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!