Thermal Soaring

Takeoff Site Name: Mount Ben Nevis 140km West of Melbourne
Date: 17-12-2006
Conditions: Light westerly to north westerly 2-5 knots, gusting at about 8 knots.

After a fortnight of imprisonment on the ground due to the bush fires going around in the northeast, with smoke haze and the high level of alert amongst the fire brigades, which eventually blocked the possibility of any flight, last Sunday came as a big relief where the sun was heating up granite rocks faces along the ridge face cooking up big thermals (and big sinks!), in which some of them I was climbing at a rate of 600fpm, it was the first time I heard my variometer screaming that loud!
Steve Normand and Glenn Batchelor took the chance of the strong thermals and went on a cross country flight to the flight park at Dynamic Flight, where I hung on to the top of the ridge enjoying the view over the valley and Colliers Gap and sneaking up on birds.


Getting into the harness after doing the preflight


Waiting for the thermic cycle to come through to launch


Chasing a thermic buble off the rock face. Glenn in the background getting ready to launch


Soaring within the thermal


Big air, started to get a bit bumpy as thermals went stronger


Top of the World


Keep on working the thermal till the end


Aerobatic Bank


Considering Landing


Target Fixed


Final Approach


Flawless Flare


Ecstatic!!

Spion Endorsement

Airborne

At about 1 pm the sea breeze started to pick up making ideal conditions for flying Spion, heights achieved were in the range of 500-1200 feet with possibility of extended coastal flight. The tide was at it's high 5 pm that limits landable space on the beach, however, it was exhilirating to fly one of Victoria's most popular coastal sites.


Moments before take-off, traditionally nervous!!


500' above launch, and still climbing


Heading towards Bells Beach


Flying with the rest of the gaggle


Inland view


Crabbed Landing

Flying The Sunset When Its Too Cold

Drove my car for 3.5 hours, I found Rohan preparing for tandem flights for a group of people comming down from Melbourne. I gave him a hand in setting up, watched each one of those thrill seekers as they get nervous when they get close to take off and how happy they get when they get back to the ground.
The sun was going down and the weather was getting colder. Though that didn't deter me from actually setting my own gear up and go for a sleddy. I got well dressed up and here we go!

Flying the sunset. Freezingly cold!





Too cold to fly. Can't even push the button.

Flying Is A Great Commitment

Driving on the way up to Mount Ben Nevis


Heard a couple of thunder rumbles in the clouds, we decided to pack up and head back. There is always another day to fly.


On the way down to get my car out, not really in my best!

As its the case with all aero sports, and furthermore because hang gliding is highly dependant on the weather conditions; I couldn't find it easy at all to start putting hours under my belt. I had a really slow disappointing progress, driving for hours for the sake of a quick sled ride without being able to stay up in the air, or its too gusty for a safe launch, in addition to the fact hang gliding is financially consuming especially when I first had to set up, but still the cheapest of all aviational sports (needless to mention the fun).
I heard one of my mates once saying to me "When do you know that you are such a hang gliding nut, when you drive to launch site for hours hoping that the forecast you heard last night is wrong.". And the same voice comes back to you when you get there "Its better to be on the ground and wish you were in the air than to be in the air and wishing you were on the ground".
Sometimes I think of why should I put up with all this, I am fed up with carrying my geer, driving hundreds of miles, setting up, find crappy conditions, then pack up and go back, but one flight after all this in perfect conditions ended by glorious landing is all what it takes to wipe all that off.


Floating over trawalla, Beaufort in the background.


A little bumpy out there, crunching on the basetube while taking the photo.

Dream Comes True!

Hooking up the tow bridle for the first high altitude flight

Picking up the glider in preparation for the high altitude tow

Sunrise takeoff


The Idea of flying came back to me with full strength this time, and with a nagging desire of putting every other plan on the shelf but hang gliding. I looked up on the internet and there was a school called "Dynamic Flight" in Victoria run by one of the most known figures in hang gliding; Rohan Holtkamp. I rang up and booked myself in the nine day restricted licence course. They sent me a text book for home reading about aerodynamics and I was reading it just addictively.

Time has come and I am heading south to Trawalla, I caught up a strong flue on the way down, but never mind the first two days in the course were mainly theory nudging with minimal physical effort. The third day on the course was for the training hill runs and that was just too much fun to be described in here. I was first to have a go, got into the harness, hang checked, "Happy Pilots Bring Cash", and ran into the A-frame; at the time I was running the wind picked up a bit and it sort of gave the wing more airspeed which eventually caused the glider to zoom upwards and lift off from the ground about 10 feet. I just couldn't believe this magic force that was grabbing me from my back and lifting me up that high, it was so powerful and so smooth at the same time. I was so blown away by the fact that I am flying and I even couldn't hear what Rohan was saying to me "Pull the bar in" which I didn't, I stalled the glider and crashed into the ground. Rohan said "Pull the bar in next time". Next few runs down the hill were actually better in terms of the control that I had over the glider, eventhough I didn't get as much hight as the first time.

The next day we went in turn on a 2000 feet tandem trike flight with Rohan to adapt with the arial cue and excersise a real time control when Rohan gave us some authority to handle the controls and to find out if we are ready for the solo flight.

Day five has come and thats the day for the high altitude ground tow, in which the glider gets towed by a car that has a tension meter, and students will be able to go up as high as 1800 feet above the ground in a solo flight. Rohan recons that the smoothest flights will be attainable in the early morning just at the sunrise, of course before the sun heats the ground and thermals start kicking up. I had to see a couple of students crashing before I had to go so I was having big rush of contradicting emotional messages through me, my mind was racing and I just had to try it myself to give a proper assessment for the situation, whether I am in or not. So its my turn now, Rohan was talking to Nic over the radio beside my ear, "wind is 3-5 knots, wings are level, bridle is free and clear", waiting for me to node my head "and ready to GO GO GO", I took a few steps running as the tow rope pulled me in, and I was airborne. 100 feet, 200 feet,.., 600 feet and Rohan was saying "you can breath now if you like", 900 feet and he said "keep an eye on the tow vehicle, and you can swallow now if you want by the way", these sort of messages contributed greatly to my comfort as I was clueless about my destiny. 1500 feet and I got locked out in the tow without being able to recover, it scared the hell out of me because it was something we were not told how to respond to. I thought to myself that I am in a deep shit by the sound of the situation, and I am way out of my usual safety envelope, until I heard an astonishingly calm voice on the radio going into the repetitions of "Release, Mohammad, Release, Release, Release, Mohammad, Release" which I acted to accordingly by reaching out to the tow realese and pulling it out, and due to the fair amount of tension I had on the overall system and the locked out bank angle I had on the glider, I went through the first aerobatic show on my first high altitude flight, as the glider went into a wingover, the a big stall followed by a severe dive and PIO's "pilot induced occilations", after which I lost every ground reference of where the directions are and where the hell am I, I had the death grip on the uprights and sooner I started hearing from Rohan again saying "relax your grip and pull the bar in a little bit" and "we are just about 30 degrees to your left", these messages are so simple but at the same time quite prescious and vital when you're just reacting subconsciously and automaticaly. I started unfolding the enjoyable part of my flight as I was slowly descending to the ground and I had to try the 360 and the S turns as well, after that I had to setup for landing which Rohan instructed me how to do especially the keeping high airspeed part of it, and all I had to do was to aim the glider into the direction Rohan was indicating (which we had to find out on our own shortly after that). I had the glider perfectly lined up with the runway even though I had to land on my belly. Now ground consciousness came back to me and a big grin made its way on my face, those ten minutes felt like one or two minutes only, and there were such a new person born inside of me who is flight hungry flat out and cannot stand staying on the ground for long anymore. Everyone else's feeling was pretty much the same as they lost their flight virginity. Take-offs, Flying, and landings were getting better and better during the day, and I even managed to get close to spot landings within 2 metres, that was until the wind became so gusty and flights were so punchy and bumpy, Rohan then called it off. We were left with a huge amount of words to talk and describe our life changing experiences, that all came up when we went for dinner celebrating our first flight in Ballarat.
By day nine I had my Restricted Pilot Licence and I headed back home with so much to think about, and with a changed way of thinking as well. I started taking interest in things I didn't care about before, like wind direction, strength, the way tree leaves are rustling, cloud types and so. And like always, we don't get what we want straight off, and hang gliding was not an exception to this rule, as I got fairly busy and I could hardly find some time like once in a month to go back to my school and fly with whoever is there, just to keep up with my beloved sport and not get thrashed out.
Dedication and strong commitment are what I needed to get to where I am now and where I am going to be in the future. You have to crawl before you can walk and run and I am just fine if I had to crawl for a while. I finally managed to set myself up with a suitable four-wheel drive car, a hang glider, and a harness. So pretty much I got mostly geared up and ready to soar.

My Flight Dream

As a 6-9 year old kid, I had always been looking to possessing a supernatural power and use it for the good of the world. Mainly that power would be in the form of being able to take big jumps effortlessly and kick ass those who are evil. I also had dreams of flying in a prone position, or typically in a superman style with hands forward, I wasn't keen on flying a big iceburg but the idea of leaving the ground and watching the neighbourhood get smaller and smaller was tremendously exhilarating. I was also attracted to those kids TV cartoons that included flight actions within (which they mostly did). However, that developped into a bad habbit of hunting down birds either with a pump-action shotgun or with a trap cage, prooving my superiority over the bird's world and at the same time feeding my curiosity by having a closer look at birds' aerodynamic bodies. So that counts as my first invasion of birds' privacy.

Later on when I turned 10, I took up cycling as a main aero-ground activity, I mean not just for the ability of traveling fast but also for the feel of the wind in my face and the sound it makes in my ears as I go quicker down the hill. I took my little sister on a tandem ride once where I lost control over the bike and and we both fell over with her breaking her front teeth, shame on me!! I do feel guilty about it but that was my the first and last tandem passenger I took with me uptil now and I hope I can make a better example of a tandem pilot later on. I had to find out other ways of getting real airborn on that stupid pusher bike, so I drifted to cycling on dirt humps, ramps, ditches and banks, pulling on as much speed as possible to make that hell of a big jump which was a few moments of airtime, I wished if that could last a bit longer but it just made my dream of flying become more and more intense with time.

I also started dreaming when I am asleep of flying like a cricket and landing on top of power poles, buildings, or doing a whole mounting in one go; these type of dreams where exceptionally appealing to me and had their own unique taste, which is not different than the taste of a real flight.

I had to put cycling down on hold for a fair while but nevertheless the dream of flying never stopped chasing me, whether in my sleeping dreams, or when I am left baffled by a passing aircraft up high in the sky, or even by birds sometimes when they stop flapping their wings and just glide through the air. I still do get the same bafflement up till this very moment, I can't help it.

In fact I don't care if I'm the only one walking in a crowd and stupidly looking upwards at a passing aircraft or a big puffy cloud pointing a strong thermal lift underneath it, I just can't help not looking at all.

And how do I know that I am such a hopeless flying nut? When you see me arguing at airport check-in points and insisting on having the window seat, sticking my head right through the window during take off and landing, or even during the flight; ofcoarse thinking why don't we have the same view as the pilots' do have at the front, "lucky bastards!"

I also remember once that I saw a helicopter takeoff about a 100 metres away from me and it occupied my thoughts for a fair while, I'd be talking weeks.

The flight dream got a bit distorted when I became a teenager, generally its a period of no particular interest except those commonalities between a bunsh of crazy teenagers. Nevertheless, I had proven to so many people my willingness to go to the extreme seeking thrill even if that meant that I am taking too much risk; which is that I enjoyed somehow. And thats the real me. I feel that I am enjoying life when I am bidding on it, the feeling that you have just passed a life threatening challenge gave that bit of ecstatic feeling that makes my mind racing and my head becoming all over the place. Oh I forgot to say what was it, it was car driving, but in my own twisted way. I even managed to get the car on two wheels for a second once.

Well these things do give me a satisfying answer as to what made me come out as a pilot from a whole heap of a pilot wannabes crowd. Its us who cast our own lives, and there is a rule of attraction that affects our lives. I believe that if we keep thinking on something we are charging our personal atmosphere to attract those incidents that coincide with our aspirations. Some people fall into a habbit of calling these occurences as coincidences, I call them spot on. How many times we thought of an old friend that we haven't seen for so long and it happens at that time they give us a call or send us a message. Even when we are walk down the road we seem to drift towards the side we look at. Its target fixiation. Amazing.

I've heard about a statistic once been conducted among school kids aged from 5-9, it turned out that more than two thirds wanted to become doctors, nurses, lawyers and etc. The balance went for those who wanted to step into aviation. At that stage I had the dream of becoming a jet fighter pilot, flying over my home town and filling the sky with my engines rumbling sound.

Life had to go through its turns and bends with me, some were tight others were broad, my love for flight has never slowed down. I might have drifted away from flying a fair few times but that did not wipe off the triggers I had, the sight of an aircraft, a soaring bird and things like that would get me greatly absorbed in.

That was pretty much the case until I met with a Norwegian bloke who spotted my enthusiasm about flying and he told me about his brother who flies hang gliders, and that was the moment that I was greatly mesmerized, and I asked myself a few questions like "its gotta be a damn coll thing those people do" and "how possibly could someone fly without an engine, how far could they get". Due to prevailing circumstances at that time I wasn't able to put my dream into action straight off but nevertheless I never exempted the idea of doing it one day.

First Blog

It is exactly 9:00PM Wednesday the 11th of October 2006, and I see myself writing my FIRST BLOG online (a few months back I didn't know what the hell that means). The main reason behind this is a nagging desire arising from the need to have a record of my personal achievements and what needs to be done in the future, it helps in doing a proper self assessment kind of thing when we don't really have much time to do that. So here we go.

I liked the years 2005 and 2006 so much that I was able to get done with most of my dreams, including childhood ones. And thats why I find myself having to write this down.