nice flying

A nice long flight today - my longest yet, in fact (duration, that is).
Nothing spectacular distance or height or scenery wise, but it had it's moments. I went to Clearspot, Mystic, Clearspot, half-way to Blackfellas, Clearspot, Little Buffalo, Clearspot, Mystic, Goldmine, down Reliance Ridge, Mt Ebaneazer, back to Goldmine, Pyramid, over the landing paddock and top-landed at Mystic.
Some of the memorable moments were:

-Nearly bombing out on Little Buffalo - I had plenty of height when I arrived, but there was a headwind there and I couldn't find any lift. In fact, I was in 2-4m/s of sink as I dropped down the side of the hill, really hoping I could stretch my glide to land at the Porepunkah airfield, and got a low save off the orchards in that little valley there.

-My second ever frontal collapse on this wing (I think) - I find the AspenII to be very collapse resistant, but when it does go it's usually quite soft and this was no exception. The wing dropped back evenly, we both dropped down evenly, and it snapped back evenly. No drama, just an indication that there were some sharp little pockets of air around.

-Late in the day, drifting into a slow-climb-thermalling daze near Mt Ebaneazer - it was so pleasant up above 2,000m, wide smooth lift.... slowly turning towards the sun, away from the sun, towards the sun, away from the sun... lying back in the harness watching the wing, flying by the relaxing beep, beep, beep of the vario...
After some time the wing snapped on one side a little and I suddenly I realised I didn't know how long it had been since I'd last checked my position (I don't think I had my eyes closed - but the vario noise was pretty hypnotic!) and I might have drifted deep over some inhospitable back valley and sat up in a mild panic - but it was all ok, I was still over the same hill, still not quite at cloudbase, the late afternoon sun was making all the shadows in the valley grow longer and longer and it was probably time to start heading back to the landing paddock.

I diverted to Pyramid on the way and the air was so nice that despite a slight headwind and no climb on Little Mystic I made it back to the launch and toplanded - a perfect end to 4.8hrs in the air!!

New site, new camera!!

There's a new flying site opening up in the area - BobS has purchased the site of the 1998(?) HG World Championships out near Gundowring. It's an afternoon site, and should take a NW-SW, which fills a large gap as none of the other local sites will take W-NW.
I've been out there several times now - flown off it on two different days - and am looking forward to exploring the potential of this new area!

Also, I have a new camera!! My faithful Kodak DX7590 has taken over 16,000 pics, has dust on the sensor, and I've noticed a degradation in picture clarity in recent months. The strengths of the Kodak were it's GREAT lens and ideal size for operating with one hand while flying - it's weakness was the overly aggressive jpeg compression. It's been taking more and more work to clean up the pics and I finally found what looks to be a good replacement. Enter the Ricoh GX200, which sounds like it's special features may work out perfectly for paragliding pics. The main selling points for me were the wide-angle lens (24mm equivalent), ability to take RAW images (speeding up in this area is the significant difference between the GX200 and the GX100), faster frame-rate for video's (30fps should be better than the DX7590's 12 fps), and higher resolution (the GX200 has a 12MP sensor, but as it's still quite small I'm expecting lots of noise in anything but good lighting - which I'll be in most of the time :).
I've ordered with it a remote shutter switch and lens hood (will put a UV, polaroid, or maybe sky filter on this - which should also keep dust from getting blown into it's guts), so there should be lots of fun experimenting. Although this is a pocket-sized camera it has more functionality/programability than some DSLR's so it'll be interesting to see how easy it is to use.
UPDATE: I've picked it up from the shop - looks nice - and the guy I ordered it from swung some sort of deal with his suppliers and got (no price increase) the external viewfinder model (I wasn't going to order that, $120 more expensive for a feature I don't think I'll use much) and a 19mm equivalent wide-angle lens!! Now that's why you buy from the small local businesses - you just don't get that quality of service from the big places or when buying over the net. Thanks Wodonga Photographics, I'll be back for more gear in the future, no doubt.

While I'm talking about new things, I downloaded a freebee photo-stitching program (called autostitch) which I'm really happy with - it's small, fast and easy to use but has lost of controllability, and does a great job. Here's a panorama that it stitched together from six or seven pics I took while flying above Gundowring.

There's a bigger version in my web album here.

Weird air

Flew from Mystic today and at the end of the day I felt like I understand the weather less, thermals didn't make as much sense as they used to, my wing doesn't have nearly as good a performance as I thought, I didn't really mind being on the ground, and what were the weather forecasters on???
Contributing factors may have been some stability and an approaching front? But anyway, I flew from Mystic, to Clearspot, then Blackfellas, Mt Porepunkah (scratched around there for ages before getting over the top, and once there, no boomer to zap me up to cloudbase), and down the spur-line to the north to land in Running Creek Valley.
What made things difficult was firstly the winds, which I'd have to say were strong and variable - three separate times I was pretty much parked in the wind - which was blowing in three different directions, and everywhere I went the wind was blowing somewhere different. Secondly the thermals were very hard to find - it seemed like you had to be right on top of them when they came through or you'd miss 'em, and they didn't last for very long either. Drop out the side or the back and by the time you'd found it again most of it might have passed through.
Coming down the spur on the other side of Mt Porepunkah the whole area was in the sun but do you think I could find a climb? Nup, there were little bubbles rocketing off here and there, drifting strongly in the wind, but no good climbs and the air was getting rougher and rougher so in the end I got fed up as I ran out of height and landed in the valley.
An hours walking and lifts from a farmer, a retired geological surveyer, and then a regional climate change planner saw me back at the landing paddock and my vehicle but check out this amazing B&B place I came across on the way out!!

Over the Tawonga Gap

Short flight today, but satisfying.
I got to Bright late and arrived on launch to find a really light drift from over the back. After monitoring conditions for a bit I launched in a light puff up the face and got a climb from a bit further down Marcus than usual. It did feel a bit lee-sidey at first, but after going up through a bit of a rough layer 400m up it was a smooth elevator to 2,000m. The drift was from the SW and by the time I had maxed the climb I had drifted a fair ways to the NE, enabling a straight glide to Little Pyramid. I was in a bit of a hurry, because while climbing all of mystic had shaded out and I wanted to get a climb off Pyramid before the fast approaching shade shut it out too.
The shade was just marching up the slope as I flew in to it, and I was expecting that to trigger off residual heat from the slope but if it did I didn't find it. Instead I ended up scratching around the high points, ecking out little height gains here, loosing them there, hoarding all the altitude I could as I waited for the sun and a thermal up into the blue again.
Several minutes later an orange and white UP glider wandered around the corner to join me - Chappo was in the same situation. We gradually scratched lower but then the sun came out again and we started scratching higher - the light lift was drifting fast over tiger country and it was tricky knowing weather to stay with the lift in the hope it strengthened or keep close to safe landing options and risk landing. Anyway, I caught a good bubble up several hundred meters (then lost most of it getting back to the trigger point), then Chappo caught one and stuck with it to around 1,800m before heading over to Mt Beauty. I flew right through the area he climbed out of less than 3minutes after him but couldn't find it - however I got my own climb soon enough and although it was a tight, squirmy little thermal, blowing over no-mans land I stuck with it and rode it up to just over 2 km's. Heading downwind it was an easy crossing, not much sink for the first half, but heaps once over the other side, and I didn't find another climb until I was setting up to land near the Mt Beauty Bakery. By then I was wanting to land in time to hitch a ride back to Bright and had to fly away from the core (big, wide, thermal) and spiral down through the lifty air all around!

Indescribable

Sometimes - very, very rarely - everything just comes together in a way that you hadn't even dreamed it would - ever had that happen?
Well it happened to me today and here's how it went down.
Short version (much more to come) I flew to Mt Feathertop (again!),
...climbed up to over 3,000m, and from there flew across to land at the Hotham ski resort.

I took photos, and a short panorama from above Mt Feathertop...
...but I really doubt that I'll ever be able to communicate the wonder of that flight....
Spectacular... scary.... awesome... incredible....

Does it get better than this?

Haven't got time for a long post here, but just wanted to say that TODAY I FLEW OVER MT FEATHERTOP!!!!!!
I've been eye-ing this flight off for over a year now, and to finally do was just indescribable!
It wasn't easy - I got a climb from my first foray onto Bungalow Spur, but couldn't find one when I pushed in further and had to fly back out through some very unwelcome sink. The trees were looking awefully ominous for a minute there, but then I got out of the sink and soon after found another climb and this time it all went smoothly. Got high, transition in further, got another climb, and flew in to Feathertop!
For a few short minutes there I was filled with an incredible sense of possession - I'd beaten the mountain, that sucker was MINE! Yeah!!!!
Awesome views, pics here , will post more later.

another milestone

Two flights today, the first one I launched around 1:30 (Daylight Saving time - 1 hr forward) and climbed to 1,400, then crossed towards Clearspot. I arrived well below the height of the hill and had to scratch around the side before getting up to 1,500 in a narrow, drifting core. Above 1,300 it was easy to stay up, and I boated around taking some pics while watching Ollie climbing up and waiting for Rob to come across. We headed out towards Blackfellas, but Rob didn't like the look of it and turned around for another climb while watching me get lower and lower as I searched for lift. He stayed high and further back, which was a smart move as after desperately working tiny bubbles and even ridge soaring I ran out of height and options and landed on the outskirts of Bright.
I eventually got a lift from Alex, who very kindly drove me up to my car on launch, but once there the conditions on launch (N-NNW at 5kts, gusts to 8kts) proved too tempting and I relaunched. By now (4:30ish) there were small rough-edged bubbles coming through but not many thermals. I did catch a few, but they were extremely narrow and hard to stay centered in. Max height was about 1,200m. FredG and MichelleB drove up and launched after a while (on a Boom5 and UP very high aspect ratio wing) and we flew around for a bit before they landed. I kept flying for until I ran out of bubbles and then landed very pleased with a smooth toplanding in 4-9kts of NNW wind. I wasn't sure it'd work out and was prepared to forget the idea but it all went very well.

Today's flying also puts me over the 200hrs mark - Hooray!!
I arrived home to find that my advanced rating had arrived in the mail - nice timing!