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