The lads had a ball out at Binos yesterday. Andrew lets us know what we missed.

Who said winter was the time of year to pack up your gliders until the warmer weather returns?  Dave, Steve, Nic, Ed and myself headed out to Binalong on Sunday to tear it up and enjoy all that winter has to offer.

We arrived at launch at around 11am and were greeted with a nice and steady WSW breeze blowing straight up the face at around 25km/h and a balmy 9 degrees (top temp at Temora was only 11!).  We all set up pretty quickly and Dave was the first to launch and only seconds after taking off he was climbing in a winter thermal and anyone within the local vicinity would have been able to hear his voice as he yelped out some choice words to explain his excitement to Wilson.

A minute later I ran off the hill followed soon after by Nic and then Steve.  The four of us ridge soared and turned in small climbs that came and went.  Steve was loving and it and deservedly so after a 3 hour drive from home just to grab a fly – Top effort.  It never seises to amaze me the level of Steve’s enthusiasm and commitment to the sport and it is always a pleasure to fly with him.

After about 40 minutes in the air I saw Dave out to the west of the ridge heading head wind away from the ridge steadily climbing in an awesome lift line.  I pulled on some speed and headed there arriving at about ridge height.  Slowly I started to lift and followed Dave out climbing at around 200ft/min.  The lift line was wide and after a while I noticed Dave get lower on the horizon so I figured that he was reaching the end of the lift band so I turned and circled in the lift I was in.  Dave turned back and we both eventually climbed up to base which was around 4100ft asl.  Dave went on glide over the back while I chose to stay at the bottom of the cloud circling in zeros while watching Dave’s progress.  His glide at first seemed crazy as he didn’t seem to loose much height but once he was a few km over the back and just before reaching another cloud he was drilled with sink and landed just over 8km from the ridge. In the mean time, I had gone on glide and taken a line 2km or so to the north of Dave’s line.  I received a pretty good glide not really hitting any sink and simply gliding at min sink the whole way.  Once I was near where Dave had landed I turned right and flew cross wind to join Dave as I figured I had not found a single bit of lift after leaving our climb from the ridge and the sky ahead was blue so my chances of finding lift were as good no matter where I headed being only 500ft above the deck.  I landed with Dave and was pretty stoked to have reached cloud base and flow XC in winter.  Although the XC was small the practise flying in weak conditions should serve me well come summer when I will hopefully be able to seek out better climbs and fly better than last year all the while improving my skill.

Nic came to pick the two of us up and took us back to launch to collect cars where we found Steve still tearing up the ridge nearly 3 hours after taking off.  Ed was in the air now too after arriving later in the day to grab some winter air. A big thanks to Nic for the retrieve.

All in all a great day out and certainly goes to show that there are small XC flights to be had in an around Canberra in the middle of winter, so if you have a hang glider tucked away in your garage waiting for the warmer months to arrive harden up, get out there and fly

Thief

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