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!!!
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