Every once in a while

Every once in a while, when you fly your paraglider around in the sky, you get up high, way above the ground, and you look around you, and you think "I want to go there". And you point your toes in that direction and off you go.

And when you pick a place to go, it is usually more than just somewhere you want to be, it's usually is a spot where you think a nice big fat juicy thermal will be kicking off, which will then take you back up into the blue...

Today was just like that - I went where I wanted to go, and when I got there, there was a nice, big fat and friendly thermal waiting to take me back up into the sky... And it was like that from Noon on.

After 4pm I was getting tired, so I went to land, and the landing zone had a nice, big fat juicy thermal right over it so I took one last ride up until I was high enough to do a couple of tail slides... which is a interesting way to loose altitude (you actually fly backwards), and land sooner rather than later.

When I think that my entire flying kit takes up just one car seat of space, it blows my mind... this little bundle of gear is the coolest gizmo that can harness one of natures ultimate Free Rides...

Today's Flight is here.

Not Again!?

Not another day flying into clouds!... How much more can one take!

At least tomorrow will be windy, and we can stay home and play computer games...

and drink beer.

Euro Style

Fly with cloud, good - make easy lifting and fun.

Launch position forward as not as good fun making...  but repeatable often making easy....

Yah, ok.

Flying Faster just got Easier...

I have been thinking about how to fly faster - just mashing the bar and flying the course line doesn't seem to work, except on the most perfect of days.

At the risk of giving away my IQ, I have noticed that the winner of a comp always has the fastest average speed... that thought started the heavy metal cogs in my mind turning, and another Eureka moment happened - if I spend more time flying towards goal, I'll get there faster! Which means I need to use only the strongest thermals to climb, and the time I saved climbing can be used to get to goal sooner....

As the cogs turned faster and faster, formulas started appearing in my head - math symbols I've never seen before but now made perfect sense - Auto-Regressive Integral Moving-Averages and the like, and through these I visualized how polar curves, fluid dynamics, Reynolds numbers, you name it, it all became as natural as pulling the wing up in a perfectly smooth breeze...

By now all the obvious tips were miles back, way before the whirring stream of equations, stuff like be high and upwind at the start, know when to stop racing and start flying like it was an XC, using the power of the gaggle, etc, and then it changed. The math stopped. Sentences started appearing, like: "Good Decisions and a little gambling can put a LTF 2 across the line first..." and "Pimping isn't glorious but can get you on the Team..." stuff like that.

Humm... the math seemed easy, translating straight into flying faster, but these one liners had a bit of irony in them, they suggested there were subjective psychological components to flying fast as well... Things like "Good decisions are proportional to your awareness and level of relaxation", and "Sheer determination is unquantifiable and extremely powerful...". I was starting to question the sanity of the mysterious insights...

And then the last sentence appeared: "At the end of the day, what really matters is that you learned something new, made a few new friends, had a good time and are able to fly off the hill tomorrow..."

Wow, what a strange trip it's been...

Mystic Cup Task 6

The weekend has ended - and we got 2 tasks in for the Mystic Cup.  Today's conditions were more challenging - stronger SE winds aloft made us think a little harder out on course.  We were getting tired of the same cats cradle tasks we do so often, so the task committee decided to use  a few new turnpoints and do something different...

The sky was absolutely gorgeous - big cumulus cloud showing were the lift was and where it wasn't.  The SE winds made launching tricky, but once off the hill, the climb out was straight up at 4 meters/second right to base... couldn't ask for more...

The western most turnpoint at the Deer farm was in the blue, and I watched several wings speeding downwind over the valley, but I figured it would be best to get really high before going in there, so I slowed down and then noticed there were clouds on the buffalo side of the valley, and also one Fred Gungl, so I took that line in and out of the Deer Farm turnpoint.  It seemed to work.

The Burrs decked a good percentage of the field, which is not unusual even on a normal day...  We thought the valley wind down low would draw up valley as usual, but I never got low enough to find out... 

The final glide from Porepunkah Airstrip to goal at the main LZ(ed) took about 15 minutes on full bar as it was almost straight into the wind.  They say the hardest part should be last, but a high base really helped...

Check out the Mystic Cup online, and have a look at Geoff Wong's web-based competition scoring software while you are at it.

Stay Tuned...

Fires and Honking Things

Big Fires are burning in the state of Victoria - we have our eye on the Beechworth fire, which is now burning 15km from our house.

This wild Koala survived a fire but must have been in shock, as you don't normally walk up to a Koala and offer it a drink of water...

 Luckily the wind has been blowing from the south for the last week, so the fire isn't moving our way very fast.  Having a south wind for a whole week is unusual - it will switch back to north soon and with a north wind comes high temps, and when we see that in the forecast, we may think about evacuating.

Speaking of wildlife, the other evening I was walking on a track in the forest and heard something moving in the bush, when out out pops a deer, a very large deer.  Australian deer are big, more like the size of a north American Elk, and they are very dark brown, and this one had a large rack of horns.  He bounded across the road and up into the deeper bush.

A while later, as I was deep in thought walking through the forest in the dimming light, out of the blue an extremely loud noise startled me, badly enough that I almost made a Chockie Bickie in my pants.  Then I saw another deer running away from me...

One curious thing about the Australian deer, when they get frightened they make a very loud noise - it's an unusual noise, and it is the last sound you would expect to hear in the middle of a forest.  It's sort of a piercing honk, like the blast of an air-horn from a huge truck, but it could also be described to sound like a seal's bark, but on steroids.

The smoke and south wind have pretty much shut down flying at Mystic for now.

Hasta Pronto.

Task 3 & 4 Mystic Cup

Last weekend we flew 2 more tasks for the Mystic Cup.  It's been super hot, over 100F, for about a week now, but despite that, the flying has been pretty good.  Sat was fairly stable, small slow cores, and hard down low, but easier if you could stay above 2000 meters and over the peaks.  A few clouds popped and gave up superb climbs with base appearing to be around 4000 meters.  Saturdays task was OLC style, and this meant long hours in the air if you wanted a big score.  A few went over 100km in triangle attempts, but the boaty PM conditions never really happened and this made getting home tough.

Sunday was much better - the day started earlier and the climbs were clean and fast over the short task of ~40 km.  The final race to goal at the main LZ was fun - Brian and Heike on a tandem managed to take the lead and Jeff Wong and I went pulley to pulley starting from clearspot and thru Porepunkah bridge TP, and then to the LZ.  

Brian/Heike had a good lead and we couldn't catch them.  I caught Jeff and passed him just before goal.  Brian/Heike crossed first but my leading points compensated for that and I won the day by 3 points.

The cloud over clearspot was sucking massive air into it, and growing rapidly as we left for the last TP.  By the time we landed, the sky was starting to look spooky - cloud was forming everywhere, and 2 small lenticulars formed high above us.  The big CU over the range dropped rain and was flushing wind down valley, that wind was colliding with the up valley wind around Bright and the resulting convergence was powering the rapid cloud development.

Over the LZ, we had to work hard to get down the last 500 meters, and there were twitchy landings.  The task was stopped shortly after.  Big storms Sunday night, lots of lightning and a good rain.  

The Mystic Cup is such a great way to hone your racing skills, and learn how to fly fast - I am perplexed as to why more of the talented local pilots don't play the game.... 

The pic is of me, taken near Corryong, Photo by Hamish Barker.

Ci vediamo!