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??!

Woohoo!!!

In the hope of a few sleddies in calm air I arrived in Bright a little before 9am, only to find that a high SW wind had blown cold air into the valley, creating unusually early unstable conditions. There were whispey bits forming around 8:30, and by the time I launched around 9:30 there were already little cumulus clouds scattered around the sky in the distance.
The wind had picked up unusually early in the day also, and I spent a little while on launch getting a feel for it and weighing up the pros and cons of launching a new wing into what looked like typical spring conditions - a bit of rough and tumble type air with some sharp bits sprinkled in too.
I did launch, after a while, at what I hoped was the end of a lull. Maybe I was right, maybe I wasn't, but I found a decent climb above Marcus and was soon bumping against a light inversion around 1,300m. I flew along the Marcus ridge line a couple of times - pulled some asymmetrics on the wing (quit soft going into them, no nasty suprises) and flew back to launch to top up on height. Each time I topped up I got higher and eventually broke through the inversion (or it broke) and climbed high enough to leave the hill. I headed for Clearspot, which was upwind, and was suprised at how good a glide we got.
Flying into clearspot I first found neutral air, then light lift that swiftly became stronger, then good positive lift that just continued as I flew straight. Eventually I turned and four turns later was at the top of the thermal (+4m/s climb).
I messed around over Clearspot for a bit before testing the glide downwind and got a 10.5:1 glide over Mystic to the Goldmine ridge. Here I turned right and tracked up the ridge a bit before turning towards the landing paddock.
I landed after 1 1/2 hrs airtime - freezing cold, extremely happy, and giddy with the possibilities of this awesome new wing.
It's definitely less relaxing than the old one (but conveys so much more information about what's going on around), and much easier to ground-handle, possibly a little more collapse resistant, and certainly has a noticeable performance advantage! A joy to fly - I think I'm in love!!!!

New beginning...

I picked up my new wing today and "Yeehar!" is it nice!!
As soon as I had it I whipped around to the closest park to unpack it and have a quick squizzy. It all looked pretty good (crackly-new fabric!! Bright line colours!!) so I reluctantly packed it up and drove home.

Arriving, there was a light-moderate NW blowing, so I ground handled for a couple of hours in the front paddock. This was really good for starting to get a feeling for the wing - it pulls up very nicely and reacts quicker and to less input than the old one. This makes ground handling much easier because I can correct wing-crashing situations much later, faster, more accurately more now!!
Another cool thing is it seems to generate more lift, when I reverse launch the wing, stabilise it, spin around, brakes up, run forward, brake and jump into the air for a bunny hop, where I used to only manage 2-3 feet in the air today I was getting up 6-8 feet!!! Fun, fun, fun!

Later in the afternoon the wind dropped off to a light westerly so I went up the hill to see if it was launch-able. It was, so I did!!

I immediately noticed a lot more feedback from the wing than I'm used to. When I'm tuned into it, I hope I'll be able to sense lift from a lot further away, and lots light lift as well. I'll be able to turn tighter too, which'll be good for exploiting the tight little rockets that one finds from time to time.

I have to work tomorrow :( but can see lots more"Woohoo!!!" moments approaching!!

Note to self: Must get as much airtime as possible before Manilla (22 days...)

Woohoo!!