ground and maybe got back up. That's one of the great things about comps, after the fact you can always see where you went wrong, what worked for other pilots then go forth and emulate!

Results at www.chelanxcopen.com/results.htm

Portland to Chelan

Brett Hardin, Doug Mullin and I traveled to Chelan together in Brett's ute. Brett has some back issues so sitting isn't very comfortable. He worked out a novel way of making the 7 hour drive :-)

USA bound

Landed in the US to spend about 10 weeks over here in Portland with Katje. I've been here 4 times in the last 2 years and always the same question going through customs when they ask how long you'll be in the country, if you say anything more than 2 weeks you get "How can you afford to spend so much time away from work?" They don't ask about being away from home or away from family or away from your dog but away from work, because that's what life is all about right? I'm tempted to tell them I'm here for 12 hours and have to rush back to Oz but no doubt that would end with me stuck in a small room with a sinking feeling and latex-gloved customs official.

Ability

There is something wrong in a world where a person like this is labeled as having a disability...

It's why they're called the Blue Mountains...

There was HEAPS of people flying a Blackheath on Sunday, quite the following out there now. I set up to fly but conditions on launch were pretty sporty and I was half asleep from the long drive back from Melbourne so I decided to sit out. Here's a picture of Kacper landing, as you can see, conditions were perfect...

Fake rolex and spice and everything nice

I spent all day everyday in the office so I didn't get to see a whole lot of Dubai though I did escape one evening to go to the old part of the city and wander around the souks. Traders have been in this area for hundreds of years and while the souks are labelled 'tourist attraction', the shifting of goods is still their business which means you end up with a very eclectic range of goods for sale. The different traders are generally grouped together so you can play them off with each other - textile traders are all in the 'silk souk', there's the gold souk, the spice souk, the perfume souk, the 'hey mister you want a fake rolex' souk and the chinese made plastic remote control toy souk. It's all there.

One of the things I love about traveling is finding quirky little gems that you would never come across at home, here is a picture of #246 on the list of things you will never see for sale in Australia:



No your eyes are not deceived, that is actually a giant sack of dehydrated prawns. It is sitting at the front of a spice traders shop, outside where the temperature is hitting mid to high 30's every day. Though in his defence, this is the cooler less humid part of the year, I assume the prawns are taken inside or not for sale in August when the temperature is hitting the high 50 degrees with 90% humidity. Hmmm...

I've had this thing nagging at me the whole time I've been in Dubai, it's a question
nobody has been able to answer, even the people actively involved in creating this crazy place. It's this: By 2015, there will be enough residential accommodation in Dubai for over 3 million people plus the equivalent commercial space. Dubai's population is currently 1.4 million, 250,000 of which are imported Indian and Pakistani labourers who are certainly not going to be buying new houses and settling here when it's all finished. Where are all the people coming from? Maybe they're all waiting for their house on a palm frond to be finished before the sell up and hop a plane to their island paradise. The rumours are anything from the Russian mafia diversifying to rich folks in third world countries creating a fail-safe if/when their own countries become a little too politically awkward. Whatever it is, the fact that they have designs on tripling the population in the next 7 years is probably the least weird thing about Dubai.

My palm is bigger than your palm

I flew into Dubai and landed at what will become the worlds biggest airport, had the worlds biggest cup of coffee and got into a taxi which took me along a freeway through the worlds biggest construction zone. The office is right near the Palm Jumeirah which in September last year became the worlds biggest man made island.



It held the title for a pitifully short time - it's already been eclipsed in size by the Palm Jebel Ali a few km's to the west which in turn will lose it's title to the Palm Deira just to the east. When completed in 2010, the Palm Deira will be 8 times the size of the Palm Jumeirah. Oh and I forgot to mention 'The World Islands' on which construction has just begun - this will be an archepeliago of 150+ islands in between the Palms Jumeirah and Deira formed in the shape of, wait for it, you'll never guess...the world.

The surreal Burj Al Arab is the world's only '7 star' hotel (actually there is no such thing as 7 stars, the industry chooses to call it that and the hotel choose not to say otherwise), the worlds richest horse race is in Dubai, the worlds largest indoor ski slope (though a newer, bigger one is currently being built) and not to be outdone on any front, just last month Dubai broke the record for the worlds biggest car crash involving more than 300 vehicles.

Family Bike Ride

Broke in the new bike today on the standard blast around Manly Dam in Sydney's northern burbs. I haven't done the ride since before my old bike was stolen so it was great to get out there on what Kacper appropriately calls the Family Bike Ride.



I christened the bike properly just as we were coming towards the end of the loop when I came across a small lady with a very large dog standing right in the riding line at that part of the track. I popped over a rock to get around her and saw, just as I hit the point of no return, the muddy hole that my front wheel was about to rest in and the piece of track my face was about to rest on as I went over the bars. She was very apologetic but didn't offer any practical assistance such as taking the bike off my head. Glad I bought the lighter one.

Heading to Dubai on Wednesday for 8 days work then continuing on for a quick lap through the US and back to Sydney on May 7th.

Table Rock

Went to a site called Table Rock on the western side of the Blue Mountains. I haven't flown there but Kacper and the other kids have been going out there pretty regularly. The site has great potential for XC flying and you probably want to get away from it as the landing is pretty average - the place is just rolling hills so everything is in rotor plus a spider web of power lines. Thanks to Andy for picking Michael and I up from the least shitty landing paddock (read: only one I could find with no power lines running directly across the preffered approach).

The Quike

I went to Melbourne for the weekend and stayed with Hamish, the bike store down the road had 20% off all the bikes they had on the floor so after 4 months of procrastination I couldn't reasonably hold off any longer. I felt pretty comfortable on this one but it's not quite what I ended up buying, apparently this model is pretty hard to get parts for:



On Saturday night a bunch of us went into the city to see Mark Watson as part of the comedy festival, having a drink in Federation Square before the show we came across this:



Check out Roger and Megans website at www.steppebysteppe.com.au - what an awesome adventure they are going to have!

Also at Easter

Easter in Manilla...or was that Bright? Or Manilla....

Finally decided to go to Bright for Easter, but not before 5 or 6 reversals between going north or south and silently declaring I was never going to try and forecast the weather again - I was leaning towards Bright at the time so there I went.
On Friday we headed out of Bright to fly at The Pines. There was an interesting mix of air out there - with a strong SE forecast we were surprised to arrive at launch and find absolute calm. After launching we even had a slight tailwind heading towards Bright at times which got us all excited about flying home. Staying up on the flats in front of the launch was easy with some BIG dusties kicking off now and then but every time we left the 5x5 Km square in front of launch it was into a whole world of sink. We still flew for a couple hours and in reality it would have been soarable hours before we launched had we faffed less.

Pic of me by Michael Roelens, looking towards Mt Buffalo

Saturday was a stunning day in Bright, I've somehow done more flying in Bright this season than anywhere else and this was the best day all summer. Climbs were a bit slow down low but above about 1200m it was game on. Nice Cu which filled in throughout the day and strong consistent climbs - I had the vario pegged out a couple of times :-)

Antje enroute to the Big Shed

At Easter the Skyhigh club from Melbourne run a similar gig to the State of Origin in Manilla where a group of pilots with lower airtime team up with pilot with somewhat more airtime and try to fly around. I had my own group of fledglings in Lauren, Jenny, Jim and Ilin, although Ilin doesn't count as he's a gun now! It was great just flying around the valley as there were loads of sailplanes around towing out of Porepunkah. The sailplanes are fun to thermal with but they never seem to climb for long, on a day like today I'd guess they get one decent climb to somewhere near cloudbase and then spend the rest of the day flying the ridges and averaging out the whole sky.

We took our own apple harvesting machine to Kamp Krusty...

On Sunday and Monday we flew some tandems with Antje's housemates who came up from Melbourne for the occasion. Geoff and I did a couple rounds, they weren't long flights but I'm really enjoying flying the tandem.

Weekend Warrioring

Checked the forecast on Thursday, out of habit really and noticed that it was looking about as good as it gets for Manilla. Having been away the previous week nobody was really keen to do the drive and there was talk of flying the Hunter Valley, 2.5 hrs closer than Manilla so I couldn't convince anyone. I drove myself as I was too late to get a ride with another car load and couldn't convince anyone else to come up and certainly couldn't convince myself to stay at home. Saturday had very weird cloud early on and nicer cloud after about 1pm, got to 2300m then glided into the dirt in less than 10Km. Oops.

Sunday looked as classic as any day I've ever flown in Manilla. 15-20k tail wind, perfect Cu from horizon to horizon. I climbed out to 2300m with JJ and Shep and we headed west. 15Km out I'd picked the paddock I was going to be landing in right behind Shep when I saw his glider pitch back and he screamed away. I flew in under him, about 50m off the deck before I got the climb...and we were away. Again. The sky was saying 5m/s climbs everywhere - we hardly found anything more than 2m/s and usually fluctuating between that and zero. Very frustrating. I got to Narrabri and pushed it past 90km in 4 hours and then had to leave the best climb I'd found all day to spiral down and land as JJ had already gone out of his way to retrieve me. It was easily on for Wee Waa (130km) and if I didn't have to be back in Sydney I'd have thanked JJ and sent him on his way. But looking at gliding down the train line west of Narrabri at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon with no retrieve was a very lonely prospect.

Thanks for the ride JJ!



Photo is the sunset on the way home as I managed to forgot to fly with my camera both days... :-(

Bright 321 Comp - Day 6

No flying yesterday, looking windy today. The nights have been absolutely freezing and the alpine forecast is calling for snow tonight on the mountains. Gav might get to use his speed wing as it's makers intended!

Here I am using the competition rules to my advantage.



Check out Brett's page as all this non-flying spare time has me so busy I just don't have time to blog...

Bright 321 Comp - Day 4

Gavin, the crazy little bugger, flying his speed wing off the hill after the task was finally cancelled due to strong wind. Aparently the users manual for the speed wing starts off something like 'don't ever, ever fly this thing unless you are on a steep, snow covered mountain with skis attached firmly to your legs...'

Bright 321 Comp - Day 2

Lloyd was kind enough to take us gold panning in Morses creek today and show us a few tricks. He knows quite a bit about finding gold. And catching deadly snakes with his bare hands.

Manilla - Bailing Out

Bad pun indeed. So my Manilla adventures have ended for a little while with extraordinarily bad weather conditions. Monday might have been 'the one that got away' but that was the only possibility for a big flight all week. Next time...

A few pics from Manilla and surrounds.

Manilla Day 9 - Always flying somewhere

I hear they've been flying in the rain in Queensland, and it's been pretty windy down in Bright with a few good days squeezed in, Brett had a good flight on Thursday and Heike was attacked (repeatedly and for several minutes) by an Eagle. Not a fun encounter at all but it reminded me, on Tuesday's flight, I thought I was going to get rolled by an Eagle for the very first time. James and I were thermalling over the NE launch on Borah with two wedgies, I was watching one above and to my left and at one point he tucked in his wings and dove towards me but he pulled away at the last moment without contact. I actually felt pretty excited about the idea, though I'm sure my sentiment would have changed the first time he hit me. If not definitely by the tenth time he hit me I'd be getting mildly agitated.

This morning James and I were standing outside (it stopped raining for a few minutes) an there was a steady north-easter and we remarked how nice it would be to just go up for a bit of ridge-soaring. Then it started raining again.

Headed home tomorrow.

Manilla Day 7

Today I went into Tamworth and got into a whip fight. These things happen in the bush and I guess you just do what you can at the time. What’s a whip fight? Well, a fist fight is a fight using fists and a knife fight is a fight using knives and a whip fight is…well you do the math. Imagine it like ye olde English duelling days, but without the 10 paces, pistols at dawn, “By jove I say” and poncy cravats. Whip fighting is a down the line no messing around argument settler if ever there was one. You put on a drizabone, pick up your stock whip, put your useless non-whipping hand in the pocket of your drizabone, tell your blue heeler called Bluey to ‘get in behind’ (if you have one and that’s what he’s called, and ideally you do and he is) and then you proceed to lash the guy standing in front of you about the head. It’s a fair and decisive way to solve those pesky disagreements in the pub such as deciding once and for all if Ford really is better than Holden but I think it has potential to go much further. In fact, I’m sure John Howard had something in the back of his mind when he made all the delegates of the APEC summit pose with Drizabone’s on – namely winning another term, setting up a whip fighting arena in parliament house, handing over the leadership and then enjoying retirement watching PM “Lightning wrist” Costello and Kevin “Super Crack” Rudd settle their disputes like real Aussie blokes.

Manilla Day 6 - You are what you eat

I just ate a muesli bar. Really this is a noteworthy event as I have some very nice museli bars. Some time ago my friend Dom recommended them to me as an alternative to just about everything else on the market, so I keep buying them. They're called AO bars which the packaging tells me stands for 'Adults Only' and all my social conditioning tells me that means they must be good. The problem is, I never seem to eat them. There is 6 bars in a box and and if I've bought 10 boxes in the last 2 years flying then I'm sure I've eaten no more than 1 box worth. They do get used for various purposes, some are thrown in cockpit for that ‘one day’ when I might actually eat something in flight, a few go in with my lunch, these tend to get cycled out of the lunch bag at the end of one day and back in the next meaning one or two muesli bars are clocking up some airtime, a few get left behind in whatever car took me to launch and I’m sure a possum once took one away from me in Bright, they just don’t get eaten, at least not by me. On the box there is a cashew and almond model (for the bars made of cashews and almonds, of course…) striking a salacious pose and the assurance that the bar contains ‘100% unadulterated taste’. So imagine how much I was looking forward to finally savouring one of these pre-packed delights. Unfortunately what this all seems to mean – the sexy fruit figurine, the AO label, the price tag – is that you end up with a muesli bar, minus all the fun. The French have the philosophy worked out perfectly with snails - simply a vehicle to deliver an artery clogging amount of garlic and butter to your body as quickly as possible, likewise a muesli bar is not about eating muesli and nuts but getting sugar and low quality chocolate straight to your stomach in the guise of a healthy snack. I think I’ll go buy some jelly snakes to fly with.

If you couldn’t tell, it’s still raining.

Manilla Day 5

Today the rain came. Bob and James (in picture) both flew around for a bit before squeezing around the mountain back to the farm and landing a few minutes before the rain started. I pranced around on the west launch for a while, kiting the glider and messing around, but with rain approaching from every visible direction, I thought of Ewa and put it back in the bag.

Manilla Day 4

The wind was forecast to be lighter today so James and I were leaning towards doing a triangle. While my main goal is to fly a big open distance flight, triangles do have some very positive aspects. For example, if you attempt an open distance flight and you are even remotely successful, you will be landing a very long retrieve away from home. You fly a 100km triangle, you've had a great flight and you get to land in a nice grassy paddock with cold beer a few steps away...most would say the decision is easy.

However, as soon as we arrived on the NE launch we knew it wasn't to be a triangle day. A solid ENE wind was blowing and we went up and down on the NE side of the mountain for about an hour. There were clouds to the south of us and a line running out to The Gap so James suggested we fly south to Baldwin and try to connect with them. It was the best idea all day, James led, Oli Blonske and I followed and promptly got flushed. James got low near Baldwin but scraped enough height to get back to Borah. The sky blew up in the afternoon making for an amazing sunset.

Manilla Day 3

Had a wicked storm last night which blew my towel away, probably into the paddock where it has been thoroughly devoured by Godfrey's 8 goats. It seems the amazing lightning show off in the distance late in the evening moved a lot closer by about 1am. My radio and battery charger were out on the blacony and were sitting in a puddle when I found them in the morning. The battery charger exploded but the radio was fine, I fared better than James who after the excitement of the Weekend Warrior Weekend left his GPS and 5020 out in the storm...we are yet to find out if they lived.

Today shaped up as a classic Manilla XC day, some instability, some clouds and moderate SE winds had me imagining landing at sunset somewhere far away. It was windy on the hill and difficult to drift with some of the lighter climbs, but after half an hour of yo-yoing above launch, I hit 22oom and and headed towards Narrabri with Andrew Polidano flying his tandem a short distance behind. The drift away from launch was SE and ground speed was up to 60Km/h hand up so all was looking good for a long one. Clouds were forming around Mt Kaputar and further north but not accessible to us until we got much closer to Narrabri. It was relatively easy to stay high but it would have been much nicer to have a few clouds in our area. Andrew landed after about 20Km and I continued on flying north of the Boggabri gap and into the flat lands where I hoped I could speed up a bit. I left the last of the hills at 200om and lined up a row of nice brown paddocks about 10km long. I flew the entire length and only heard my sink alarm turn off once. I landed in a stubble field with zero groundspeed into wind as I descended, 50km from Borah. The wind was much further south after I hit the flats and I later heard that the Japanese all ended up flying north to the Horton valley after the wind becames southerly on launch, a much better direction. I ended up with the easiest retrieve imaginable from probably one of the most remote places I've ever landed around here, the farmer whose property I landed on drove me half way back to Manilla and then just as he was stopping to let me out, a ute came past and took me the rest of the way. Love the locals out here!

Manilla Day 2 - Weekend Warrior Weekend Task 2

The second task for the Weekend Warrior Weekend was a 45Km round the valley run, up to Tarpoly, down to Manilla then back to the farm. It was a similar day to yesterday with few clouds to help out and mercifully, a 3Km radius was set around Tarpoly so as not to put the entire field on the ground. The pilots who paid attention to that survived (mostly), yours truly flew half a km into the cylinder before working it out, got low battling a headwind coming back to the ridge and bombed out on the wrong side of the ridge (that is, the hot, long walk out on a very quiet road side of the ridge...)
Godfrey, Patrick, James, Che and Crannie on the tandem all got to goal.

The weather is looking good for some distance the next couple of days, James is hanging around and a group of pilots from Japan have just arrived so I have a few bodies to fly with. Hoping to go big...

Manilla Day 1 - Weekend Warrior Weekend Task 1

I'm in Manilla for the next week, hoping to do some good cross country flying. Today was the very first 'Weekend Warrior Weekend' - an informal competition organised by Che and James. Competitors fly in one of four clases - Xena (the fairer pilots), Wookie (just wanna go up), Warrior (still driving to Manilla every weekend) and Jedi (mmm, fly twitchy glider, you will). Pilots came from Sydney and and the North Coast folks managed to swim out and escape the deluge up there so we had 30 pilots competing - not bad for an event that was only announced 3 weeks ago and great work by James and Che to get a weekend series started in NSW which has been a long time coming.

We had a 50Km task to the north with goal at Cobbadah. It was a day that needed an enormous amount of patience, lots of circling and drifting. Many went down just around Barraba and Tarpoly claimed the usual haul. Wes Manzke, Tim Smith and myself all got to goal then Wes and I continued on another 15Km after getting the best climb of the day right over goal, always the way :-)