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.