Nice work Nic

Splint put us on to this interview with Scott after returning from France.

Andrew writes:

Wednesday mid morning I get a call from John asking me if I would like to join him on Saturday for a flight from the lake to Tumut in his trike.  Without even having to think about it I say ‘for sure’.  The offer even extended to crashing the night at John’s place which included a game of pool and some home brew!

Happy flying – Andrew

Holly crap!!!

Nice flying Scott! He was excited about the new sail cut on the C4 – Now I can see why!

Results here

A short video of Scott lanuching here

First from the NSW State titles in Manilla…

Then photos from Chop’s triumphant return to Canberra

See all Ed’s photos here.

Looks like our Philippines correspondent, Chop, will be in the air after all…

Hey Guys,

When there’s no launch in the jungle you just employ a few locals and away you go! Took them about 2 hours and cost 600 Pesos to clear an area to launch  (about AU$7.50) and they carried our paragliders out for us! Phil Robbo could use a few of these guys at Spring. Simon arrived last night and we have already had few local beers.

Cheers,

Chop

Email to Armand/Davis:

Thanks heaps for the weekend and all the time you have put into getting us all in the air over the past few months. Really appreciated mate.

Saturday, as you know, was great. A tail wind run to Condobolin. Most of the crew landed at town with Grant, Tove and myself stretching it out to 100km. Phil continued on into the boonies for 160km and a character building retrieve in a constantly overheating van.

Sunday, the wind was blowing us towards West Wyalong. Once again almost everyone made it to goal landing at WW Airport. Base 7000 amsl.

Tove was high over West Wyalong but Grant “persuaded” her to land in order to look after the kids while the rest of the crew returned to get the cars from Forbes. A shame, as I was looking forward to sitting in a pub in Hay with the person that originally taught me how to fly one of these things.

I missed West Wyalong (some bugger moved it) as I only had Hay in my 6030. By the time I had a visual on WW I was downwind. I couldn’t fight my way back SE (wind was 30km from E by this stage) so just headed South instead until I met up with the Newell Hwy – Lucky Peter Garonne gave us a description of where the Hwy tracked as it went south so I knew I should hit it sooner or later. This would make for a much faster trip back to Canberra that night. I ended up just short of Grong Grong – of Forbes Flatlands 2008 fame. Andrew, Nath and Deb were in my landing paddock as I descended on final glide.

Scotty Hannaford replied:

… I had the same issue with the downwind drift, but realised I was losing touch with the course early enough to correct it – my track when you look at it is going to be pretty ugly – there was plenty of flying backwards to find lift, following wrong roads and generally faffing about. Of course there was oodles of lift over the airport when I arrived, making it very difficult to get down. If I wasn’t already buggered I would have followed you down the road, but in hindsight it was probably wise to land where I did rather than risk a boonies expedition!

I was flying Dave May’s Airborne C4 13 as opposed to my usual C4 13.5 on both days. A nice feeling glider but it does not do the whole self coring thing that makes the 13.5 such a breeze to fly. Glides were quick as you would expect from the higher wing loading. Following lift lines in this glider also seemed to be easier due to the super responsive nature of the glider. Landing either glider is a pleasurable experience with generous flare windows and a crisp rotation with a bit of VG on.

Flights:

http://xc.dhv.de/xc/modules.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=26840

http://xc.dhv.de/xc/modules.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=26839

A great weekend, thanks for making it all possible. Please also pass on my thanks to Bill Moyes for letting us have all this fun in my favourite place to fly.

Sorry guys, the updates have been somewhat scarce over the past month due to me being on the road and flying a lot. Since Christmas alone, I’ve wracked up 53 hours on 19 flying days. Not a bad way the start the year but I have to work out a way to keep the site updated while I’m on the road – I’m working on it.

Over the next week or so I will get some posts happening about the past few weeks and what I have learnt while flying with the world’s best pilots on their annual pilgrimage down under. In the mean time though sit back and enjoy a few happy snaps of the fun times we’ve had over the past few weeks.

As usual, use the arrows on either side of the image below to scroll through the pics.

Glenn Bachelor sends in some launching videos from the Melbourne cup long weekend.
Here are two clips I have posted up on Youtube of Trent and Ed launching off Buffalo on the Melb Cup day.

Trent’s Launch

Ed’s Launch

They were both in the top 5 launches of the day, nice clean straight take off’s.

Enjoy!

Glenn.