301km from Deni!!

COBB HIGHWAY. It’s 11:30, and I’m in a paddock out the back of Ron’s place, setting up my flying gear while Ron checks over the winch. It feels very early to be starting towing, but it will be much easier in this light wind than it was yesterday when it was blowing much stronger. I had three tows yesterday, but wasn’t able to connect into a thermal on any of them (one was a line break, but I was at a good 400m when it happened). Ron showed how it was done, hooking into a light thermal on his first tow and landing 100km down the road near Berrigan a couple of hours later. Not bad for a flight that started after 4pm... So today I’m determined to take the tow as high as possible, not release in wind gusts, and stick like glue to any air going up.

NESBITS RD. Well, I’m in the air, but it all feels uninspiring. Got a great tow from Ron, released above 500m, and concentrated on staying in the lifty air. Ron said yesterday that it was very slow going down low but the climb rate improved with height, and down low here it is very slow. There’s a lot more wind up here and it feels strange to drift with it while circling – I’m used to noting a trigger point on the ground and circling up over it. Still, with this wind pushing me all I really have to do is stay in the air – over time it will do the real distance work for me!

CONARGO RD. Phew, for a bit there I thought I’d 15km was as far as I’d get – the first climb either petered out or I fell out the back of it around 1,200m and I was flying lower and lower down a dirt road before hitting a patch of neutral air. I drifted in it for a couple of km’s before passing over a farmhouse where it all started lifting off - hopefully I can stay with it a bit better than the last thermal.

FINLEY – Woohoo – still in the air!! Finley is the 70km mark and the climbs have finally started going a bit higher – there must be a low inversion. But after grubbing along low for so long I'm now at the lofty height of 1,700m and feeling fantastic! Either that or I’m figuring out how to stay in the thermals better, but I think there was a layer of something that is slowly lifting. It seems to work better to face into the wind for a bit, easing left or right to stay in the better lift until the climb rate just starts to drop off, then swoop around downwind before facing into wind again. However even when facing into wind I’m still flying East, just backwards! Low down it seems to work best if I watch the wing and just concentrate on feeling what the air is doing – looking at the ground is more of a distraction than a help.

PAST BERRIGAN. I’m getting pretty low again... but I’ve just passed the 100km mark! Still, I’m a few km’s north of the Riverina Highway so it’s probably a good idea to get closer. There’s a green paddock, a couple of small patches of bush, and a tree-lined road with a canal on one sidethat all line up sorta towards the road so I’ll fly over them and hope the temperature change or wind shelter or something triggers a thermal off one. It’s still before 4pm - Ron launched after now yesterday and flew 100km so maybe if I can stay up I could make 200km!! That’d be amazing... and theoretically quite possible... just gotta stay in the air...

NORTH OF COROWA. Still in the air, still in the game! I’ve been out of radio contact with Ron for hours, and I’ve run out of Riverina Highway to follow - I'm truly flying cross-country now – but there’s scattered farmhouses and dirt roads below. The height of the climbs has continued to improve – I’m getting around 2,000m now and using my gloves and jacket sleeves for the first time. I'm a lot more relaxed now - I've flown over 150km, I've got lots of height, I've just had a muslie bar, a bannana, and a sip of water for lunch - this day is going into my "Great Flying Days Box" now and anything more is a bonus! There’s a very pronounced band of haze on the horizon – I’m not getting near the top of it but the higher I get the harder it is to make out objects on the horizon. Still, it was pretty exciting to fly past Lake Makoan, and I think I can just make out Mt Buffalo and the Glenrowan Gap through the haze. Or maybe I’m imagining it.

I keep the radio volume very low mostly – occasionally turning it off when I’m low and it’s cluttered with traffic like recently. Here's a sample - “yeah, yeah, nah, bring ‘er back a bit George, bit more, bit more, woah, that’ll do ya, nar so I says to ‘im ya mus’ be dreamin mate, what’s it made a’ gold or something – there's a latch on the side matey – and ‘e says it’s nearly new, so I says Yere right, ya mean ten years ago maybe and ‘e says....etc.” You get the idea. I’m sure it’s users like this that inspired privacy codes!

More interestingly, I could hear a flying instructor coaching students on the finer points of ridge soaring and pointing out good thermal triggers for a while - I have no idea where they were or what they were flying but the company was fun.
And I’m at 150km! And there’s still plenty of sunlight left! I’m going to start working north – I know Albury airspace extends out to somewhere near Holbrook? – and starts just after the Hume Highway – maybe I’ll reach that far!

WALBUNDRIE? I’m back near a road, and there’s a small town ahead - Walbundrie maybe? There’s also a small creek which should be good for low saves. The GPS says it’s Billabong Creek - I wonder if it’s the same Billabong Creek that we flew along near Conargo near Christmas?
Back a few km’s I noticed a sailplane circling way below me to the north. There was another one several km’s behind it, then one flew by under me, and just then one flew south a few hundred meters overhead. Fun to have some company in the air - I guess they’re from Corowa, or maybe Benalla.

FURTHER EAST. Another town that I don’t know the name of is passing underneath. The GPS says it’s on the Olympic Highway, it’s got some distinctive silos in the middle of it, and I’m sure I’ve driven through it in the past. But the nice thing about it is the lift it produces – light lift for a couple of km’s past it, then strengthening into one of the best climbs so far. The Hume Highway can’t be that far ahead!!

HUME HIGHWAY. Back in a thermal! Getting low close to the highway I spotted a steep looking ridge facing SW and made a bee-line for it - sure enough there was nice lift over it and I’m climbing steadily as I cross the Hume - several km's north of Holbrook. Looking ahead there seems to be a big patch of bush – I’ll try and edge north of it when I leave this climb.

10 MINUTES LATER, MUCH HIGHER. Well, by the time I topped out in the climb I was over the edge of the trees and committed to the crossing - which looks huge. I should have plenty of height to make it - provided I don't hit lots of sink. There is a possible landing area after about 15km of trees, but with a 40km tail wind I’m not too sure how it’d go – I’d have to line up for the landing area upwind, and if I got blown over it there’d be no flying back around for another pass – wind too strong. Best to stay as high as possible, make it across both patches of bush, and try and decide if I should head further north or further south. I can see the Great Dividing Range ahead!

TUMBARUMBA RD. Further south it is. I dithered for ages over the decision and what decided me in the end was the larger flat areas to the SW – it looks like a much safer area to attempt a possible backwards landing than the rolling hills to the north. There’s a bit of a ridgeline leading SW towards a town – I’ll aim for west of the town and maybe I can fly past the hills past it. It'd be nice to fly as far as possible (there's still enough light for another hour of flying at least) and from here it looks like heading south will let me get further.

APPROACHING TUMBARUMBA. Well, I don't think I'll fly past the town, I’ve been pointing south with the speedbar on for most of the last 20km but the wind is still pushing me east pretty quick and I haven’t managed to track far enough south to take a climb without ending up over hills covered in trees with no landing options downwind. The tree’s below must be releasing the accumulated heat of the day or something – I’ve been flying through lots of patches of light lift, and a few stronger climbs. Ahh well, who’d ‘a thought that taking off from Deniliquin I’d run out of land before I ran out of light and lift? I’ve managed to descend to below 1,000m and should be able to lose the last of my height upwind of the landing paddock I’ve picked. The wind has dropped a little down lower – here's hoping it does so further and I don't have to land backwards.

TUMBARUMBA PADDOCK. It did and I didn’t! Once down to 100m or so I was able to penetrate into the wind and pulled off a nice landing in the top corner of the paddock. Well, I'm sure the cows gave me approving looks! I turned the GPS off (it says I'm 288km from takeoff. 288km!!!!), sent an “I am ok at this position” message on Ron’s SPOT and packed up the wing, buzzing from one of the more amazing paragliding days I’ve experienced!

REFLECTIONS. Most of all I'm impressed by the power of a good windy day – I know that I wasn’t flying particularly fast (for most of the day I circled in anything stronger than 1m/s) but by just staying in the air the wind blew me an amazing distance!

Being very comfortable with the Aspen2 helped a lot, as did all the hours of scratching in light lift on poor days. A couple of musli bars, a bannana, and occasional sips of water helped keep the energy levels up, and taking pics, leaning back and watching the wing on high glides, and fiddling with the GPS provided welcome breaks for the mind. The GPS says that time in the air was 6hrs 35min and straight distance was 288km - with waypoints added the xc distance comes to 301.7km. 300km!!!! That’s just so far past anything I’d planned or dreamed - it's majorly redefined what I thought was possible by a regular pilot on a regular paraglider - even on an extraodinary day.

Checking my flight on Google Earth I can see my ideas of the airspace steps weren’t very accurate – it starts just after the Olympic highway (not the Hume), and while there is a step up that ends near Holbrook it’s the 3,500’ to 4,500’, not the 4,500’ to 8,500’ one I thought. I had some airspace waypoints marked on the GPS, but they were mostly dealing with the airspace sout-east of Albury, and weren't very helpful to the north. Furthermore, I was a bit intimidated by the size of the bush crossing and took the thermal before it as high as it would go, climbing past 3,000m. I'm a bit puzzled by my max height as I remember looking at the XC Trainer when the roughness eased off at the top of the climb and seeing that I was above 3,000m, but I'm sure it said I was a good 300m below what my Garmin recorded. Measuring heights and distances on GE I see that I didn’t need all that height, but then again if I’d flown across lower and hit 3-4min of good sink I might have.

More pics of the flight here.

A very big thanks to Ron for convincing me that today could well be worth waiting for, putting me up for the night, the super tow in the morning, and lending me his SPOT GPS tracker and encouraging me to go big.