Everyone was very slow to get up today…lots of groaning and stretching from pilots as they worked out muscles that were still sore from yesterday’s hard flying. Even the birds couldn’t wake us up this morning!
The winds were more southerly today, so the open distance direction was to the north. Up on launch it was east winds initially, just enough to fool everyone into unpacking their gear there, and then it switched west, so everyone had to schlep their stuff to the west launch. It was blowing in nice and strong over there, so I got off launch fairly early, since I didn’t want to be caught on launch if it blew out (which I’ve heard can happen quite easily here). But once in the air it was very weak and rough, and I spent about 1 hour below launch (which is not high to begin with), scratching around in light lift with about 20 other pilots, while the Borah Basher sat below in the west bombout in case any of us actually did bomb. Quite a few did, but I managed to stay alive and save a relaunch, and eventually found a nice thermal to cloudbase.
Once at cloudbase it was an easy glide to the north and the next set of clouds, and everyone was booking along. The winds aloft were a bit strong from the SSE, so we were doing ground speeds of 70+ km/h on glides between clouds (about half speed bar). But the climbs were not that great, and we had to waste a bunch of time climbing in 1-2 m/s stuff, since there wasn’t anything else stronger around. At one point I was able to find a nice 5-6 m/s sustained climb, and was very excited about that one, but most of the time it was pretty lame lift actually (although looking at the clouds, you would have thought otherwise).
Got to Barraba at the 48 km mark and there was a giant blue hole just north of the town. With the winds pushing us that way anyways, the best we could do was get high (cloudbase about 2300m), plow through the blue hole, and try to connect with the clouds on the other side. At this point I had caught up to Keith and headed for the next cloud. It was very windy, and down low it was very trashy air. It was also extremely sinky…when I looked at my vario it was -5-6 m/s down. Keith managed to connect to the next climb while I couldn’t, and I was forced to land next to the road in a strong windy cycle. It was a rather exciting landing but everything turned out OK, and my retrieve came by a few minutes later. Straight line distance about 56 km. Total flight time was 2:15, but I spent about 30 minutes of that below launch, so I actually managed to fly the distance in 1:45.
Keith managed to get to about 98 km before the cumi clouds petered out and a bunch of rain cells approached from the NE. People were landing all over the place by now. Will landed about 85 km away, but about 30 km from the main road; but was able to land next to some ranchers that were fixing a fence on their property, and they offered him a ride back to the main road after their work was finished (apparently he learned to fix fences in the meantime). Tom took the day off from flying; Kari landed about 16 km out since she didn’t like the look of things. I think the most distance today was Semih, who did about 155 km straight line.
All in all it looked like it was going to be a great day (nice clouds, nice direction to fly with a main road underneath, strong winds to push you along), but things fell apart sky-wise in the mid-afternoon.
People are starting to show up for the World Championships, which start on the weekend. Vic and Tom’s is the new pilot hangout at nights, and they are busy feeding us after we all get back from a day of flying and driving all over the place. I think they get most of their annual business from people like us showing up!
Nicole
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