XC from The Pines

Today was interesting - I was heading to Bright when I got a call from Alex who was coming up from Mansfield and we decided to fly The Pines instead of Mystic.

There were some good cycles coming through on launch but wouldn't you know it, once we were set up and standing in the sun it all died down or came through from the west... After waiting for ages I thought I had a handle of the timing of the cycles and launched when one should have been just out the front. Instead, there was 2m/s of sink just out the front. I rode this down towards the pines below, but instead of flying towards the car edged deeper in over the pines (downwind).
There had to be a thermal lifting off from those pine trees somewhere - and once I was over them I stopped sinking but wasn't really climbing much. But the trees were just baking in the sun and near the middle of the plantation there was a bit of a clearing with a dam in it - I drifted towards it, hoping that the change in air temp caused by the water, plus the shelter from the wind caused by the trees all around would have to result in a thermal. By now I had totally abandoned the idea of landing near the car - it was a paddock away, upwind, but if I could just find a thermal it'd all be alright... And... I did!! A tight little 1-2m/s climb that was being pushed by the SW wind up the hills. I followed it until I lost it around 1,100m before heading back for the launch hill - surely one of the best trigger points around!
But... no it wasn't. There was some light lift around it, but I was going down. I thought of top-landing to get a better feel of what the wind was doing, but did one turn too many in the wrong direction and was below launch. After a couple of low climbs that petered out I finally got a good thermal (from the same clearing as before) and took it back up above the hill. The SW wind was picking up and I drifted a ways, but once at the top of the climb headed West along the hills and then over the back.

Why I flew this way I'm not sure - it would have been much smarter to fly with the wind towards the bigger hills and better clouds...

...where I could hear over the radio other pilots were having fun in the air. Instead I pushed West towards the blue sky. Maybe I need to add "Brain in gear?" to my pre-flight checklist??

Anyway, I got low, spent an age circling down above a cropped paddock with a big tree on a small hill in the middle of it before getting another climb, drifting with it from the SW wind before heading West again, climbed out above a vinyard, crossed a big chunk of bush...

...to another thermal off a vinyard, flew over hills, got another climb, got low as I was flying towards a town that the GPS said was Eldorado and arrived over the town about 300m AGL.

I circled just over a little hill with a house on it before losing the light lift and heading towards a nice looking LP near a shop when light lift pulled me downwind - of course I drifted with it over the town towards some hills behind it when WHAM! One side of the wing lurched as a fist of air punched it upwards - I jabbed the brake to spin into the rest of it and got a brief roller-coaster ride up up before crashing through it and over the falls down out the other side.
It was very small and strong but by golly it was going up so I aimed for where I thought it would be and swung in for another shot. Similar experience, but I got more of a turn in it this time. After a bit more of this I turned a little more downwind before cranking around (each time I faced upwind my climb rate had dropped dramatically, making me think that the core was in the other direction) and this worked better and I was soon whanging around in a roller-coaster thermal of 2-6m/s. A respectable climb-rate, but boy was it punchy!!
I was quickly climbing while I continued to try and get the core and on one slightly wider swing felt like a giant hand had grabbed the harness and yanked me upward! The vario was screaming what sounded like octaves above where it usually beeps so I think it shared the feeling... Now this was the real core but I found it nearly impossible to stay in - as I left the 5-6m/s outer part of the thermal and hit the +8m/s core I'd get flung upwards and lose most of the pressure on the brake and a good bit of the pressure on the lines- I was weightshifting way over to the left and burying the left brake near the point of spin but it was the thermal that was deciding where the wing went, not me - and the core was so narrow. Once the initial surge had reduced I had more control, but by then we were exiting on the other side.

Exhilarating flying!!! "Never give up!" is the moral of most low saves, I think, and this one was no exception.
I find it scary when I hit strong air like that close to the ground, but once I'm high up I like it - I can really concentrate on trying to make the most of it because if something does go wrong I've got plenty of altitude to sort it out and get back in the game.

So that was the most exciting part of the flight, a super strong thermal from a super low save!!
I think I dropped out the bottom of it, because all of a sudden it was weak again, and although I searched around I didn't find anything like it again and other thermals had taken me higher. By now the sky was all blue, however even when I was climbing towards short-lived clouds I'd never gotten close to them. Ahh well, musta been some sorta shear layer maybe that I didn't figure out...?

My heart-rate slowly returned to normal as I bobbled along over some hills in a nice line towards the Hume Highway.

I was getting low again as I flew over it, headed for a likely looking hill where I found a couple of Wedge-tailed eagles hunting for dinner and found a light, drifty, scratchy sort of climb that petered out after 200m - the last of the lift I found for the day. I landed soon afterwards...

...and was happy to see that I'd flown 31km from The Pines (40km with a couple of waypoints) over the course of 3:15hrs, mostly fairly low in challenging conditions.