Snowtime!

The weather yesterday looked agonizingly beautiful - easily the best flying day for the last 2 months - and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to get out of work. A front was approaching and there was more rain, snow and thunderstorms forecast for the weekend. However, the front wasn't forecast to come through until shortly after 10am so I was keeping a close eye on it's speed - desperately hoping it would delay enough for some pre-frontal flying at Mystic.

The morning dawned bright and clear, come twelve noon and I was at Bright. No one else was around. A fair number of the local pilots are currently overseas, but I was expecting at least someone else. There were cycles coming through so after a quick safety call (going flying from Mystic, I'll call you when I'm down, don't send out the search & rescue unless you haven't heard from me by 4pm), setup, and I was off!!

The wind was from the North, 12-20km/hr, it was still sunny (although high cloud was moving in), and the air felt GOOD!! Nothing more than some light ridge lift to the right of launch so I swung over towards Marcus and, sure enough, found a climb there. It was narrow, rough, and had pretty sharp edges, and the wind was blowing it all over the place - but it was going up fast and I was sticking to it! I lost it around 1,200m, I think there was a wind shear layer around there but it could have just been that I lost it.

I nosed around, then pushed forwards along marcus (didn't find anything) but coming back connected with another (or the same) climb from Marcus. This one was going up faster - I was averaging 2.5 m/s, despite constantly falling out the sides, and peaking around 5m/s. Again I lost it around 1,200, but I thought I had fallen out the front of it.

The next thermal I caught I lost twice, and each time searched downwind (with the wind I had a pretty quick downwind speed) and caught it again - all the way to where the cloud started to form below and around me at 1,500m. Yee-har!!!


The rough conditions were keeping me on my toes and I'm happy to report that I didn't get a single collapse (funny, but I get a lot less collapses on the DHV2 than I when I was flying a DHV1-2).
I'd drifted a fair ways from launch by now, and the clouds looked good over goldmine, so I kept going downwind, curving around to intersect the goldmine ridge.


Although there was no lift over goldmine I could feel that there was a climb somewhere close by, so went searching downwind and found a strong core that was so small I couldn't stay in it for a full circle. I flew through it a bunch of times before finally getting a few turns in it but then lost it. I'd regained a couple of hundred meters though, and was pretty close to cloudbase.

What's more, there was an awesome looking cloud several km's down the ridgeline...

...so I went on glide.

The first couple of km's were good, but then the glide got worse and worse and the trees got closer and closer. I was flying in the shade of a great dark looking, flat-bottomed cloud but was just not connecting with any lift. Eventually I had to decide if I wanted to fly out into the valley and land or start kicking treetops so I left the ridgeline (I wonder now if the climb was triggering from the next ridgeline upwind and was blown back to where I could see it...) and flew out into the valley. Lots of sink near the ridge, better in the valley and I took some pics of the snow before landing.

A pity I didn't connect with that next climb, it would have made Harrietville a piece of cake to reach... ahh, well, next time.... But how cool is it to get good xc-able conditions like this in winter?!! I'll be watching the weather more closely in future ;-D

Mt Feathertop with a nice covering.

Soaring the gusts & dolphining the bubbles...

I got a sleddie from The Pines a couple of days ago - tricked by the weather readings again (I still haven't found a good indicator of windspeed for that site).

Today, however, I was flying from Mt Oates. The wind was at soaring strength for short periods, so I launched, soared, and as it dropped off tried to land as high up the hill as possible. It's tricky, because the different landing areas are separated by bands of trees and if you think, "I should be able to make one more pass before landing" and end up too low to make that landing area it adds an extra 5-10min walking (very tiring walking uphill in winter flying gear carrying a bunched glider continually trying to inflate).

Eventually the wind started to drop off so I took off and headed out towards the house. Halfway there I doubted I would make it against the wind, but then flew through a bubble of lift. I used the bar to control the wing's pitching, applying more as we went into the lift and less coming out the other side... and more again as we flew into another bubble, and less as we flew out of that one... There was a continuous string of small bubbles drifting with the wind (I'm pretty sure from a big, freshly mown paddock across the road) and the lift I gained from them allowed me to reach the house easily! Perfect!!!!

My sister Sharon (future pilot maybe??) had the camera and took these great shots.

Waiting for the wind...

Checking wind strength

...And away!!!

It's a pretty wing (I may be slightly biased...)

Top-landing

Re-launching

Heading out and not finding as much lift as expected...

Kiting the wing back to launch after a slope landing

Whoo! That's more like it!!

Much more like it!!

In fact...

I think that this...

... is it.

Blown over the back

Another day of windy soaring at Mt Oates, starting off well and ending much much better than it so easily could have...

The forecast was for easing Southerly winds but I knew that the valley shape would make that SW-SSW winds on the hill. I'd seen some eagles soaring at great heights well out in front of the hill and, bearing in mind the forecast, I was keen to get up there as soon as I could and hopefully connect with the lift band out the front.

The launch was fine - pull the wing up hard, half-a-dozen quick steps towards and under it, quick turn, final line check, all good, lean forwards and we're off - but I had little initial forward movement. I didn't want to use the bar, so just kept brakes off and slowly crawled forwards and upwards. Once I got above the first tree-line the lift increased noticeable, as did my forward speed. This was lots more relaxing - and I started to sweep a bit wider and explore the lift some more. Swinging left and pushing out a bit I came across some great lift - and it felt like more than just good ridge lift...

Treating it like a thermal blown by strong winds I was soon well above takeoff, and knew I'd guessed correctly. However I ventured a bit too far to one side and lost it and although I pushed well out in front of the hill looking for stronger lift upwind I didn't find any. Nearly down to launch height I turned downwind and toplanded to get a better feel for what was going on.

Although I had a ripping downwind speed once I had landed the wind on the hill felt too light to stay up (I was puzzled by the apparent low windspeed on the hill, and didn't register that the wind gradient had changed significantly while I was in the air).

25min later the wind on the hill had picked up to a good soaring strength and I relaunched. Again I initially experienced little forward speed, but this time when I reached the tree-line and the lift improved, the wind strength picked up dramatically with height and I started flying backwards. Conscious of the dangers of using speedbar at low altitudes I tried to reduce the induced drag and wait out what I though was a short gust. As I got higher and my backwards speed increased I realised that it wasn't just a gust - there was now quite a sharp wind gradient with high windspeeds above it. Big-ears reduced my climb-rate but increased drag and pushed me back past the takeoff.

I could see I wasn't going to be able to topland, and flying directly downwind would lead to a large patch of bushland (and rotor and that low altitude) so I turned and headed crosswind to a cleared paddock over a slight crest of the hill (unfortunately covered with trees), knowing that the rotor wouldn't be as bad there and hoping that keeping the wing cells partially into the wind would help.

I knew I'd have to fly through some rotor, and it was easy to tell when the wing hit it- as I was flying over the second last big gum tree before cleared ground (the last one was big, dead, and horribly spikey looking) the left side abruptly lost pressure - a quick hard jab kept it open but I noticed it felt soft and mushy right side twisted back a bit, then snapped under in a small asymetrical collapse. A small thing in normal flying, but I was only 60m above the ground, very conscious of the big dead tree just ahead, the hard ground below, and the wing above me trying to do a helicopter.

I don't perfectly remember the sequence - too busy trying to apply the right brake inputs - but I checked a hard dive forwards and to the right, the right side recovered and I swung under the wing in a slight left turn, flared, and thumped down onto the ground between the big gum and the big dead tree. Wing fine, pilot shaken by how easily it could have ended badly, very thankful to be ok, and a little wiser regarding weather observation and wind shears.

One thing I will say is I was very glad to be flying this wing and not my DHV1-2 - I believe the extra sensitivity of the wing gave me advanced warning of the air ahead and the directness of handling allowed me to recover control before I impacted the ground.

A scary lesson that I really hope I never have to relearn.