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.