Smoother later

Two flights from Mystic today – I first launched shortly before three pm into boyant but rough air (+7m/s – 5m/s, probably mostly due to the strong inversion around 1,100m – it didn't break all day and the closer to it you got the rougher the air became). There was also a moderate northerly wind blowing that increased in strength until I decide to go and land after around 30min airtime.
Later in the day a bunch of rello's that were visiting Bright were keen to see us fly and when the wind dropped a bit we all headed back up Mystic Lane to the take-off. I rarely get pics of myself taking off or flying, so I'll include some here that were taken.It was well after seven in the evening when we launched, and the air was totally different – glassy smooth, wide ridge lift that several pilots were already playing in. After 30min or so it started to weaken and I left the ridge while I still had plenty of height to work on my wingovers some more before landing – there's still something fundamental that I'm not getting right and I think it's the timing of my weightshift. It was fun yakking with other pilots in the landing paddock while waiting for Nath to land – he flies really well in super light conditions and didn't come down until he was running out of light. A great finish to the day!

Eskdale

Bob & Dallas were going to be in Bright from Wednesday to Friday. It would be the last chance to fly with Bob before he headed overseas so I managed to get the Thursday off work.
Some car troubles meant I didn't arrive in Bright until nearly 1pm. By then Bob was already in the air, but Dallas would meet me at the landing paddock and give me a lift up to launch. A fun surprise was meeting Veronica also at the landing paddock - I'd been following her Canadian flying blog for some time. We set up on launch ...

...and as soon as I saw enough movement in the trees left of launch I was away. Veronica launched soon after, but quickly out-climbed me.

I concentrated on my thermalling and, next time I looked around, she was half way to Goldmine. Once I had a comfortable amount of height I headed off too, and half way over spotted Bob circling fairly low above the valley NW of Pyramid.

I angled a bit towards him, but stopped for a nice climb above the ridgeline. He was climbing also, and our respective cores drifted closer together as we got higher. I left mine at 2,400m and arrived at his in time for a few "woohoo's" as we circled together before we glided off to Pyramid. Meanwhile, Veronica had hooked into a climb further down the ridge (closer to Harrietville) and had crossed Freeburg...

...towards the back of Pyramid. From where I was it looked like she got awfully deep in tree country to me, (maybe it was just the relative angles we were at) but musta know where she was going because she was soon climbing out over Pyramid. Bob and I had to search a bit for a climb, and while we were climbing Veronica had left for Mt Beauty with what looked like massive height. The crossing is at least 7km of trees however, and it only takes few minutes of heavy sink to change I've-got-heaps-of-height to Aaghh-I-don't-know-if-I'll-make-it! But she looked like she had a pretty good glide going and Bob soon left also (he'd outclimbed me over Pyramid).

I re-connected with the climb and headed off myself (from 2,650m), but I chose a slightly more northerly line than the other two - heading straight towards the Tawonga Gap observation platform. I didn't hit massive sink, and arrived over the ridge at 1,700m. There were little shots of lift blasting around the place, but I couldn't seem to connect with anything solid enough for long enough to gain much height. The wing was jerking left and right and I had to fly really actively to even keep it semi-centered over my head. One particularly hard swing to the side ended with half the wing blowing out and it took 2-3 rotations and a bit of strong pumping on the left side before everything was sorted out again. This new wing collapses much softer than I'm used to - I urgently need to spend more time practicing collapses and getting my correction reflexes faster - even big collapses don't feel as scary while they're happening as they did on the 1-2. I'm not sure if that's a good feature or a bad one really! Anyway I headed up the ridge line towards some likely looking bowls to look for a climb there. Veronica had flown right over the town of Mt Beauty and it looked to me like she got a climb out from the hill out the back of the town before pushing out up the valley. I couldn't see Bob anywhere at this time, but didn't spend much time looking as I was quite close to the trees along the ridge. I scratched along the ridge line, going from 160m above the peak to 100m below it before finding something that firmed up into a decent climb after 20min of desperate scratching. There was a shear layer around 1,800m, and it took a bit to figure out what was happening there but a nice strong bubble of lift got me through that and back up to safety and comfort at 2,290m. While I was climbing I had spotted Bob across the other side of the valley, scratching low on a spur-line. Veronica was pushing through the valley wind to a likely looking ridge a bit behind him. Heading towards Bob, I stopped briefly above the boundary of the bush and farmland to top up to 2,450m before continuing across the valley. Bob was climbing by now,

...which made it very easy as I just flew into where his climb should intersect my glide - and it did! A great climb, this one, it took me all the way up...

...to cloudbase for the first time today - at 3,009m! As I got to base the cloud started to dissipate, but the thermal I was in continued up for another 100m into a hole in the middle of the cloud. Very surreal, banking around in light lift, blue sky above, cloud all around, base 100m lower, and only some faint whispy bits below! It didn't last long however, and as the cloud broke up more...

...I decided it was time to continue up the ridgeline. Meanwhile, Bob had taken some big whacks and decided to head out into the valley. There wasn't much lift there and Dallas motivated him back to the ridgeline and he was soon climbing back up while I headed off along a cloudy line (great glide) towards Mt Tawonga. Veronica had also been thrashed around a bit by the rough stuff down low and opted for the smoother conditions of the valley - unfortunately she didn't find any good lift and eventually landed. Bob and I both had experienced some anxiety during our first attempts at crossing over the back of the ridge towards Eskdale...

...and were grateful to find light lift that we stuck in (despite it drifting us back towards the Kiewa Valley) before heading off again. In retrospect, I should have realised from the amount of drift we were getting that we were heading into a valley wind used the height from that thermal to find another good climb from the ridge, taken that all the way to the top, and then crossed above it. But it was getting on, and I succumbed to impatience and headed across from 2,300m. It was a long crossing into wind, and we headed down a spur to a likely looking bump near the end of it. Here I stayed, gaining a few meters in a bubble that was drifting back up the ridgeline, losing a few more meters when I lost it. Bob was scratching around the same area for a while, but he stayed with a slightly stronger bubble and ventured out into the valley. I thought he was on the ground a couple of times, but he found little bit of lift and worked his way up the valley and out of sight. A while later I heard a radio call from him to Dallas as he left a climb - he had got back up to 2,100m (which sounded really high to me, scratching between 600m - 1,100m for the last 30min) and was past Eskdale. I kept going for another 20min - by now I'd been fighting the light lift and valley wind around the same little hill for 50minutes and gradually got lower and lower between each small gain of height until the paddock came up and ended this round of the war with gravity.

Still, I'm stoked with the flight - I've been wanting to cross over the Kiewa Valley ever since my first Tawonga Gap crossing, back in Nov'06. It was great to have other people to fly with, they both helped mark lift & sink and also were a good encouragement to go faster and further. Getting to base was pretty special, and cruising along with stacks of height afterwards - the views in every direction were just amazing. Dallas did some great back country navigating and picked me up a bit later and then we drove around for a while trying to contact Bob. We eventually ran him to earth in the Tallangatta Pub, where we had a bite to eat before setting out on the drive back to Bright. We pulled in to town at 10:50pm, tired & sore, but very happy with the day. How good is paragliding!!!

Persisting at Pyramid

Twice now I've lost the better part of what turned into an epic day by bombing out at Pyramid. Today, hopefuly, I've turned that around.
I launched, flew over to Goldmine, topped up and headed into Pyramid. Nothing but 2m/s down. I persisted, flying right over the sumit (passing over Little Pyramid) but no go. By now I was quite close to the trees and the closest landing paddock was looking uncomfortably far away. Instead of heading straight out I detoured over two likely trigger points and flew around the hill instead of straight down it. This enabled me to cover more area (less sink) but alas no lift. However I didn't give up hope but had enough height to fly over one more possible trigger point. Either that or land near the road, but "no guts, no glory" so I headed for it. Woohoo! A thin thread of lift was wafting up above it!! I found it hard to center in and eventually just followed it wherever it felt like it was going - which was drifting back up toward Goldmine (against the prevailing wind direction, but the Goldmine ridge was sheltering it).
I connected with another climb above Goldmine and was zapped back up to cloudbase, then followed Sass and Hans across the Tawonga Gap (bypassing Pyramid) to land at the Mt Beauty Airport.
A fun day's flying, and it was great to save the flight and stay in the air instead of bombing out in the middle of the day!

Towing in Deni

I've just got back from four days in Denilliquin. I was there during the Deni '07 Hang Gliding Comp with four other paraglider pilots to get some more towing experience and hopefully some good flatland flying.
The weather was challenging, with increasingly stable conditions as the comp went on and temperatures soaring into the mid fourties. In these conditions getting dressed in thick socks, hiking boots, long pants, shirt, fleecy jumper, gloves, & helmet - and then standing in the blazing sun in the middle of a shadeless, bone-dry paddock doesn't seem entirely sane...
...But it's all worth it when you ping off from the tow and manage to climb away from the tow paddock (you don't get more than a couple of attempts though before heat-stroke kicks in).
As you get higher and higher the landscape gets more and more amazing - dead flat for as far as the eye can see, huge dusty dry paddocks, wandering creeks and billabongs coming into view as you get higher, few roads, no clouds, and you just keep climbing higher and higher, passing through 1,700m the air is no longer hot and you can see the Murrey river 100km to the south, around 2,400m and the air is refreshingly cool on your face, the wing steady above your head and the vario keeping up it's re-assuring chorus of beeps as you drift in lazy circles ever upwards. I topped out at 3,150m and at that height I was glad of all the warm clothing that caused so much sweat and discomfort such a short time ago in the tow paddock.
There was very little drift on the days we flew (which makes flying long distances difficult) but despite that I flew 1km on the last day (two tows, didn't get a thermal), 20km the day before that, 50km the day before that (Conargo to Finley), and 80km the first day of flying.

Toppin' out at 3,000m

Today was a pretty cool day of flying with a couple of new 'firsts'.
Nath and I were playing around Mystic for a while with a bunch of others and eventually drifted over to Goldmine. We didn't do so well there, Nath headed over the back (we'd climbed out of Mystic over the back) but didn't find anything and landed on the Mt. Beauty road. I headed back towards the landing paddock and soon landed. I got a lift up the hill and re-launched to find that the air above Mystic was a lot rougher so as soon as I could I headed over towards Clearspot.
Flying in to the top of the hill I started to go up and as I explored the thermal I found it was huge - air all around the top of the hill rising into a super smooth, nice strong climb. I topped out here and headed down towards Blackfellas - didn't get a climb from it but had a pretty lifty glide. Flying out over the valley I aimed for a spur comming off Mt Porepunkah and, despit some qualms about flying that far into the ridge, I followed my head and connected with a nice climb that took me up the spur and eventually up to just over 3,000m!! Climbing out above the top of the hill was awesome because Mt Porepunkah is one of the largest hills in the area and from above it I had a fantastic panorama. The climb was really smooth too - which meant I was able to enjoy it and take photos as well. From here I headed into the Happy Valley and down the road towards Mudgegonga. I cut the corner at Mudgee and although the day was getting well on was able to make it as far a Bruarong.
Over half way back to the farm - I'll manage it one of these days!!
Funny thing, the farmer who owns the paddock I landed in came down to give me a lift back to the house (and BBQ!) and it turns out we're vaguely related!! It's a funny old world!

livin' & learnin'...

Two flights today - with very different excitement levels

The second flight was basically a sleddie - there was a light drift over the back (sometime a light breeze swinging NE or NW) and I waited for awhile before finally front launching with a light downhill tailwind drift. Lots of running, lost a fair bit of height before getting clear of the hill but once clear the air was very buoyant. I still haven't figured out the Aspen in microlift condition - but this flight was a good on for getting a bit closer. I managed to maintain a sink rate of around 0.2-0.7m/s most of the way to above the house (although dropping out of it to one side or the other several times) - so I am improving but there's still a long way to go before it's instinctive. Approaching the house the sink increased but there was a super light thermal rising above the house. Even with the flattest turns possible I was only able to reduce my sinkrate to 0.1m/s for a number of turns before it passed through and I landed.

The first flight was the exciting one - although not much longer. Launch conditions at 5pm were similar to the later flight but I the lift was better. I swooped in and out of a light bubble of lifting air near windsweeps before heading out over the key plantation. The air felt a bit funny and I kept looking up to check that the wing was ok. There was a climb over the key plantation, but it was really small and I couldn't get a full turn in it. Still, by getting half of each circle in the core and swooping around quickly I was at least climbing and I knew if I could just keep this up I'd soon be able to do a full circle in the core and then I'd be beepin' my way outa the paddock.

It was as I approached launch height that I got the collapse, and I wonder if it was caused by the thermal meeting the light prevailing wind blowing over the back. Anyway, it was a big collapse and I'm not wildly happy with my initial response to it. Sure I weightshifted, but not enough and I didn't maintain my heading. I'm guessing most of the wing was folded under because we were dropping out of the sky and pumping the other side didn't seem to be doing anything. When a rotation started to develop I pulled down both brakes (my first stall for real, I guess) and looking up at the wing it soon popped back into basically the right shape (although pulled back in the stall) so I released, controlled the surge and flew back towards the key plantation. I'd lost stacks of height though, and didn't find any lift strong enough to encourage me to circle in it so landed a minute later.

In retrospect (that wonderful thing!) I think the air felt funny because I was flying in the lee-side of the hill -even though the prevailing wind was quite light. I've re-evaluated my thoughts on the safety of launching in those conditions, and I also feel that if I were more experienced with collapses and in-touch with the wing I could have prevented or minimised the drasticity (nice word, that :-) of the situation.

We live and we learn.

Flying Report: "Get me to the church on time..."

The day started off looking promising. The winds were light, the skies finally blue after rain earlier in the week, and Nath and I went over our plans. Nath had organised drivers, we'd bought food the night before, and once we got up to launch we did a final run through the checklist! It was definitely looking promising!!
We were up on the hill early, and as we arrived we saw a couple of Wedge-tailed Eagles near the top...
... they are such magnificent creatures!! I've always been slightly awed by the size and grace of these birds, but since I've had the privilege of flying with them on different occasions my appreciation of their skill has jumped ten-fold!!

After finishing breakfast...
...Nath and I launched... ...and both flew out into light but plentiful lift.
It was a slowish climb for the first bit, but improved with height. I managed to catch a good bubble and was soon well above launch. I left this and pushed out towards the hills across the valley but flew into another climb only 400m away! I played around in that for a while... ...before spiraling down to where Nath was circling a bit below me. We had a plan, you see, and it involved sticking together at least until things improved a good bit...
There was a great line of developing clouds over the Indigo Valley / Chiltern Valley hills that was a couple of easy glides away and there was no danger of over development.
I was puzzled as I spiraled down to join Nath, as I just wasn't getting any closer to him- until I straightened out and realized that not only was I trying to spiral down a thermal but he was also spiraling down, not thermalling up!

"Oh yes!" I thought as I remembered our plan for the day, stopped just messing around in the air and got serious about working out just where the best lift & sink was. Soon I found a nice sinky patch of air and worked it persistently until I landed in front of the house a minute or so after Nath. We got cleaned up, chucked our best duds on, and drove off to the church. The bride was beautiful, Nath (the groom) was great, the service was lovely - and a day that started really well just continued to get better... ...and better
..and better!!!