News.com.au has some potentially good news for us flying folk:
A $30 million, four-year project to create Australia’s biggest weather computer is underway.
The new supercomputing system, being built for the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and Australian National University (ANU), will make weather predictions more accurate.
The BOM machine will have the capacity to make about 1.5 trillion complex weather calculations a second as it crunches through weather data from around the country.
Terry sent in this clipping from the Forbes Advocate after our activities at the airport the other week:
Wow what a weekend we were just treated to. Dave writes in to tell us all about it:
The pilots who rocked up: Andrew, Barnesy, Dave, Geoff, Guy, Len, Nathan, Peter Dall, Peter Leach, Roger, Stuie and Nic, Trent and of course Steve.
We were faced with a blue inverted sky with SW wind of about 15 km/h. We set a task of Forbes, Narromine, Gilgandra, and once in the air we were greeted with a base of about 4,500ft asl and knew it would be tough. With the low base, one mistake would find yourself on the deck. After a bit of a start that’s exactly what happened to a few of us. Geoff got a great 100km flight in working well with Trent. But Trent, determined to make up for lost air time due to his little touch up at the Forbes comp, pulled out all his tricks and made goal (200km). Nice work mate!! But I was looking forward to having a beer with Terry and your epic retrieve put a stop to that.
Sunday’s sky was looking fantastic. We considered going tail wind flying back our way to Lake George and beyond but retrieve logistics didn’t suit so we decided on a challenging triangle. 160km – Forbes, Grenfell, Eugowra, Forbes.
The air on tow was exciting but thanks to Steve’s skill, doing his best to sedate the ride, we all got up. It was a great scenic task with views over different National Parks on each leg. Great lift and high cloud base contributed to an amazing flight with four of us making it around. So as usual, heaps of airtime, heaps of kilometres flown and a truck load of fun was had by all.
It was good to see the turn up of pilots growing. Stuie and Nic came down from Newcastle in the Fun 220 to set a tandem record. Better luck next time.
Nice work Andrew L for pumping out another 50km.
It was great to see Lenny join us in the last leg of the triangle after 14 months off, flying like he had never had a break at all.
Thanks Terry and Trish for having us stay at Munjal. Thanks Nat for your driving. AND thanks Steve for your time and tugmaster skills.
Dave
Ed and Liz have thrown together some nice little videos from the last few weeks of flying and Forbes and Pig.
Another awesome weekend at Forbes. Steve McCarthy writes:
Hi Flyers
Turn up this week end was not high due to a poor forecast, however we still managed to launch at 4pm on Sat day with most flyers landing around Young and one managing to get to the goal paddock at Lake George (well done Attila). Dave May is improving out of site and is now one of the best pilots in the world on tow and off tow is putting in consistant, impressive flights in average conditions. Sunday saw Peter Leach towing in his new glider and Rodger Lynch completed his aerotow endorsement. A bit of air to air photography was done using the Dragon Fly as the camera platform, and the very brave Liz as the photographer. Thanks Liz. I dropped Mark a long way up wind in his Sonic to give him plenty of thermal time and still allow a landing back at the field but it didn’t quite work out as planed. Sorry Mark, hope we have better conditions so you can have a better flight next time.
Shorter goal tasks were set for Sunday to allow pilots to get home at a reasonable time with most setting goals in the home direction.
Thank you Bill and Brendon for your assistance over the weekend and thank you to the flyers who showed up despite the less than ideal forecast. Thankyou Pete and Dave for putting up the crew in Canberra on Sat. night.
Finally a HUGE THANKYOU to the partners who put up with the heat, all the hanger talk, dust storm Brendon, drove car shuffles and retrieved smelly pilots for us.
Next Forbes Aerotow will be Sat. Sun. 21st 22nd
Regards, Steve.
This is a great tool for tracking aircraft movements in and out of your favorite flying spot. It is designed to track aircraft noise but includes lots of information that it great for our curious little minds.
The Canberra guys are heading into the comp season with a lot of momentum. We usually hit the Canungra Classic fairly cold because our XC season has not yet when October rolls around. This year has been very different. More on this later.
After the sucess of the last weekend out at Forbes we headed out again with great expectations. We were not disappointed.
Saturday
A task is set. Forbes Airport > Intersection of West Wylong to Forbes road > “Munjal”. 122km.
Vitals: 7700ft base, 1000fpm climbs, big streets and no wind.
An awesome day. I make it in, Nath, Dave and Andrew get very close. All 100+km.
Sunday
A carbon copy of the day before. We head for Cowra the back to Munjal.
The first 50km were easy. Things got tough past Gooloogong. Corwa was covered in a blue hole. We had to take a turn point right in the middle. The next 35km were though. Dave and I flew together the whole way. Climbs were stopping below 3 grand. Paitence get us to Cowra where we both land at the airport.
Forbes looks a little different to when our international friends see it in summer. These conditions are great practice for Canungra.
A huge thanks to Steve once again! The tugmaster’s master! We are forever indebted to you.
Binalong was going off on Tuesday. It was great to finally get away from the very exciting site. It was only a little pop over the back to Boorowa but it was a very enjoyable flight. Thanks heaps for the Retrieve Dave.
… Well, the RiotACT – But that’s mainstream for us!
I have been a long time reader of the The RiotACT, Canberra’s self proclaimed and much loved soap box. I was surprised to discover that, johnboy (forum admin), had embedded one of my videos in their site. Too cool!
To have our sport acknowledged by the non-flying community is awesome even if the soundtrack does cop a bit of flack from the masses (oopsie).
Article here:
Leonardo at www.paraglidingforum.com :: Latest flights