Sunday Aug 17 saw Dave, JP and myself out at Binoes for a fly.  As always when we arrived it was on, although this time a little on the light side of things.  Once all three of us were set up and all the usual badgering had taken place we were ready to go.  JP took off first and climbed quite well for the first few minutes before loosing luck and bailing out.  As JP went into land at the bombout Dave and I were still standing on launch watching him come in for what was a pretty funny landing.  The bombout was full of cows and as he got closer to the ground the cows ran off in a stampede all of which JP caught on film as he approached which can be found here along with a number of other vids that he has loaded up onto youtube.

I was next to take off and found a nice little thermal to the NW side of the range and managed to climb up a few hundred feet above launch, which was short lived as I then came down to ridge height just as quick!  Dave then took off and found some good lift and got on the radio and told me to get under him.  Once I was under Dave (not in an Anoos sense) I managed to climb up again but not nearly as high as Dave did.  The next 15 minutes or so comprised of climbing up in little thermals and scratching along the ridge.  At one point I got a third of the way below the hill and started to bail out to the bombout even telling Dave over the radio that I was gone.  Straight after my turn towards the bombout I hit a bit of turbulence and then the vario started beeping slightly.  So I slowed the glider up as slow as I could and put her into a gentle turn and made about 3 full turns in constant lift and saw myself back up just above hill height.  I was pretty stoked as normally I would have been on the deck.  Another 5 min went by and I managed to stay just above the hill when I saw dave starting to circle and going up just above launch.  I flew out under him and too started to climb.  I got up pretty well in this thermal which felt stronger and wider than the others had been.  With each turn I made I drifted further SE along the ridge and slightly over the back.  Dave meanwhile was a good few hundred feet above me and had decided to go on glide over Binalong.  It was cool to see him off on glide as it didn’t take long for him to disappear (at which point I will point out that that those topless glider really do glide amazingly well)!  I soon lost the thermal and was once again going down.  I decided at this point to try something different.  Instead of going back to the ridge I flew out over the bombout hoping to score a thermal.  My move nearly worked but I was too low.  Just as I made it back over the bomout I saw that the trees below were moving around so there was obviously a gust of wind or a thermal going up.  My vario started to beep momentarily and I managed a few turns maintaining zeros at which point I was now down wind of the bomout and needed to bail to make it home.  Once I landed JP and I packed up and headed just over 10km down the road to pick up Dave.

On the way home we went past Spring bombout to collect Dave’s car and JP and I decided to hit up spring for another 30 minute frolic on what you could call a nice ‘glass off’ of an afternoon.  All in all a top 10 degree winters flying day!!!

Happy Flying – Andrew >:-)