Toppin' out at 3,000m

Today was a pretty cool day of flying with a couple of new 'firsts'.
Nath and I were playing around Mystic for a while with a bunch of others and eventually drifted over to Goldmine. We didn't do so well there, Nath headed over the back (we'd climbed out of Mystic over the back) but didn't find anything and landed on the Mt. Beauty road. I headed back towards the landing paddock and soon landed. I got a lift up the hill and re-launched to find that the air above Mystic was a lot rougher so as soon as I could I headed over towards Clearspot.
Flying in to the top of the hill I started to go up and as I explored the thermal I found it was huge - air all around the top of the hill rising into a super smooth, nice strong climb. I topped out here and headed down towards Blackfellas - didn't get a climb from it but had a pretty lifty glide. Flying out over the valley I aimed for a spur comming off Mt Porepunkah and, despit some qualms about flying that far into the ridge, I followed my head and connected with a nice climb that took me up the spur and eventually up to just over 3,000m!! Climbing out above the top of the hill was awesome because Mt Porepunkah is one of the largest hills in the area and from above it I had a fantastic panorama. The climb was really smooth too - which meant I was able to enjoy it and take photos as well. From here I headed into the Happy Valley and down the road towards Mudgegonga. I cut the corner at Mudgee and although the day was getting well on was able to make it as far a Bruarong.
Over half way back to the farm - I'll manage it one of these days!!
Funny thing, the farmer who owns the paddock I landed in came down to give me a lift back to the house (and BBQ!) and it turns out we're vaguely related!! It's a funny old world!

livin' & learnin'...

Two flights today - with very different excitement levels

The second flight was basically a sleddie - there was a light drift over the back (sometime a light breeze swinging NE or NW) and I waited for awhile before finally front launching with a light downhill tailwind drift. Lots of running, lost a fair bit of height before getting clear of the hill but once clear the air was very buoyant. I still haven't figured out the Aspen in microlift condition - but this flight was a good on for getting a bit closer. I managed to maintain a sink rate of around 0.2-0.7m/s most of the way to above the house (although dropping out of it to one side or the other several times) - so I am improving but there's still a long way to go before it's instinctive. Approaching the house the sink increased but there was a super light thermal rising above the house. Even with the flattest turns possible I was only able to reduce my sinkrate to 0.1m/s for a number of turns before it passed through and I landed.

The first flight was the exciting one - although not much longer. Launch conditions at 5pm were similar to the later flight but I the lift was better. I swooped in and out of a light bubble of lifting air near windsweeps before heading out over the key plantation. The air felt a bit funny and I kept looking up to check that the wing was ok. There was a climb over the key plantation, but it was really small and I couldn't get a full turn in it. Still, by getting half of each circle in the core and swooping around quickly I was at least climbing and I knew if I could just keep this up I'd soon be able to do a full circle in the core and then I'd be beepin' my way outa the paddock.

It was as I approached launch height that I got the collapse, and I wonder if it was caused by the thermal meeting the light prevailing wind blowing over the back. Anyway, it was a big collapse and I'm not wildly happy with my initial response to it. Sure I weightshifted, but not enough and I didn't maintain my heading. I'm guessing most of the wing was folded under because we were dropping out of the sky and pumping the other side didn't seem to be doing anything. When a rotation started to develop I pulled down both brakes (my first stall for real, I guess) and looking up at the wing it soon popped back into basically the right shape (although pulled back in the stall) so I released, controlled the surge and flew back towards the key plantation. I'd lost stacks of height though, and didn't find any lift strong enough to encourage me to circle in it so landed a minute later.

In retrospect (that wonderful thing!) I think the air felt funny because I was flying in the lee-side of the hill -even though the prevailing wind was quite light. I've re-evaluated my thoughts on the safety of launching in those conditions, and I also feel that if I were more experienced with collapses and in-touch with the wing I could have prevented or minimised the drasticity (nice word, that :-) of the situation.

We live and we learn.

Flying Report: "Get me to the church on time..."

The day started off looking promising. The winds were light, the skies finally blue after rain earlier in the week, and Nath and I went over our plans. Nath had organised drivers, we'd bought food the night before, and once we got up to launch we did a final run through the checklist! It was definitely looking promising!!
We were up on the hill early, and as we arrived we saw a couple of Wedge-tailed Eagles near the top...
... they are such magnificent creatures!! I've always been slightly awed by the size and grace of these birds, but since I've had the privilege of flying with them on different occasions my appreciation of their skill has jumped ten-fold!!

After finishing breakfast...
...Nath and I launched... ...and both flew out into light but plentiful lift.
It was a slowish climb for the first bit, but improved with height. I managed to catch a good bubble and was soon well above launch. I left this and pushed out towards the hills across the valley but flew into another climb only 400m away! I played around in that for a while... ...before spiraling down to where Nath was circling a bit below me. We had a plan, you see, and it involved sticking together at least until things improved a good bit...
There was a great line of developing clouds over the Indigo Valley / Chiltern Valley hills that was a couple of easy glides away and there was no danger of over development.
I was puzzled as I spiraled down to join Nath, as I just wasn't getting any closer to him- until I straightened out and realized that not only was I trying to spiral down a thermal but he was also spiraling down, not thermalling up!

"Oh yes!" I thought as I remembered our plan for the day, stopped just messing around in the air and got serious about working out just where the best lift & sink was. Soon I found a nice sinky patch of air and worked it persistently until I landed in front of the house a minute or so after Nath. We got cleaned up, chucked our best duds on, and drove off to the church. The bride was beautiful, Nath (the groom) was great, the service was lovely - and a day that started really well just continued to get better... ...and better
..and better!!!

Fly another day

Two flight today - the first one was mostly flying around above Mystic.

Conditions were a bit weird - the wind direction kept changing, there was a wind-sheer layer above the hill, and there were some rough pockets of air around. Eventually I followed Nath across to Goldmine, where we both found lots of sink and got flushed down into a paddock near the Wandi Pub.
Back to the Mystic LP, where after a while we went back up the hill. I launched into a great climb (much smoother and higher than earlier) and headed across to Clearspot. I wanted to try and fly towards Myrtleford because I could see the overdevopment forecast for the afternoon building in the direction of Bright from Hotham and out the back of the Buckland Valley.

I made it to Little Buffalo but had to scratch just above the hill for a while until a thermal built and released. When it did though, it was pretty cool - 5.5m/s a lot of the way up to 2,000m! It was really smooth and quiet also - not much pitching or rolling about. However it was quite a tight core - when I flew a bit wide a couple of times the outside wingtip was whacked under in an asymetric collapse. No problem, just weight shift more to the inside of the turn, brake a bit more and pump it out with the outside brake. This wing does take a bit more effort to recover than a DHV1-2, but it's (so far) pretty soft going into the collapses and hasn't given any nasty suprises so far.
Back on glide, and now the OD was getting a bit too close for my comfort levels so I took a pic...

... and tried to accelerate away from it. No good, it was spreading over the top of me and rain was falling closer and closer to where I was flying.
I left that side of the valley and briefly entertained hopes of crossing to the other side - which looked quite nice...
...but the cloud was spreading too quickly and I ran into a valley wind that quickly had me picking out a landing paddock.
Once on the ground I quickly packed up the flying gear and chucked on my wet weather clothes.
While waiting on the side of the road for a lift the gust front from the storm came through...

...making me feel glad that I was on the ground and happy with my decisions.
I tried to hitch hike but Gengis arrived to pick me up before anyone stopped.

All in all - a good day of flying - nice to experience some new situations and kick-in-the-pants climbs, good to catch up with friends, and just fantastic to be able to fly!

Full set of pics here

100km xc!!!

Well the title kinda gives it away, but yes, today I broke the 100km mark!! From the pines, no less!!
I had the day off and woke up to light winds, warm sun, and great looking little whispies forming early in the morning. Bob was in Bright so I chucked the gear in the car and headed up to Bright.
The wind was over the back at Mystic, so we headed out to the pines. Arrived there to find that the Skyhigh NTVO comp had moved out there also. There were also a stack of hangies set up on launch. There was a paraglider launch que about 20 people long on the right launch, and a bunch of hangies doing nothing on the left launch, so I went over to the left launch. People were launching...
...slowly, and some were staying up for a cycle or so, but it didn't look that promising.
After around 40min though, more people were staying up and the clouds were getting bigger so I thought it would be best to launch before everything got shaded out. I waited until the cloud shading the launch had moved off and we had some sun - timing my launch as the next cloud-shadow approached the landing paddock. Once out the front I saw Paul climbing in a thermal so I joined him and we climbed up...
...to around 1400m before heading off down the ridgeline. We glided together towards the end of the hills ......and messed around in some light bubbles before eventually getting a good climb. Quite a lot of people only got one climb that day - around launch the thermals seemed to be quite widely spaced apart.
We flew towards Wangaratta...
...finding several climbs... ...and then getting low... ...as we approached the Hume Freeway. I couldn't get above 800m for what felt like forever here and in a desperate attempt to just stay in the air I stopped and circled in anything lifty that I found, trying to drift north towards the clouds... ...(I was on the edge of a blue hole), even if it meant I was only maintaining height. After drifting from one poor lift spot to another for about 10km I was down to 400m and had picked out a paddock to land in when I felt the wing tugging me towards an adjoining paddock. I flew over there and wohoo! was soon established in a great climb (although a bit ragged lower down) that took me back close to cloudbase!! Paul had landed near Wangaratta in the mean time, as had Wayne and several others. I stayed under the cloud for a bit before setting off, watching the weather and looking at my options. To the west was a big blue hole but off to the North a bit there were some great looking clouds developing. I aimed for them, and after a pretty good glide reached them (low again). Searched around under them and was soon climbing again out from above a freshly ploughed paddock! Back at base! Now I was heading more WNW and stayed around the cloud for a while, before jumping ahead to under the next cloud. I didn't know exactly where I was (Bob was on the radio trying to work out where to head in a retrieve vehicle). After a bit more cloud cruising (km's flowing underneath) it suddenly clicked where I was - I could see Rutherglenn off to my right, the lake that Yarrawonga is next to was straight ahead, and the river that I was sortof paralleling joined the Murray and fed into the lake. Looking back there was an awesome street pointing back towards Beechworth.

Looking forward there was a small tree crossing between me and the lake...
...and I wanted to get to the ploughed paddocks on the other side of it before the cloud shadow shut everything down - so I speedbarred (the extra speed that the Aspen2...
...has was really nice here) my way under the next cloud and raced the shadow to the paddocks. Flew over the first, over the second... and boom! Back up to base!! Now I was flying along the Southern shore of the lake...
...with the wind trying to drift me out over it. There were some good looking clouds over the lake, and I'm confident that with the wind and height I had I could have easily made it over, but I couldn't see any way for the retrieve vehicle to cross, and by then I was slightly fixated on reaching Yarrawonga. I continued alongside the lake, crabbing slightly away from it as much as I could while maintaining a good glide. Flying along under a cloud gave me a really lifty glide path, and I glided into another thermal just before the town.
Thermalling back up to base :-D
...I noticed an airport below me and to my left...
...hope I didn't break any rules....
Back at base I flew over the town, experiencing quite a lot of sink as I did so, however soon found another climb on the other side.
By now it was getting pretty late in the day and I'd noticed the climbs were getting slower and slower so I stuck with this one for as long as I could - and when I went on glide this time...
...I paid as much attention to achieving a staying on a good glide line as possible. Constantly weight-shifting, varying the speedbar lots...
...in this way I stretched it out for about 15km.
Meanwhile Bob and Peter in the retrieve car had nearly caught up (once they found their way out of a winery along the way...) and we finally made visual contact as I was circling in some boyant bubbles at about 400m.
Staying in this I got another few km's but it wasn't quite enough to make the next town of Cobram. I landed 7km short of Cobram at around 6:30pm (daylight savings time) after a flight of 4hrs 15min and 110km (optimised with three turnpoints).

Yee Harr!!!

The hardest part was certainly the 10-15km around Wangeratta - after this it all got much easier. Being patient and staying in zeros, or even light sink rather than charging off looking for something strong kept the flight alive for long enough to drift over to a better area where I was able to continue. Flying with Paul for the first part enabled me to reach Wangeratta - I'm not sure I would have made it without him as by flying together we could cover a much larger area in our search for the next climb. Having a really well organised retrieve was good and bad. Bad because it made me stick to an easier retrieve direction rather than just going with the best flying direction but really good because it meant I didn't spend half the night hitch-hiking and walking back to my car!!

I took quite a few more pics over the course of the flight and have uploaded them to a web album here.

Next time.... It should be possible to launch much earlier (I wasn't in the air until 1:30pm) - possible from Bright and fly out of the valley to the flatlands (the hillsides facing the sun will be working better much earlier than the flatlands) - and this could add 2-3 hrs and 40-70km onto the flight.
Speed.... By being looking further ahead I should be able to pick a better cloud line to follow - and by sticking high under the clouds, using the bar more and smarter, and taking faster glides to the next cloud (especially in the best part of the day) I should be able to add another 20-40km onto a flight out in the flatlands. Given the right conditions, not too much valley winds near Bright, and some lucky low saves it should be possible to achieve over 200km..... Certainly 150km!!!

On like a train...

The short version of a weeks camping at Manilla.

Nath & I arrived at Mt Borah Monday afternoon and setup the tent in moderate NNW winds (blowing along the mountain, unsuitable flying conditions)
Tuesday: windy
Wednesday: windy mostly, as it dropped off in the evening we got 45-50min ridge-soaring on the West face. Nice to be back in the air.
Thursday: Light winds, overcast, some light rain in the morning. We joined the students for some sleddies, then around lunchtime the sun started to burn through the cloudlayer and soon afterwards some cumulous clouds started to form above the range. Nath turned a sleddie into a great 15min low level scratching flight and came back up the hill as I set up. He launched first and quickly climbed out, I followed but had to search for a while and lost the first climb at around 1,000m. Nath headed off down the range towards Manilla while I flew around looking for another climb. Eventually I found a weak one but was not able to stay with it much above 900m. More searching, finally got the wing stuck into a climb that took me to around 1,400m. Low, but I headed off after Nath. Got another climb at a likely trigger point but lost sight of nath somewhere around here (He flew out West and got decked by lots of sink). I continued down the ridge, scooting along just under cloudbase, went on glide to Manilla, climbed back up to base just before the town and then again on the other side of it. Here I chose to go more south than SE, which was a mistake as I was flying crosswind and only connected with on more climb. I think if I'd been willing to fly over the back of a hill I woulda got another climb (but bombing out there woulda involved LOTS of walking). I ended up landing 25km straight line from Mt Borah, 31km optimised. Hitched into town, where Nath picked me up, and raced up the hill in time to see a student take of and fly out from the hill for about a km, climbing all the way out!! Godfrey said it was "on like a train" and we sould launch as soon as possible so we quickly setup. I launched first, swooping up from the launch and then straight down, 3m/s sink, all the way to the ground. Nath followed about 5min later with similiar results. After walking halfway back up the hill we got a lift and that evening both did a couple of 1min flights in conditions so light that we only just made it back on launch.
Friday: windy, we packed up & left around 3pm, got back to the farm at 3:30am.

Manilla or bust!!

This time next week I will have been in Manilla (NSW) for two days, with another two left before Nath and I return home. We're going flying for a week partly to celebrate the end of exams for Nath and partly because we can!

Here's hoping for epic weather and awesome cross country flights!!

Dave may come down too - if so we plan to try and organise a tandem for him - maybe the three of us (and his pilot) can all fly together!!

Can't wait...

1st Aspen XC!!!

It was a great Saturday - here the story....

I took off from Mystic for the 3rd time (1st flight was a sleddie, 2nd I latched onto a bubble and ecked 30min airtime out of it and others that I could see by the rising dust from the convoy of vehicles heading up to launch) and had to scratch around Marcus and the front of launch for a while before eventually hooking into a climb that I followed up through the gaggle around launch (8-14 pilots) and out over the back. By the time it ran out I was at 1500m half way to Goldmine.

Thats the Aspen2. It's taking a while to get used to it but the main things I notice are that it moves around way more than my last wing (it doesn't move as much as a single unit - the two sides are sometimes sorta doing slightly different things) and that the handling is much more direct - I can turn quicker, tighter, but it'll spin much easier and without much hesitation. Correct input is required.

Looking down the other side of the Goldmine ridge. I flew past the top of the ridgeline and was getting pretty low before I found a climb that took me up to 1700m. Colin Jeffreys (flying his Gradient Golden2) flew across and joined me in the thermal for a while before pushing off down the ridgeline. I hung in for as long as the lift lasted and took a couple of pics as I set off after him.

Looking back at Mt Buffalo. If you look closely (click on the pic to see a larger version) you can see some paragliders flying around launch on the far right of the pic, about half way up.

Here you can see Colin a bit further down the ridge, and might just be able to make out Basil further ahead (above and to the right of Mt Feathertop). When I got to the end of the ridgeline there was no good lift so I stuck around in the zeros for about 8min until a cycle came through. I tried pushing upwind back towards Bright for a while, but my forward speed was so low, occasional patches of 3m/s sink put me pretty close to the ridge soon, and it was getting rougher and rougher. In retrospect the roughness was probably from the heat of the middle of the day rather than the wind picking up as I feared and I should have persisted in my efforts to get back to Bright. It was probably possible (Greg made it back from the Big Shed - even though it took him 2hrs and I think he averaged 6kph) and would have been good endurance training for long flights. There was plenty of lift around and as soon as you turned downwind you had plenty of speed and distance to make it to landing options.

Anyway, I'd had enough of the roughness and after taking one final climb that was too good to pass up (+5m/s on the 20sec averager for a few turns) I topped out at 2010m, turned for Harrietville and arrived there with stacks of altitude and 74kph groundspeed!

I lost height pretty soon and landed in what I found later was a no-landing paddock. Packed up the wing and was just starting to look through pics on the side of the road when Basil showed up - he's driven back from Bright to pick me up when he saw that my car was still at the LP. I won't say that this is typical of the paragliding community, but this type of looking out for one another is far from uncommon and just one of the many things I love about being a paraglider.

Earning the airtime!!

Flying report:
Take off at Mystic around 11:40 (arrived a while before that but there was no-one around so I spent quite a while on launch getting a feel for the weather - which was averaging North at 6-7kts, gusting to 13kts, occationally from NNW). I launched and spent a while flopping around launch before evetually taking a few scrappy climbes to 1,240m, lost the thermal here and was soon back around launch. This happened a few times but I just couldnt punch throught that inversion at 1,250m. The air slowly got rougher and the wind stronger - some of the lift I was hitting felt a bit savage considering how close to the deck I was (not much time to recover if any of these hits turned the wing into funny shapes) so I decided that pretty soon I was going to bail out and go land.
I caught a pretty savage little bubble just above launch and pretty much rode it till I bashed into the inversion again. It felt like I was falling out the front of the themal so I tried circling downwind in the hope of finding it. Big mistake as I fell out behind the thermal (it had probably slowed in the inversion) into stong sink. I used the bar some while I was still high but it was strong sink all the way to the LP. I wondered a couple of times if I'd make it (from 1,240m!!??) as the sink persisted all the way to 20m from the paddock (2.8m/s was the least I saw it...) and I landed.
Still, I got an hour of airtime in pretty rough conditions. - good getting to know the wing a bit more.
After packing up I earned my flight by walking up mystic hill to retrieve my car from launch!
Went to the pines and had a short flight (wind weasterly, tiny bubbles of lift shooting up) but made a crical mistake to leave the hill and try for lift over the pines treas. I found sink, and was soon on the ground. Pack up the wing, hike up The Pines to the car, and drive home.
Total airtime: about an hour and a half.

jus' boatin' aroun....

After escaping from the dentist's chair (I'm sure there are plenty of nice dentists around, it's just that I think I'd be happiest if I never had to see any of them ever again..) I headed up to Bright.
Awesome looking day, and at the landing paddock I met Rod O who'd just landed after 4hrs in the air. He was waiting for Roger and Bill B, who had headed over the Tawonga gap to Mt Beauty... However, it was nearly 4pm by the time I got into the air, and it was soon evident that the good climbs were gone and all that was left was bubbles of lift and some strings of bubbles. Hit them right and turn quick enough and you could stay in them for a few hundred meters, but it was clear that I wasn't going anywhere far today. Ahh well, it was good fun, boating around launch with Pete W, Ollie (HG Ollie, practicing being bi-wingal), and Jerome. Pete seemed to stay a hundred meters higher than me most of the time

(very distracting, I'm s'posed to be the one at the top of the stack!) but I was mollified by managing to scratch back up above launch after the others had to land,
and then fly along marcus to the end overlooking the town
before turning for the LP. Pretty smooth conditions mostly.
I landed in the alternate landing paddock - all the bare dirt from the upgrades to the Mystic landing paddock result in tiny little shots of heat hurtling up from it - much easier/safer landing in the grassy paddock over the road!
Doesn't the wing look pretty??!