Does it get better than this?

Haven't got time for a long post here, but just wanted to say that TODAY I FLEW OVER MT FEATHERTOP!!!!!!
I've been eye-ing this flight off for over a year now, and to finally do was just indescribable!
It wasn't easy - I got a climb from my first foray onto Bungalow Spur, but couldn't find one when I pushed in further and had to fly back out through some very unwelcome sink. The trees were looking awefully ominous for a minute there, but then I got out of the sink and soon after found another climb and this time it all went smoothly. Got high, transition in further, got another climb, and flew in to Feathertop!
For a few short minutes there I was filled with an incredible sense of possession - I'd beaten the mountain, that sucker was MINE! Yeah!!!!
Awesome views, pics here , will post more later.

another milestone

Two flights today, the first one I launched around 1:30 (Daylight Saving time - 1 hr forward) and climbed to 1,400, then crossed towards Clearspot. I arrived well below the height of the hill and had to scratch around the side before getting up to 1,500 in a narrow, drifting core. Above 1,300 it was easy to stay up, and I boated around taking some pics while watching Ollie climbing up and waiting for Rob to come across. We headed out towards Blackfellas, but Rob didn't like the look of it and turned around for another climb while watching me get lower and lower as I searched for lift. He stayed high and further back, which was a smart move as after desperately working tiny bubbles and even ridge soaring I ran out of height and options and landed on the outskirts of Bright.
I eventually got a lift from Alex, who very kindly drove me up to my car on launch, but once there the conditions on launch (N-NNW at 5kts, gusts to 8kts) proved too tempting and I relaunched. By now (4:30ish) there were small rough-edged bubbles coming through but not many thermals. I did catch a few, but they were extremely narrow and hard to stay centered in. Max height was about 1,200m. FredG and MichelleB drove up and launched after a while (on a Boom5 and UP very high aspect ratio wing) and we flew around for a bit before they landed. I kept flying for until I ran out of bubbles and then landed very pleased with a smooth toplanding in 4-9kts of NNW wind. I wasn't sure it'd work out and was prepared to forget the idea but it all went very well.

Today's flying also puts me over the 200hrs mark - Hooray!!
I arrived home to find that my advanced rating had arrived in the mail - nice timing!

It is ON at Bright!

I took off from the Mystic launch around 12:30 today - 

- just after BrianW - and we both got a nice climb that went close to cloudbase (just light whispies over Mystic at that stage) around 2,100m. I headed over to Goldmine (nice looking cloud there) and as I left saw Brian, KarlT, FredG and CraigC thermalling over towards Wandi. After a brief search I connected with a climb (triggering off the GM point, 3m/s) and while climbing towards the cumulous above saw the others had decided to head directly to Mt Ebaneazer. By the time I'd reached CB (2,400m here!) I'd lost sight of Brian, Fred and Craig but could see Karl heading towards the Reliance ridge (looked like he got some pretty strong sink). 

I had heaps of height and there were really solid looking clouds along the ridge...

...so I headed straight towards Ebaneazer also. 

The flying was really nice! I remember some pretty funky air from last spring but so far I haven't felt anything like that this year. Today, for instance, there were a couple of times I jumped off the bar smartly, and once the wing flexed with a bit of a snap (might have been a frontal collapse if I didn't stop it), but all in all I've found things quite benign. I'm usually comfortable enough to take photos with both hands off the brakes (using the bar for pitch control) and I'm wondering how much of this is due to the wing I'm flying, how much due to flying at the top of the weight range, and how much due to the conditions. For sure the wing helps a lot - since I've gotten used to it (Gradient Aspen II) I've had far fewer collapses than I did on a DHV 1-2 and flown in much rougher conditions (around the end of last summer). I think because it gives you so much more information about the air around you it is easier to anticipate (and check) most collapses well before they occur. 

Anyway, as I got closer to Ebaneazer another glider was also gliding in

- and it was Rob. He was flying a Avax RSF and I was interested to see that the Aspen had a comparible glide and slightly higher trim speed - although I'm sure he could leave me in the dust once he used his speedbar.

We arrived at around 2,100m to find widespread lift in the area so we just kept on going (partly due to a combination of the cloud above us getting darker and shade approaching the spurs above Harrietville we were aiming for). As we crossed over Harrietville I could see someone (turned out to be Brian) scratching on the spur south of Harrietville and as we flew further and further in (chasing the sunlight) spotted a couple of wings well above us and much closer to Feathertop.

Rob was ahead of me and hit some sink going in to the ridge  - he nosed around but didn't find anything and turned around for the glide back out to Harrietville. I took a slightly different path in and as I crossed over the spur felt the wing pull forwards ever-so-slightly into.... YES! LIFT!! But then I dropped out the other side. It was felt very small and very light and wasn't in the same place twice as I bumbled around trying to stay in it. It felt like it was being drawn deeper towards Hotham but when I ventured a bit that way I lost it completly. I turned back but what was there was there no more and after a few searching turns I was getting uncomfortably low a long way from the nearest landing site so left the spur and headed for Harrietville. Everything except the upper ridges was shaded over by now, 

... and the air was quiet and dead as I glided down (not even a beep) to land next to Rob in the Harrietville quarry. Brian had landed somewhere nearby and Karl up the road a bit.

In retrospect (that wonderful thing), I think I should have waited in the lift over Ebaneazer until there was sun on the Feathertop spurs before crossing - there was heaps of lift there and if I'd flown back to near the edge of the cloud I think I could have easily maintained height there and waited for a better time to cross. OR, topped up near to cloudbase and taken a more direct route across - I would have been even further from sunny ridges but there was a darker line of cloud stretching towards Feathertop (convergence?) and I might have gotten a really good glide all the way there at cloudbase. 

Things to remember for next time...

Fred and Craig made it to above Mt Feathertop, and we heard on the radio one of them reaching 3,100m by flying up the side of one of the clouds. From here they flew along the Razorback ridge to Hotham (as they flew in, Ollie was flying out on his hang-glider - apparently he took a really good line and made it back to the Mystic LP on the one glide from Hotham...), got a weak climb there and made it back out (encountering hail on the way), to the smoko bowl (Fred got a 6.5m/s average climb there), and glided down to the Mystic LP as the now blue-black clouds near Harrietville dropped a bunch of rain. Awesome flying, and some nice timing there too.... 

Fred had a video camera with him - hopefully he posts some of the footage of the flight!

Above the snow!!!

Sometimes, when you fly, it's like you somehow sidestep all the rules and slip into a place not made for people - a wonderful place, breath-takingly beautiful, sometimes scary, a place run on laws you can't see and only dimly sense. No visit is the same, nor lasts long enough - for we are but foreigners in this wondrous place - but once you have been there the memory sinks deep and is never fully forgotten. At every chance you will strive to get back, and, if you do get back, strive to stay a little longer, to learn a little more, see a little further. Each visit fills, to the exclusion of all else, the moments that measure it's duration and overflows into a deep satisfaction that lights all else for a time afterwards. But only for a time... until the vividness of that memory is burned through by everyday living and you wonder did it really happen? Did I do that? Surely such sights are not for men but for eagles and angels and the winds and the stars. But the memory is still there, however deep, and when the chance comes once again - to slip by the rules and re-enter that wonderful place - you leap for it with anticipation.

So yeah, you could say it was a pretty good day's flying yesterday. A lot of the boxes that go into making a 'great' flight were ticked for me - flying with friends, a good recovery from a bad place, flying difficult air and flying it well, taking off early and landing late, trying new things, wonderful views... Something I've wanted to do for a long time now is fly above the snow, and as I was thermalling above the ridge near Mt Ebeneazer I looked down and there it was - snow all under and through the trees along the shadowed side of the ridge! I've flown to Harrietville a number of times and several times to Harrietville and then onto somewhere else but never (until yesterday) there and back again. It was a good decision to turn back to launch when it looked like I wouldn't make the crossing to Goldmine - despite the others all being ahead. It was good to get a bit more of a feel for the air before heading over - and then heading over in good air. It felt great to find a climb where I thought there should be one - and then to stick with it through the light inversions and to pick it up again after the wind shear layer nearly to cloudbase. It was good to stay over the high ground - and to set the goal of flying back to Bright. It was great to just clear the last ridge and glide slowly to the landing paddock as the few clouds in the sky faded and the thermic part of the day ended.
Yep, the whole day was pretty good!!

The stats:
flight time: 2hrs 15min
max height: 1,912m
peak vario: 6m/s, steady around 1.8m/s (thermals were not small, but very unorganised air and difficult to 'core'. There seemed to be several light inversion and there was a wind sheer layer around 1,600m)

Snowtime!

The weather yesterday looked agonizingly beautiful - easily the best flying day for the last 2 months - and I knew there was no way I was going to be able to get out of work. A front was approaching and there was more rain, snow and thunderstorms forecast for the weekend. However, the front wasn't forecast to come through until shortly after 10am so I was keeping a close eye on it's speed - desperately hoping it would delay enough for some pre-frontal flying at Mystic.

The morning dawned bright and clear, come twelve noon and I was at Bright. No one else was around. A fair number of the local pilots are currently overseas, but I was expecting at least someone else. There were cycles coming through so after a quick safety call (going flying from Mystic, I'll call you when I'm down, don't send out the search & rescue unless you haven't heard from me by 4pm), setup, and I was off!!

The wind was from the North, 12-20km/hr, it was still sunny (although high cloud was moving in), and the air felt GOOD!! Nothing more than some light ridge lift to the right of launch so I swung over towards Marcus and, sure enough, found a climb there. It was narrow, rough, and had pretty sharp edges, and the wind was blowing it all over the place - but it was going up fast and I was sticking to it! I lost it around 1,200m, I think there was a wind shear layer around there but it could have just been that I lost it.

I nosed around, then pushed forwards along marcus (didn't find anything) but coming back connected with another (or the same) climb from Marcus. This one was going up faster - I was averaging 2.5 m/s, despite constantly falling out the sides, and peaking around 5m/s. Again I lost it around 1,200, but I thought I had fallen out the front of it.

The next thermal I caught I lost twice, and each time searched downwind (with the wind I had a pretty quick downwind speed) and caught it again - all the way to where the cloud started to form below and around me at 1,500m. Yee-har!!!


The rough conditions were keeping me on my toes and I'm happy to report that I didn't get a single collapse (funny, but I get a lot less collapses on the DHV2 than I when I was flying a DHV1-2).
I'd drifted a fair ways from launch by now, and the clouds looked good over goldmine, so I kept going downwind, curving around to intersect the goldmine ridge.


Although there was no lift over goldmine I could feel that there was a climb somewhere close by, so went searching downwind and found a strong core that was so small I couldn't stay in it for a full circle. I flew through it a bunch of times before finally getting a few turns in it but then lost it. I'd regained a couple of hundred meters though, and was pretty close to cloudbase.

What's more, there was an awesome looking cloud several km's down the ridgeline...

...so I went on glide.

The first couple of km's were good, but then the glide got worse and worse and the trees got closer and closer. I was flying in the shade of a great dark looking, flat-bottomed cloud but was just not connecting with any lift. Eventually I had to decide if I wanted to fly out into the valley and land or start kicking treetops so I left the ridgeline (I wonder now if the climb was triggering from the next ridgeline upwind and was blown back to where I could see it...) and flew out into the valley. Lots of sink near the ridge, better in the valley and I took some pics of the snow before landing.

A pity I didn't connect with that next climb, it would have made Harrietville a piece of cake to reach... ahh, well, next time.... But how cool is it to get good xc-able conditions like this in winter?!! I'll be watching the weather more closely in future ;-D

Mt Feathertop with a nice covering.

Soaring the gusts & dolphining the bubbles...

I got a sleddie from The Pines a couple of days ago - tricked by the weather readings again (I still haven't found a good indicator of windspeed for that site).

Today, however, I was flying from Mt Oates. The wind was at soaring strength for short periods, so I launched, soared, and as it dropped off tried to land as high up the hill as possible. It's tricky, because the different landing areas are separated by bands of trees and if you think, "I should be able to make one more pass before landing" and end up too low to make that landing area it adds an extra 5-10min walking (very tiring walking uphill in winter flying gear carrying a bunched glider continually trying to inflate).

Eventually the wind started to drop off so I took off and headed out towards the house. Halfway there I doubted I would make it against the wind, but then flew through a bubble of lift. I used the bar to control the wing's pitching, applying more as we went into the lift and less coming out the other side... and more again as we flew into another bubble, and less as we flew out of that one... There was a continuous string of small bubbles drifting with the wind (I'm pretty sure from a big, freshly mown paddock across the road) and the lift I gained from them allowed me to reach the house easily! Perfect!!!!

My sister Sharon (future pilot maybe??) had the camera and took these great shots.

Waiting for the wind...

Checking wind strength

...And away!!!

It's a pretty wing (I may be slightly biased...)

Top-landing

Re-launching

Heading out and not finding as much lift as expected...

Kiting the wing back to launch after a slope landing

Whoo! That's more like it!!

Much more like it!!

In fact...

I think that this...

... is it.

Blown over the back

Another day of windy soaring at Mt Oates, starting off well and ending much much better than it so easily could have...

The forecast was for easing Southerly winds but I knew that the valley shape would make that SW-SSW winds on the hill. I'd seen some eagles soaring at great heights well out in front of the hill and, bearing in mind the forecast, I was keen to get up there as soon as I could and hopefully connect with the lift band out the front.

The launch was fine - pull the wing up hard, half-a-dozen quick steps towards and under it, quick turn, final line check, all good, lean forwards and we're off - but I had little initial forward movement. I didn't want to use the bar, so just kept brakes off and slowly crawled forwards and upwards. Once I got above the first tree-line the lift increased noticeable, as did my forward speed. This was lots more relaxing - and I started to sweep a bit wider and explore the lift some more. Swinging left and pushing out a bit I came across some great lift - and it felt like more than just good ridge lift...

Treating it like a thermal blown by strong winds I was soon well above takeoff, and knew I'd guessed correctly. However I ventured a bit too far to one side and lost it and although I pushed well out in front of the hill looking for stronger lift upwind I didn't find any. Nearly down to launch height I turned downwind and toplanded to get a better feel for what was going on.

Although I had a ripping downwind speed once I had landed the wind on the hill felt too light to stay up (I was puzzled by the apparent low windspeed on the hill, and didn't register that the wind gradient had changed significantly while I was in the air).

25min later the wind on the hill had picked up to a good soaring strength and I relaunched. Again I initially experienced little forward speed, but this time when I reached the tree-line and the lift improved, the wind strength picked up dramatically with height and I started flying backwards. Conscious of the dangers of using speedbar at low altitudes I tried to reduce the induced drag and wait out what I though was a short gust. As I got higher and my backwards speed increased I realised that it wasn't just a gust - there was now quite a sharp wind gradient with high windspeeds above it. Big-ears reduced my climb-rate but increased drag and pushed me back past the takeoff.

I could see I wasn't going to be able to topland, and flying directly downwind would lead to a large patch of bushland (and rotor and that low altitude) so I turned and headed crosswind to a cleared paddock over a slight crest of the hill (unfortunately covered with trees), knowing that the rotor wouldn't be as bad there and hoping that keeping the wing cells partially into the wind would help.

I knew I'd have to fly through some rotor, and it was easy to tell when the wing hit it- as I was flying over the second last big gum tree before cleared ground (the last one was big, dead, and horribly spikey looking) the left side abruptly lost pressure - a quick hard jab kept it open but I noticed it felt soft and mushy right side twisted back a bit, then snapped under in a small asymetrical collapse. A small thing in normal flying, but I was only 60m above the ground, very conscious of the big dead tree just ahead, the hard ground below, and the wing above me trying to do a helicopter.

I don't perfectly remember the sequence - too busy trying to apply the right brake inputs - but I checked a hard dive forwards and to the right, the right side recovered and I swung under the wing in a slight left turn, flared, and thumped down onto the ground between the big gum and the big dead tree. Wing fine, pilot shaken by how easily it could have ended badly, very thankful to be ok, and a little wiser regarding weather observation and wind shears.

One thing I will say is I was very glad to be flying this wing and not my DHV1-2 - I believe the extra sensitivity of the wing gave me advanced warning of the air ahead and the directness of handling allowed me to recover control before I impacted the ground.

A scary lesson that I really hope I never have to relearn.