Buffallo2Wangaratta 12-12-2007

Wangaratta from up above

After a few short flights from Mytsic in Bright and Mt Buffallo, mainly landing at nearby places like Freeburg and Harritville, I headed up to Buffallo last Wednesday with Ray Kinder and his wife Trudy at about 10.30am, at that time the valley was starting to get overclouded, "bugger!" was the first thought that came into my mind as I bombed out a few weeks ago in similar conditions. We went up to launch where a light breeze was blowing nicely up the face, started setting up and by the time we were ready to go the sky looked better as those big clouds were dessipating into nice smaller cu's. So I launch at 12:20 and it took me about 20 minutes to get up to cloudbase which was slightly above 2500m ASL, so when I looked around then cu's were extending out to the flats, so I got on the radio with Ray "do you wanna have a cuppa at my place" and "bloody oath" he radioed back.So as it is the case with days like this (quoting what others say here), big lifts were associated with big areas of sink, I think at some points I was doing 3:1 glide in my Sting II, and I got real low at a couple of spots where I had the sneaky though of "where am I going to land now" coming to me, until I find the glorious finger picking me from my shoulders back to cloudbase. Three hours later I was getting close to Wangaratta with a higher cloudbase, the highest altitude I got to was 2680m ASL, which was right above my house, and I was always wondering why it gets quickly hot at where I am. I could see lake Mulwala from up above but being up in the air for 4 hours and Ray being in the paddock next to where I live had me deciding that I had enough, so I came in to land. Few minutes later I had that nut inside of me going again "what have I just done! I'll stay up longer and further next time, possibly to Yarrawonga". So we packed up, had lunch and a cup of coffee when Trudy turned up and we headed back to Bright where I had to bring my car back!

Airtime: 4hrs
Max Altitude: 2680m ASL
Flight Track 200km all up, 75km straight lines

Here is a link to some photos I took with my frozen hands!

Melbourne Cup Weekend

With the deep low pressure system that was hanging around Victoria for a few days last week, flying in the northeast was 2 days out. Some pilots from Belbourne had aerotows at the airstrip in Porpunkah when the rain stopped but apart from that no one else had a flight. Monday the 5th the sky was pretty with more blue than grey, the forecast was for SE winds picking up during the day. So I packed up and headed towards The Pines ridge near Everton as its the only ridge that faces SE up here. For a start there were only Ray, Katrina and myself before a crowd of both hangies and paras started to turn up. By 11 o'clock the hill was crouded with no significant breeze up the face except from frequent wind cycles, so most of us decided to wait for better launch conditions.

Oli was first to launch at 11.30am followed by Stuie and a couple of other hangies and they slowly started to climb with a couple of paras, it didn't look very flash. However, they did pick the best part of the day as sky overclouding had most of thermic activity shut and soon bomb-outs started to happen one after the other.

Next day, Tuesday the 6th looked better for Mt Buffalo, so I headed up with Ray, Katrina, Murray, and Paddy and it looked a bit breezy but launchable on the ramp, with some cross wind blows but it doesn't take too long for the breeze to straighten up. By 11.30am I was ready to go first, just before I left the edge of the ramp I had the feeling of a solid positive bar pressure, followed by a 700fpm thermal just in front of launch. I took into that thermal and in less than a minute I was well above launch height.

Because of the SE wind thermals were drifting over the top of Buffalo, so I thought I'd head to hot-rocks and see if I might get better lift. I was surprised by the fact that hot-rocks wasn't working quite well and I only had few bubbles enough to extend my flight and when I realized I better get back to where I was cutting accross the middle I got drilled with hardly having enough altitude to make it to Burse. Those who launched after worked the thermal infront of launch upto cloudbase and didn't bother trying hot-rocks. There must be a sacrificial lamb for every flying day.


Start of launch run - Mt Buffalo Ramp





Airborne

Mystic 27/10/2007

I'm sitting here on Melbourne Cup Weekend where the crew from Airborne is up in Bright for the demo show, we haven't had the favorable conditions so no one is flying today or even the next couple of days. So I am posting about my last flight from Mystic in Bright.




The sky looked filled up with cu's and by the time I finished setting up my glider clouds seemed to be closing together, so I jumped into the harness and took off at about 12:30pm. 10 minutes later I was at bomb out, what a bugger.

Flying above Mystic's launch, my car is the red one. Beside there's also a group of mountain motor cyclist who popped around to have a look

An overdevelopment looked definite with a thunder head right above me as I was packing my glider at the landing paddock, I though tomyself I haven't had my fix for the day. So by the time I tied my glider onto my car, I thought I'll go into town grab a drink and a pie and see how it looks. So after that the storm looked to be drifting to the south east away from Bright and I thought I'll go up the hill again I might get another flight.

Maximum height for the day

Paragliding tandem operators were there too, sothat was a good sign, its working! It looked though the same senario with the sky fliied up with closing in cu's, so it was a hit and miss for me. I launched at about 4:00pm, it took me a bit of work to get right lift, but once I was up high enough I was working to stay away from the clouds, with extra smooth thermic conditions I enjoyed boating around for at least an hour before another OD was due, then I thought lets go to land.

Cruising above Bright

So writing about flying is not a bad thing indeed when the day is not good for flying, and when you don't want to just sit and think about flying.