Manilla XC Open, day 2

Another fine day, with winds projected to be more east and less south, so people would fly west today. Chance of t-storms but less than yesterday. We stopped by Godfrey’s to see if Tom’s glider had arrived yet, and no. But we took the chance to visit Mango, the kangaroo joey that he is raising (the mother was hit by a vehicle). Very cute, but very long claws, and I think when he gets older he’ll have to go wild.

Up the mountain and this time we congregated on the north launch. This launch is pretty low, on a low mountain to begin with, so once again there were a few bombouts. But I was able to maintain until a thermal came though, and took it up to cloudbase at 2300m. Not too cold at cloudbase, it was nice to be cool for once compared to the burning heat on launch (especially when wearing lots of clothes). Then it was off to the west for some XC flying.

There was a task of sorts today…a control turnpoint about 29 km to the west, to keep people in the same area and avoid the north where the t-storms were predicted to hit. After the control TP it was open distance as usual. On glide to this TP it was easy going, but as I got closer to the TP it was a bit shady, and I got low about 6 km from it. At this point I went into survival mode, hunting around for lift, and taking whatever I could find, nevermind where it was drifting me. I was by myself, which made things harder, and I found myself at 100m AGL a few times. But I was able to get myself out of there and continue on (probably my lowest save to date, about 50m AGL; the flatlands here really allow you to scratch until the very last minute). In this fashion I was able to scoot along the “mountain range” to the NW, where it’s heavily forested. It was completely shady by this time, and there was a storm to the north of me. I figured the forest was the way to go in the shadiness (residual heat) vs. trying the flatlands (which were a bit upwind at this point, and too far away to fly to at my low altitude) so I opted to continue along the edge of the forest. I managed to scunge my way another few km and then it was too shady, and I couldn’t stay up, and landed at the base of the forested area about 36 km from launch, a place called dripping rock (according to the road sign I found later on).

A pretty sucky distance considering all the hard work I had just gone through (2.5 hours of hard flying, to get only 36 km?!), and I was pretty far from any civilization. I packed up and started walking, for about 2 hours, until a rancher came along and offered me a ride on his ATV with his 2 dogs. He saved me about 1 hour of walking, and then dropped me off where I started walking again, and got another ride for another 5km or so, and then got dropped off again. I was still on dirt backroads at this point, but I was in contact with our retrieve driver, Dan (a local pilot: he was still chasing Will and Keith), using my new CDMA cellphone I had just picked up that morning.

PS when flying in Manilla, carry twice as much water you’ll think you’ll need, since if you land out, you’ll drink all of it! Everyone I ran into was carrying extra water, and offered it to me (I had plenty but could see me running out had I hiked too much further).

Eventually a car picked me up and drove me all the way to Manilla. It was about a 1 hour drive. The car was packed with me, a baby, a car stroller, another pilot also picked up (Finnish pilot by the name of Kaspar), a parrot in a birdcage, and a very cute Maltese puppy. The whole way back the puppy (about 2 months old) snuggled in my lap and drank the water I offered from my water bottle. He was very cute and snugly! The lady (Nicky) drove us all the way back to Rivergums where Lee was waiting for us, with cold drinks. So nice!

Kari had 2 flights today. The first one didn’t go so well…I saw her get an gigantic cravatte which she couldn’t get out, and I watched her land to the north of Mt. Borah with the cravatte in the entire way. But she maintained excellent control of the glider the whole time, and landed safely. Back up the mountain she went and flew again.

Will and Keith flew further than me today…about 100km straight line. But they had the same problems as me…very disorganized lift, and tracks that took you in the wrong direction, so the total distance flown was actually much longer than the straight line distance counted. It took them about 5.5 hours to fly that distance, due to all the out-of-the-way places they had to go to find lift, and changing courseline direction so many times.

Bad news from yesterday…a Chinese pilot who had been missing was finally found by search and rescue, dead. Apparently something happened to him yesterday, probably due to the cu-nims on course. There is going to be a protest to get the day cancelled due to the unsafe flying conditions. We’ll find out what happens tomorrow sometime. But good news from Ewa…she’s OK and is resting. She did indeed get higher than Everest while inside the cu-nim (9947 m, according to the tracklog), and lived to tell the tale. But she's dealing with the aftermatch, mostly being frozen. +20 m/s up, and -30 m/s down.

Despite not flying super-far today I’m pretty OK with my flight…getting comfortable on the glider, and I was able to use my speed bar successfully using a trick that Kari taught me (thanks Kari!). So I think I’m getting there…hopefully I’ll be completely dialled in by the time the Worlds starts up next week.

More pics at http://mclearn.ca/gallery/

Nicole