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We flew today - task 2 - and it all went pretty well. No one hurt, 4 in goal (that I've heard of). I didn't make it to goal, I couldn't punch through the wind from Mystic towards the second last turnpoint.
The course was: Start - Goldmine, TP1 - Smoko Ridge, TP2 - Blackfellas Peak, TP3 - Little Mystic, TP4 - Porpunkuh Bridge, TP4 - Little Mystic, Goal - Mystic LP. Total distance - 51.7km.
Things I think I did right:
- Didn't launch straight away. It was a good thing to put off the stress of the gaggle for an extra 30min.
- Was near the down-task edge of the start cylinder at the start time.
- Took a pretty direct route to Little Mystic - that saved heaps of time.
Things I didn't do so well:
- Thermal with the gaggles - especially when the air's a bit rough I'm just not used to having lots of glider around me. I like to move around in the thermal and look for stronger cores and it frustrates me to try and circle at diameter of the least efficient climber....
- I should have pushed harder earlier on stay with a faster gaggle instead of circling in a weak climb and getting stuck with a slow gaggle for ages.
- I should have headed direct towards the Porepunkah bridge intead of flying through Mystic - I'd heard that people were getting stuck there and could see them there so I should have avoided it and tried for Apex or at least a glide up the center of the valley.
- Stayed in the strong lift over Mystic when the gaggle joined it instead of leaving (? assuming it would have been safe....)
- Used my height from Mystic to get as far along the course as possible, rather than flying back to land at the Mystic LP.
But all in all it was a good day of flying!
Here's a pic of the field shortly after the start.
We flew today - task 2 - and it all went pretty well. No one hurt, 4 in goal (that I've heard of). I didn't make it to goal, I couldn't punch through the wind from Mystic towards the second last turnpoint.
The course was: Start - Goldmine, TP1 - Smoko Ridge, TP2 - Blackfellas Peak, TP3 - Little Mystic, TP4 - Porpunkuh Bridge, TP4 - Little Mystic, Goal - Mystic LP. Total distance - 51.7km.
Things I think I did right:
- Didn't launch straight away. It was a good thing to put off the stress of the gaggle for an extra 30min.
- Was near the down-task edge of the start cylinder at the start time.
- Took a pretty direct route to Little Mystic - that saved heaps of time.
Things I didn't do so well:
- Thermal with the gaggles - especially when the air's a bit rough I'm just not used to having lots of glider around me. I like to move around in the thermal and look for stronger cores and it frustrates me to try and circle at diameter of the least efficient climber....
- I should have pushed harder earlier on stay with a faster gaggle instead of circling in a weak climb and getting stuck with a slow gaggle for ages.
- I should have headed direct towards the Porepunkah bridge intead of flying through Mystic - I'd heard that people were getting stuck there and could see them there so I should have avoided it and tried for Apex or at least a glide up the center of the valley.
- Stayed in the strong lift over Mystic when the gaggle joined it instead of leaving (? assuming it would have been safe....)
- Used my height from Mystic to get as far along the course as possible, rather than flying back to land at the Mystic LP.
But all in all it was a good day of flying!
Here's a pic of the field shortly after the start.
Today was the first flyable day of the Bright Open. It's been really well organised by Benn and Hamish but, until today, the weather hasn't co-operated.
But today we got to fly - and although the day didn't look very good initially (windy, with a really low cloud base and a short thermic period) it turned out much better than expected.
The task committee decided we start at Goldmine before flying to Smoko Ridge, Blackfella's, Freeburg Ridge, and landing at the Porepunkah Airfield.
Launch went well... 
...with all the field off pretty soon - and everyone was going up nicely. 
I timed my run over to the Goldmine badly and got there late, low, and behind most of the field. 
After a lot of looking around I eventually started getting high (around 1,600m was high today!) but heard on the radio that the task had been canceled. This was puzzling for me, as the weather seemed fine and I couldn't think why else the task would be canceled - but I could see from the way the other pilots were flying that they were heading down to landing spots so I spiraled down and landed at the Mystic LP. There I heard that one of the pilots had smacked in pretty hard near the Mystic launch while thermalling low and badly broken his wrist and possible hurt his back. An air ambulance had been called, and the organisers wanted paraglider pilots on the ground before the helicopter arrived.
After packing up and trying to find out some of the who, where, how, how bad questions (along with everyone else) we headed back to the Outdoor Inn for some food and to await developments.
Turns out we hadn't been flying for long enough for the task to score any points so as of the fourth day of the comp we are all still equal first....
Once the injured pilot had been flown out a number of us went back up the hill and had a very nice fly in the later afternoon conditions.
I had a really fun glide over to Clearspot with Paul and another pilot on an Aspen2 
- formation flying by the end and although we were flying into a headwind it was a pretty boyant glide. After that I hunted around clearspot for a good climb but it wasn't working that well and the highest I got was 1,560m so I headed down towards Blackfellas, then along the ridge towards the airfield. There were little bubbles around, but nothing really worth turning in so I ended up landing at the airfield after Paul. 
A fun fly!
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