Stable weekend

Sleddie yesterday from Mystic (some pilots got above launch briefly, by the time I picked another pilot up from the LP, got back to TO and launched it was just sled rides), another today from Mt Oates and yep, the forecast of stable conditions is dead on. sigh. Pic launching from Mystic.

Aspen2 Glide ratio - checkin' the numbers

I launched from Mystic a little after 5:30pm today - the idea was to do a sleddie in really calm conditions and get a more accurate idea of my glide ratio. Over a 2.1km straight glide I got a glide ratio of 8.13:1 (slightly less than the overall sleddie ratio of 8.27:1) and a sink rate of 1.1 m/s (1.05 overall). I think the slightly better overall figures are a result of initially flying along the Marcus spur before turning to overfly the landing paddock for the 2km leg. Not quite the 8.7 as reported by the Gleitschirm magazine - or the more conservative 8.5+ on the Gradient website - but where they'd use really aerodynamic harnesses, speed arm, optimum flying weight, etc, etc I'm right on the top of the weight range, flying a harness with lots of back protection and stuffed with various odds and ends, and the wing has over 70hrs of Aussie sun on it... It's probably really not that bad. Anyway, it's a kickin' wing to fly and now I have a bit more of an idea of what a still air glide is. Dunno how useful that is really - I usually use a 5:1 glide when planning flights over tiger country and have had some long 12:1 glides on lifty lines... But any excuse to fly!!

Great winter flying

After the uncertainty of the weather forecast, watching for weather signs all the way to the launch (clouds, their shape and size, drift and direction of drift, wind in the trees, birds, smoke, other gliders, etc) it's alway hard to wipe the grin off your face when you finally come around a corner and see gliders circling above launch. "It's on!" you know, and now the race is to get up the hill and pick a good time to launch in to join the mob in the air.



Nath and I had those happy grins on our faces when we came around the corner and into sight of the paraglider launch above Bright today - and it wasn't long until we were set-up, checks done, and winging our way towards the clouds above us.

Cloudbase was around 1,650m, although it varied quite a lot depending on where you were. We flew over to Clearspot and towards the Porepunkah airfield a ways before turning towards Blackfellas. Looking up the valley was the most amazing view of the sun shining through a trough of clouds - fantasy-like colours and shapes!

I got low over Blackfellas but got a low save from a nice thermal that gave me enough height to fly back to Clearspot again (nath drifting along above me). It had been completely shaded over for a bit, but there were light bubbles drifting towards it so I headed in to give it a try. There was a thin thread of lift coming off the northernmost point, and after several minutes of weaving in and out of this a bubble big enough to turn in floated through and gave me the height I needed to make it back to Mystic.

The soaring day was nearly over so but after boating around the hill for a bit I noticed that the gentle northerly winds were ideal for top-landing. I've done a few of these over the last few years, but none that I've been really happy with. It's a bit tricky, as you need to lose height out the front until you are level or slighty below launch (depending on the ridge lift strength) before turning and flying downwind alongside a treeline - aiming below the left-hand side of the launch. As you get close the you get lifted up (hopefully) to launch height, keep flying towards the back left corner, then a quick right turn as you're getting close to the trees at the back of launch and you're down. If you mis-judge the wind or your speed or the lift you'll be too high to land or get blown into trees on your left or behind launch and if there's West in the wind there's an increased chance of collapses due to turbulence from the trees to the left of launch.

Anyway, conditions were good today and for the first time I nailed the approach, landing pretty much exactly where I like to take off from. Woohoo!!
Nath soared for a bit longer before we flew down to the landing paddock after just over 2hrs of playing with winter thermals.

I don't think our grins had slipped from when we'd first seen gliders in the air - it's goanna take an awful lot to wipe 'em off now!!!

Season change

Autum has arrived with a bang! Over the course of just one week the daily average temperature has almost halved, we've had rain, clouds, and some light snowfalls in the mountains!

Today the conditions looked like they might permit some ridge soaring from the hill out behind home so I headed up on a bike to check. A straight Southerly is best (but rare) as the main face of the hill generates a huge lift band way above and out the front of the hill but a SW (like today) should allow for some soaring near the top if it's strong enough.

I launched and soared up to a bit over 600m, which is not bad for a SW. I was flying with gloves and a ballaclava under my helmet but it was still pretty chilly. The cloud above blew away and the wind became too light for me to stay up so I landed up above the mud hut, however there was enough wind to ground-handle, so I ground-handled my way across the slope, up a gulley (some tense moments navigating between some of the big rocks and over a dead tree there), and back up to launch. Great practice for launches in tight & tricky places or conditions, and by the time I reached the top I was sweating and had removed a couple of layers!

Another cloud was approaching the hill and I launched again as the wind picked up - found the best beat to be from the top corner of the gulley above the little dam (above the mud hut) to the lighning-struck tree above the rock-brow pine plantation. Suprising, as this wasn't the steepest part of the hill, but I guess it's because it is a wide, smooth slope without trees and big rocks to disturb the airflow?
Anyway, as the wind dropped off again Nath was on his way up in the Landcruiser so I explored the (or lack of) further out and landed next to him on windsweeps to get a lift back up.

Nath set up and launched next (he's much better than me at scratching in light conditions) and flew around for a bit before slope landing down the hill a bit in the next lull. The truck makes for quick retrieves, you just bunch the wing up and stand in the back in all you flying kit. Jump out at the top, pull the wing up and you're away again!


Unfortunately the wind was just a bit too light to stay up. Nath landed a little ways down the slope and started ground-handling. It looked like fun so I flew down, landed next to him, and we 'walked' our wings back up the slope to the top. It was interesting 'flying' the wings through the turbulence behind some of the trees downwind - good active flying practice!
The wind never really picked up again, but we had fun trying to keep our wings in the air around the top of the hill. Eventually Nath relaunched and flew over windsweeps to land at the foot of the hill for some ground handling on the flats.

A fun day!

Last good thermal?

Nath and I weren't able to get to Bright today until 4pm - and once there heard from other pilots about lumpy air and an inversion layer around 1,800m. But that's a whole lot better than not flying, so once I was set up and felt a cycle coming through I lobbed off and headed to the left of launch and was soon circling in a light climb out the front of the ridge.



[The dip in the RH trailing edge of the wing was caused by a knot in two of the brake lines on the upper cascade - vigorous pumping didn't remove it and it didn't cause any problems ]








Nath launched soon afterwards...









...and we pleased to find that the air had become lovely and smooth and the climb slowly improved from a 0.5 m/s to a steady 3 m/s up to 2,100m!! Great fun thermalling together! We headed towards Apex Tower, crossing over the town of Bright on the way. I led out and found a fairly sinky line and not much lift along the ridgeline around the tower - Nath saw this and wisely turned back to Clearspot, where he connected with another climb and topped up his height. Meanwhile I was scratching around Apex, gaining height and losing it as I blundered around trying to center the lift. I never really figured it out - dunno if I arrived at the end of a cycle or if it was just small bubbles of lift but after awhile it was time to leave the ridge so I headed downwind towards Little Mystic. I wasn't high enough to fly into the bowl, but gained a bit of height in a few circles over the lower part of the spur before falling out of it into sink and valley wind, followed shortly afterwards by landing in the landing paddock.










Nath made it back to Mystic and ridge soared for half an hour or so before he flew down and landed.

Cold fronts, cold wind and cold rain are forecast - I wonder if this was the last good thermal of the 07/08 flying season?? It looks like we're about to turn the corner into Autum.

Rough riding in the Kiewa Valley

Driving up to Bright, the wind-talker on ch21 was reporting light Northerlies and there were cumulus clouds popping off all over the sky – woohoo! I launched around 12:30 straight into a nice climb off Marcus. Nine minutes of thermalling later I was approaching cloudbase at 1,700m.
A high pressure system had been hanging around for a few days but the sun was hot and the night was cold so the thermals were punching up through the stable air, however the thermals were narrow and tended to feel quite strong.

To get a bit more of a feel for the day I headed over to Clearspot (very boyant crossing) and turned a few circles under the cloud there to take me back to base (around 1,800m here) before flying towards Blackfellas. However the sink was pretty strong, the cloud I was heading for started to dissipate, and it was up-wind, so I turned around, topped up my height at Clearspot and headed back towards Mystic. There were some gliders climbing out from launch which marked the lift nicely so I flew over, circled five or six times in the lift (back to cloudbase!) and kept going over to Goldmine. The crossing was a bit sinkey and although I found lift over Goldmine it wasn't very well formed until I widened my search around 1,600m and found a nice core to circle in while climbing back to my favorite place – where the climb meets the clouds!

The next good trigger point, Pyramid, had been basking in the sun for a few minutes by the time I was ready to leave Goldmine and as I approached the sunny side of the center peak I was expecting a good climb. I wasn't disappointed...

The wing pitched forwards and we were ripped upwards as the vario started going crazy. One moment the speed of the climb was squashing me down in the harness, the next I was going nearly weightless as the ground dropped away beneath me. I had the left brake buried to try and stay in the core but it didn't feel like it was doing much – the violence of the movement of the air was what was spinning me around as I was hurled upwards. Heart rate maxed, check that surge, quick stab on the outside brake to pump out the tip, brakes all up we're going uuuupppp, pressure off whack the inside brake on again and two minutes later I was tipping the clouds at 2,000m after one of the wilder rides under a paraglider. I've thermalled at higher climb rates before, I've thermalled much higher from much lower - but measured in terms of power and adrenaline this was definitely the thermal of the season for me!!

There were good clouds around so I took a slightly deeper course line over the Tawonga Gap and was rewarded with a pretty easy crossing. Near the end I hit more sink but found a light climb just before flying over the final ridgeline. There was some sort of shear line around 1,600m and the thermal drifted in a different direction after that but it took me back up cloudbase. There was a line of clouds running North for the next 6-7kms so just flew along under them, diverting towards the darker patches when I needed an altitude top-up. Arriving at the edge of them I had a choice of following them NW over tiger country towards Mt Porepunkah, straight ahead over a ridgeline with no good clouds, or NE out over the valley.

I chose to continue flying North, trusting that I'd come across a thermal lifting off from the ridgetop. I flew over a couple of likely looking trigger points without getting much of a twitch and by then was getting close to the trees when I flew through active air near the next good point I searched around and got slammed around by violent little bullets of lift that were to small to get much of a turn in. I was getting height out of them – but it was pretty rough at times (I looked up once and saw a fold in the back of the wing as the leading edge was bent back). Eventually two air masses traveling in opposite directions whacked one side of the wing under but with a counter-whack on the brakes and a bit of fall-and-spin it came out pretty quick (in retrospect I think I was in the lee of the thermal core and the ridge which explains the roughness...).

As soon as I had a bit of height I left the ridge and headed out into the valley. Half way across I spent a while circling and drifting in a really light climb but after this died and I flew to the other side of the valley I didn't find another good thermal. I spent a while surfing bubbles rising above a hill but nothing that I could really work came through so I ended up flying back over the river to land in a convenient paddock near the main road. I great flight, a bit wild at times and I would really have liked to connect with a climb on the N side of the Kiewa Valley, but I'm pleased that I only took one real collapse and it was just great to have such nice clouds to fly. Woohoo!

Afternoon ridge-soaring

I arrived at Bright late and launched around 3pm. There was enough wind to ridge soar, and light bubbles were coming through regularly. Frustratingly, I was unable to climb away in any of them – although it was certainly possible, as Ollie showed three or four times in his hang-glider. So I ended up just ridge soaring. Got a lift up the hill and went for an evening sleddie later – lovely and smooth air...