BAD DAY

As most of you are aware we had the worst thing that could happen in a competition happen and it happened twice in one day. We lost two of our pilots to accidents yesterday. They were from Argentina and Chile. As you can imagine it has been extremely somber around here and there is much talk of abandoning the competition. I am unsure of my views as they are mixed and it depends on when you ask me. I took the day off and went exploring a 12th century castle in a little village then went for a swim with the team in a great little river spot. It was a great chance to discuss and reflect on why we do this. I was left with nothing beats a great day of flying with my friends. So for now I will stay and see what comes of the many meetings on whether this competition can be saved by using a different format. I also may just hang up my hat and choose a different way to spend my time while in Spain. I am lucky that I have the support of all of you back home and know that you will all hopefully accept my decision whatever that may be. But life is too important
Cheers
Keith

Day 1

It started off great as the team was all in relative good position at the start. We all got established on course and after about 75 km we ran into the first set of Airspace. After that we got separated so I will tell you about my day from here. I managed to still be with the lead group but choose a hard left line to avoid the airspace and that was maybe not the best choice as the pilots who stayed close to the edge of the airspace had a much easier time of it. With me now a little bit behind I instead of being patient with my climbs rushed myself to get back into the lead group which of course left me low over some trees with no way to go downwind so I fought the headwind back to clear terrain with a ground speed around 5-10km/hr. Once over land able terrain I got myself a great climb that the gaggles behind me of course joined so at least I was now with some company. We continued downwind again with ground speeds in the 80-90km/hr range so was making great progress. I took another giant climb up to the ceiling level which was 3048m so stayed under 3000 to be safe which left me not paying attention. I headed downwind as I was the top of my group and glided straight towards goal. At this point I thought to myself isn't there more airspace so I turned on my map page to find out that of course there was albeit a small piece and I was smack dap in the middle of it along with the rest of my gaggle. I did the best thing possible and fly back in to the wind to at least land outside of it and hope that it was only a don't land area and not a don't go here area. Wishful thinking on my part as I was told that it was a don't go area. SO it appears my first day will be left with a ZERO. Instead of getting credit for my 112km flight which only ended cause I figured out I was in airspace. The gaggle I was with got to goal early but they will likely get ZEROS too as they were in the space as well.

Claudio flew very well and made GOAL and I believe Brett landed around the 90km mark.

Tomorrow is a new day

Keith

Day One

With a predicted 20 km/h westerly and the top of lift at 2800 m the classic 154 km race to Arcones was called.

It was fun racing. I had some trouble managing the airspace and landed at the edge of one of the restricted areas, trying to get around it.. somewhere between Avila and Segovia. Keith landed at Segovia and Claudio made goal!

We don't know who won the day yet but the results should be up in a few hours. The link above to the live tracking is apparently very exciting to watch. Realtime race action in 3D.

The weather for the next few days is expected to be good. We've been averaging one reserve deployment per fly day.


Brett
www.flyingthevoid.blogspot.com

Official Practice Day

We had an official practice task for the competitors to test their equipment, the organization to test their systems, and the air to test our gliders.

A 60 km multi turnpoint task with goal in Piedrahita, wind at 15-20 km/h from the north, 2-5 m/s climbs, and base at 2800 m.

We flew the task with lots of speed and angry places in the sky threatened to take your glider from you. One pilot floated down safely under his parachute.


Brett
www.flythevoid.blogspot.com

The opening ceremony was grand

Follow the Championships

Here are some blogs for the comp and feel free to pass along

http://canadianparaglidingteam.blogspot.com/
http://www.flypiedrahita.com/blog/
http://www.xcmag.com/
http://alaskaparajack.blogspot.com/

My SPOT should be tracking plus they will have live tracking for the comp too. SO you could sit at home early in the morning and watch the paint dry if you feel so inclined.

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0exBicqind4ap6IoIoiXahrraJrnqxzTI

The live tracking should be on
www.livetracking.com

or search for it on http://www.piedrahita2011.com

Great test day today flew around for a bunch but took it easy too

Good Night All
Keith

First training flight and registration

The morning started off with over 3 hours of registration.... By the time we got our equipment checked and our instruments loaded it was after lunch and we had not even had breakfast and had no time to eat lunch so it was up the mountain for me to check if my lines were attached correctly from my re-lining session on my single bed in the hotel room. Everything was fine and off I launched. It was a great afternoon with me getting over an hour with lots of climbs. It was my first chance to see how my new glider compared and lets just say I have nothing to worry about. The APCO Enigma will not be the problem if I dont have a good meet. This glider climbed very well against the latest crop of gliders and seemed just fine on the few glides I took that were close to others. Its always different when your racing with a glider but I feel confident that everything will be great. Landing was just a bit sketchy as the wind was blowing across town and the main landing field was in the lee with lots of rough air close to the ground. Claudio has great film of a guy losing his glider 30 m from the ground and getting it back over his head just in time but very close.
Upon starting my packing of course a few of the other companies test pilots and designers came by for a closer feel of the new glider with some hyms and hahs and of course nice compliments they still remain my friends...haha. That is one of the many things Paragliding comps are great for and thats the employees of the different companies always get along and laugh with one another over the tricks and crazy ideas. The world is just to small for tension. Tomorrow is the official Practice day then its work time as the comp starts Tuesday.

The big parade of nations was tonight so it was long night of listening to spanish dignitaries speak in a language I don't understand about topics I also don't care about so once it was ok to disappear we joined the US team for some pizza in the alley. Its sleep time so Good Night
Keith

Lines done but no Flying

Today started off by looking really nice but we were told the winds were high on launch. After waiting around we finally decided to head up. Its 7 euros per ride so about the same as at home. We got out at launch and watched as various pilots dragged and crashed themselves all over launch to the jeering and laughing of all us happily watching. We waited around and came back down. So I now sit in an airconditoned bar in the hotel drinking a lemon cocacola and watching the tour de france live. This is GREAT. the spanish announcers make it seem like the stanley cup final at every turn and there is still over 100kms to go in the race. The bar patrons are cheering and screaming at the TV.

So far I have discovered a love for this country with the exception of two things with one being its expensive and the other is actually an extreme lack of vegetables with dinner. See ya tomorrow.
K

We Arrived

24 hours of travel and here we are. So far from what we have seen its a cool little town that we will call home for the next three weeks. All the bags arrived which is kind of nice so now its just time to change the lines then hopefully fly tomorrow which is Friday. We are already dealing with the heat as its very warm temps here because the wind is coming from Africa. Must go eat then try and stay awake till at least 9 or even 10.haha
Keith

Back to the Gate

Well it's 1:45pm flight was suppose to leave at 12:55pm. 12 year old girl next to me has temper tantrum and wants off while we were staged to takeoff. Captain turns around and now were back at gate waiting for them to find their bags. Damn kids and their parents. Haha. Oh well zero chance of us making the connection to Madrid. Off to a great start. Haha
Cheers
K

Sent from my iPhone

TEST

test

PG World Championships Awards

The entire main street of Manilla was closed to traffic for the closing ceremonies. We started off with a free steak BBQ at Vic and Tom’s, and then moved outside to the street party for the awards:

1st Nation: Czech Republic
2nd Nation: France
3rd Nation: Switzerland

Canada 19th Nation

1st Women: Petra Slivova(Czech)
2nd Women: Viv Williams (Australia)
3rd Women: Harmony Gaw (New Zealand)

1st Men: Bruce Goldsmith (UK)
2nd Men: Jean-Marc Caron (France)
3rd Men: Tom McCune (USA))

Canadian rankings:
Keith McCullough: 51st
Will Gadd: 77th
Nicole McLearn: 114th

All in all Canada did better at this Worlds compared to Brazil. All of us made goal at least once, and the conditions here were very difficult compared to the usual Manilla flying. I learned a lot more about comp flying and am very glad I came, but now I’m ready to go back home and fly for fun. Everyone is leaving tomorrow; I’ll be in Sydney for a few more days and then back in Vancouver next week. Hopefully by then the rain back home will have ceased!

Nicole

Oodles in goal, but not me

It was pretty easy to cancel the day yesterday…pouring rain all morning and early afternoon, probably as much as 2” in the end. We took David and Lee out to lunch since they’ve been so nice to us, and they returned the favour by making a farewell party (also Will’s birthday party) in the evening. Lots of drinking ensued, and later on ridiculous games. All in all a good time was had by all.

This morning it was sunny and those pilots who were hemming and hawing about leaving had an easy choice to stay and fly the final day. The task was a 53 km downwind dash to Gulf Creek, past Barraba. Cloudbase was extremely low, about 1300 m, and the lift was light to nonexistent. Once again the launch gaggle grew and grew, and nobody was able to leave, until well after the first (and second) of the start gates had come and gone. A few pilots even left at basically ridge height, since getting high around launch was practically impossible.

I think the highest I got was around 1200 m at one point, and had I known what was to come, I would have left with that height, regardless of the start gates, if the gaggle was going, or if people were getting low ahead of me. But I thought I could get higher so I stuck around launch in that hope, but in the end I got flushed and landed in the west bombout.

Now I have been here for 1 month and never bombed out, and I was quite proud of that fact (given that Mt. Borah is only about 1000’ high). So I was really annoyed that this happened on the last day. But the Basher was there to take me back up to launch, and I relaunched before the window closed. But fate (or bad luck, or lack of skill, take your pick :) decided I should land there again, which I did, about 5 minutes after the launch window closed. So after 1 month of no bombouts, I get to do so twice in one day.

So no chance to relaunch for this task since the window had closed by then, and it means I’m officially the suckiest pilot for today’s task. I certainly didn’t see any other comp pilots land there after the window closed! But looking at the bright side of things, I got to pack up on nice green grass (thanks to the rain) and have a leisurely drive back to Manilla, and not have to rush back like the oodles of people that made goal today. And when I downloaded my GPS I didn’t have a huge lineup of people, since I was back first :)

Apparently, if you were able to stay alive past Tarpoly, it got easier and whole bunches of people made goal today. Will (even hung-over), Keith, Josh, and Tom all made it. Kari and Bill went down about 20-25 km downrange. Brian Webb and Steve Ham went down in the same general area too. So the standings will change once again; today was yet another example of survival in light lift while avoiding mid airs, absolutely no racing involved, and huge amounts of luck in who stayed in the air and who didn’t. Tom has a shot at the podium since he was 5th going in, and word is that Crigel didn’t make goal today.

Will report on the overall standings and final party later!

Nicole

Another light lift task day

The day didn’t start out looking great, lots of high cirrus clouds and more clouds expected to move in, but it wasn’t windy and that was good enough for us, so we went up. On the east launch a task to Baanbaa was called (60.8 km) with multiple start gates to allow people to choose when to start the task. After the hoopla over the 1st TP on the last task, I didn’t really want to be involved in a massive gaggle right over launch in light conditions (which they were, according to the wind dummies not getting very high over launch), so I opted to wait until almost all the other competitors had launched and gotten away from the hill, even though by doing so I was pretty much shooting myself in the foot as far as keeping up with the lead gaggle. But I figured safer was better, and yep it was a good decision since there were 2 mid-airs over the mountain in the gaggles that did form up. The first one I witnessed while still on launch; a Japanese pilot on a Boomerang 5 and an Omega mid-aired right over the south launch. It took a very long time for them to separate, while those of us watching were saying under our breaths “throw, throw, throw”. Eventually they separated and the Boom flew away cleanly, but the Omega was in trouble and Caroline from France ended up throwing her reserve. It opened cleanly and she controlled her main glider as she drifted very slowly behind launch onto the west side, where she landed gently part way down the west launch slope (and OK). The other mid-air I didn’t see, but it was Renata from the Czech Republic and Tracey from South Africa that mid-aired right over the east launch. They both tossed their reserves and landed at the split rock hairpin turn up to launch; Renata was OK, Tracey was taken to hospital with a back injury.

There was also a treed pilot right off the east launch, and a pilot that broke their leg landing at Godfrey’s (not a comp pilot). So there was a lot of carnage in the beginning, which made me glad not to be in the air right then.

When I did launch, I did so with Bill and then we chose the 3:30 pm start gate. The going was slow since the climbs were weak and disorganized, and nobody really wanted to land out on the plateau to the NW. We actually stayed more to the south, and finally got a good climb to 2000 m just as we hit the Boggabri Gap. But the shade was coming, and there was a storm cloud forming just to the north of the Gap, and rain was coming out of it. I could see some pilot diving underneath that cloud in an attempt to find lift, but I didn’t feel like playing that game and stayed well away from it. Unfortunately all around that cloud was a lot of general shade, and a bunch of us spent the last few minutes searching for little pieces of lift just before the Gap. It didn’t work, and about 6 of us landed in the same field at about the 28 km mark.

Turns out all of us were women; after we took off our helmets and realized this it was quite funny. Then a guy landed in the field with us and destroyed the symmetry of it all, but he seemed pretty happy to have chosen that particular field to land in :). And just as we were packing up and leaving, Russel Ogden came in and landed too.

Keith and Bill landed a few fields over from us; a lot of people went down in the same general area. Adrian from the UK team and Brian from the Oz team also landed nearby. Petra didn’t do so well today so she will drop in the standings too. In fact a lot of rank-swapping is going to take place after this task! Josh and Will landed 1-2 km short of goal and walked the last bit as penance, while Tom and Kari made goal (yay!).

All in all, it was another non-typical Manilla day, with lots of weak climbs. With every day being non-standard, flukey, and practically no racing taking place, there is more than the average amount of luck being involved. No clear winner is emerging as far as consistency goes. Definitely not what the Worlds are usually about!

The Aussies hosted a party at JJ’s tonight for all the English-speaking pilots…$5 for a BBQ steak and all the fixings, and then we watched episode 16 of Heroes on the big screen. By the time we get back to Canada we’ll be all caught up!

Nicole

World Championships, Day 9

As predicted, today was very windy from the southeast. We’ve been told that when it’s SE it’s very rarely blown out here, but today seems to be the exception (it’s the Worlds after all :). We were all very surprised when we were told to be on launch by noon, since it looked pretty obvious that it was not taskable, and barely flyable. But we went up anyways...yep it was windy.

We waited all afternoon in the hopes that it would die off enough to allow for safe enough launching conditions off the east launch. A few wind dummies did indeed fly earlier on in the ridge lift, before it got too strong, and during the wait period Crigel flew too, although that seemed to be more a photo op than anything else. Most other people opted to not even open their glider bags in the 35-40 kph gusts. Finally the official word came at 3:30 pm that the day was cancelled, and we all breathed a sigh of relief that now we could go back down the mountain to some shade and a shower. But at least we weren’t rained on!

On a different note, both David and Lee Menzie have been absolutely fabulous towards us...last night they made us a huge dinner, and will be having another farewell party before we all leave. But it may only be a temporary farewell...they are making noises about coming to Canada next summer, to coincide with the PG Nats in Golden. They want to come out and visit, and help out with the meet!

Nicole

World Championships, Day 8

The day dawned cloudy with showers, so we weren’t optimistic about flying. At the team leader briefing we were told to reconvene at 12 noon, and by then it looked worse, so we were very surprised when we were told to meet on Mt. Borah for a 1:30pm meeting. Oh well, get the gliders ready and up the mountain we went, in time to see a nice rain cell form and start shooting lightening out of it, to the SW of Mt. Borah. That put an end to any ideas of having a task, and back down the mountain we went. Tomorrow is not looking good, but Wed/Thurs/Fri are all looking good, so we may yet end this meet on a positive note!

Nicole

Days Go By

It has been a while since my last confession. We have been doing everything but flying here it seems. So what that really means is we have been doing nothing. The weather is not on our side so there for we have had to take up other tasks. I have choosen eating, sleeping and internet. Yes, for all of you that know me well this is not working so well for me. Boredom and I have had a very much love hate relationship over the years and this last fortnight is testing it yet again. We have had 3 days here since the World's started and now we only have 3 left to go. The forecast dare i say looks good for the next few days but I will wait till they are here before I get my hopes up on some racing conditions. I still sit in the Top 50 overall so I am not going to shed a tear about it but I still wish we could test ourselves with some real flying rather than surfing every bit of lift we can find.

So until I have something more postive to say I have decided to say nothing at all.
K

World Championships, Day 7

We flew today! It was sunny and very hot (37 C), and not too much wind. Up on launch it was blowing up on several launches so I chose the west launch, even though people were launching off all launches. Once in the air it was an easy climb to cloudbase (2300 m) and we thought it was gonna be a fast race day. Boy, were we wrong!

The task was to Tamworth (57 km, via a couple of turnpoints); it being a weekend we had special permission to fly into Tamworth, provided we stayed out of the controlled airspace and to the east of the highway (there is a major airport in this town).

Once at cloudbase we had a 30 minute wait until the race started, and of course just as the start approached the lift died, and we were all scrambling for lift as the start came and went, meaning a lot of people had a late start. Had the start been 30 minutes earlier we would have had an easier time of it!

Anyways, after getting the start it was off to Manilla town for the 1st TP at the sports fields. In contrast to the abundant lift right over launch, once over the flats it was hell, with practically no lift and lots of pilots in your way. Our gaggle spent about 1 hour over the 1st TP at about 1000 m (and the ground is about 370 m), in 0’s mostly, with the occasional 0.5 m/s, followed by a –0.5 m/s. People were yelling at each other, turning all sorts of directions, and generally being very rude to each other in the game to get the most lift out of the “thermal” (I hesitate to even call it that, it was so random). There was at least 1 midair; I heard it and looked down to see the gliders separating, with one glider with a big cravatte (or broken lines, it was hard to tell), spiralling down until he threw his reserve. It opened OK and he landed in the sportsfields in a tree next to the river, and was apparently OK. The other person continued flying so I guess their glider was OK too.

After a midair you’d think people would smarten up, but no. The shit show continued until some sort of general consensus was agreed upon that this was about the best we were gonna get for this climb, and we went on glide (from about 1600 m). Another gaggle had been in front of us, in the low hills, and were having much the same problems as us, but just a few km away. We chose a line that was closer to the highway, but over the low hills, since it was obvious the flats weren’t working that well (they’re all green and still have standing water in them) and the hills were the only things with clouds over them (but even the clouds looked anemic, unless you were 100 km to the east, where they were going off).

The gaggle never really got small, and every little piece of lift was taken advantage of, so the going was slow. In this fashion we made our way to the next TP at the Attunga Mines. Up to now we had stayed in hill country in an attempt to stay high, but the Mine is out on the flats, so we had to venture out to tag it. By this time we had been flying for 4 hours and it was getting late, and it was obvious we weren’t going to make goal based on the fact we were flying so slow and the task ended at 6:30pm. We got as high as we could and made the dash to the Mine, tagged it, and tried to get back to the relative safety of the hills. No luck, and just about everybody (including me) dirted it about 1-2 km SE of the Mine. There must have been 50 people who landed in that general area during the afternoon!

In the end about 13 people made goal (and it took them over 3 hours to do it!), with 15 or so just short, and most people landed near the Mine. That is about the 40 km mark, and after 4 hours of flying (plus the 1 hour flying while waiting for the start), it meant 10 km/h. Pretty much the slowest XC I have done in a long time, and we are just bone-tired after that kind of day: both physically (we spent most the flight low, in the extreme heat, wearing way too many clothes) and mentally (keeping an eye out for potential midairs, calculating who was climbing better, what line to take on glides, etc.). So, since nobody from Teams Canada or USA made goal we are all going to have eat a package of Vegemite tomorrow morning (see Will’s blog for the explanation), as penance!

Nicole

High winds cancel the day

Today was cancelled due to high winds…it’s a beautiful sunny day and hot (36 C), but the winds on Mt. Borah are gusting to 40 kph, and to the SW it’s 50 kph. So no task today. While we were waiting for the official word on this, pilots amused themselves with a paper airplane contest. Best glide, time aloft, and accuracy. It was quite funny to see pilots lining up in the HQ with their creations, tossing them, and then retrimming them. Gin was the expert at this by retrimming his airplane often enough so that he was getting the most distance on most of his tosses. And he also won the accuracy contest by tossing his airplane directly into the lens of the video camera (the target) so he wins a free beer :)

Nicole

Were Flying

Yeah so today the storms finally stopped and we actually woke up to no clouds. The original thought was it might be windy but once arriving on launch it was the opposite. We had no idea which launch of the four to go to as it was really not blowing up any of them. Gadd and I sat on the east launch as the first start time went by with both of us behind a solid 20 or so other gliders before we could even get a chance to get into the air. After sitting for what seemed like ages we finally chucked ourselves into the abyss. In front of launch there was marginal to no lift at all. I promptly sunk out and landed at the bottom just in time to get a ride back up top as everyone climbed out. I was now behind the entire field of 145 pilots. It was time to get my ass in gear. I launched the West launch this time and climbed straight away up to almost base where I decided to head to the first turnpoint which we were told was a massive sink hole. It was. I was so far behind I had a great view of the field of pilots in front of me. We had a group climbing just before the turnpoint to the right and few to the left. I choose left and it worked. I was now with the pack. We went back in the direction of launch were we all got very low waiting for the lack of lift to become something useful. I finally climbed back to base and went on glide towards launch. I was now in the lead gaggle and charging hard. Just at the end of the ridge before turnpoint 2 Josh Cohn and I climbed to base and headed out to the flats where the turnpoint was located we timed it perfect and were now leading with me being first to tag the turnpoint. We tagged it and headed east over town to a small and I mean very small ridge hoping for a quick climb that would allow us to tag the final turnpoint and head to goal. We slowed down just enough that a few other pilots including Tom from the US to help us. We waited for another what seemed forever before we climbed back out. I turned left well Tom turned right and he got the climb and I missed it. I then waited longer turning in zero lift now giving up my lead to 5 pilots. I was still in the game so I hung in there. The next group was none other than PWC champ Chrigal and we quickly climbed up enough to tag the final point and head into the wind to Goal. Goal was right next to the Caravan park where were staying so very close to home. I believe I made goal in about 13th place. As I was packing up we watched many pilots in the gaggles after us dirting just short into the headwind. The speed section ends 1 km short of actual goal but if you do not make it across the physical goaline you get all your speed points taken away. So it should be a nice spread of points between those that made it and those that dirted. There are rumors of 35ish pilots in goal on a 60.7 km task. So I am headed to bed to prepare for tomorrow. We entertained ourselves with another episode of "Heroes" tonight to chill out. It has become a great tradition watching the laptops in our caravan. Well all for now.
Cheers
K

Sunshine!

Yesterday was another cancelled day (more downpours), but today dawned blue and sunny so we knew we’d be flying today! It looked like the winds were a bit high according to the clouds, but once on launch it was light and variable winds, which made picking a launch very difficult. The briefing was held on the west launch for a 60 km task, out to Tarpoly, back to the Chickensheds, over to Namoi Park, and finally to the Manilla East sportsfields. This time there were 3 start gates instead of individual elapsed time, or a mass race start, to allow for people to bombout and get back up in time for a relaunch (or multiple relaunches, like some people had to do!).

When the launch window opened (1:30 pm, kinda late for Borah) nobody was really launching since none of the launches were showing up-cycles. It was dead calm everywhere. The wind dummies had taken forever to get over launch and above, so nobody wanted to be in that, struggling with 150 other pilots (Lee, the co-owner of Rivergums, and not a pilot, said it was quite obvious that pilots were struggling to get up). People were laying out on the west, south, and east launches, and nothing was happening. Most people had congregated on the east launch, and apparently it was “officially a cluster” (according to Will) since people were laid out and not launching since the cycles weren’t reversible and they didn’t want to forward launch. The launch queuing system wasn’t in place on any launch (since no one launch was obviously better than another) so those of us with priority launching didn’t get to take advantage of it (and I was looking forward to that!). It was kinda annoying actually that after all the discussion about a proper queuing system, it wasn’t used. I was still on the top of the mountain and decided to head to the north launch with Bill since it looked to be blowing up over there and that launch was still pretty deserted.

Once over there Bill launched and promptly sunk out to the east bombout. He was retrieved (relaunches are OK); there were dozens of people bombing out all over the place. I heard one pilot say he was on relaunch #3!

Eventually the north launch sucked (no thermals out front, and then it started blowing over the back) and I got Dave to take me to the west launch where it was blowing in quite nicely. But nobody was getting up over on the west side, so when I launched I flew over to the south launch, past to the east launch, and over to the north launch! Over the north launch I found a nice thermal which was good, since I was really too low to make the east bombout at that point and I would have landed in the “short east bombout” instead. In fact the Borah Basher was down there getting bombed-out pilots all day.

By this time most pilots had launched (from the east, south, north, and west launches) and I was mostly by myself (a tactical mistake, I will admit). Had I been with other people the next job would have been much easier, but I had the sky to myself on the way to Tarpoly. Tagged that TP and the returning gaggle (who had already gotten it) passed beneath me, back to the ridge). But by the time I tagged the TP that particular thermal was gone and it was scratching on the ridge down into a paddock on the east side of the ridge (the easy-to-retrieve side of the ridge!). On the way down to my paddock I got to fly over some kangaroos who were dozing under some trees on the ridge, and scared them into hopping away from my shadow as I passed overhead.

A nice short hike to the nearby farmhouse (I got to see some amazing huge ant nests on the hike out, with the stinging type of ants, so no stopping for me!), where Dave was waiting for me, and then off to pick up Will, who had landed short of the 2nd TP at the Chickensheds. After that it was to the goal field to pick up Keith (who had made goal) and see the hoopla. Josh and Tom had also made goal from the USA team.

It was very scratchy around the last TP, and many pilots didn’t make the goal field, landing either a couple fields short, or just a few meters short! A lot of disappointed faces from those who landed 50-100 m short. It looked like not that many people in goal (compared to the 1st task) and lots of people were scattered throughout the course. As 6:30 pm rolled around (the task end time) we could see the last group trying to make the goal field, but they were too low and didn’t make it.

Even though I didn’t make goal I still had a nice flight. But it was very Brazil-like flying (blech), with very soft and gentle thermals, and if you left the thermal thinking there must be something better, you were wrong! It was definitely not typical Manilla flying! With all the rain from the previous days the fields are very soaked and greening up (the area got ¼ of their annual rainfall in the past 2-3 days), and the thermals just don’t have the punch they had a couple weeks ago. We are hoping the fields dry out soon so the thermals are more Manilla-like!

Tomorrow is a weekend day so the public crowds on launch should be quite large. It is predicted to be hot and sunny (36 C) for the next 2 days so it will probably be quite flyable (hopefully not windy, we haven’t had that yet). Now that both Keith and I have made goal at this comp, it’s Will’s turn tomorrow!

New photos at http://mclearn.ca/gallery/

Nicole