Dan Watters fill us in…

By 9:30am there was 7 hangies on launch at Geary’s (Dan W, Nic W, Thief, John D, Bobby, Michael I, Geoff R, Johnno W), rubbing their eyes at the early start and waiting for the hoards of punters to stuff their washing away.

The Thief was the first to take to the air, buzzing the punters in hang whilst attempting to hump his base bar like a dog. The increasing wind strength and Thief’s maniacal laugh was enough to send ‘em packing.

Nic and others joined him shortly afterwards, heading north. Launching 5 minutes behind, I found a thermal almost immediately and took it to 3,500ft… at 9:45am!

I watched the Old Farts Flying Brigade of Bob, Michael, and John launch a good thousand feet below me.

Converting my height to speed, I caught Nic and the Thief at the second rest stop with the Thief already corkscrewing up. I joined the thermal and we hit cloudbase at 4,200ft, now only 10am. The blanket of cloud from the overnight seabreeze was starting to breakup into streets coming from the NE. John joined us at cloudbase and we all pushed headwind, with the Thief and I skirting the edge of the cloud street, and ducking underneath to top up occasionally. John took a more easterly route. We all reached the other side of the lake before racing back to the second rest-stop to find the resident thermal still pumping.

By 10:30am cloudbase had lifted to 4,500, and the clouds were breaking up even more. Everyone was hooking lift left, right and centre. The day was looking awesome. My initial thoughts were to hang at the ridge for another hour, by which time the whole place would be pumping, the cloud would have lifted further and the prospects for a super XC would be seriously on the cards. Just as Nic joined our thermal, the Thief topped out 100ft above me and declared his intention to go on glide. In the excitement, I abandoned the plan to wait and decided to join him so we could spread out and find lift together.

A couple of turns later I was at base and on glide. Wisps of cloud obscured my view of the Thief. I decided to stick to the breaking street. The ridge was chopping the street up, and soon enough I was getting low near the next ridge to the west of the lake. The Thief’s luck wasn’t much better and he radioed in that he was hitting the deck near Dick’s place. My line proved only marginally better, and I drifted in zeros long enough to get me over the next ridge and landed just near the Gundaroo tip shortly after 11am, I was close enough to the pub to smell the beer.

Back at the ridge all the other dudes were having heaps of fun with everyone topping out and flying sorties out over the lake.

After packing up I strolled into the Gundaroo pub at 11:56am, and was delighted to be served a frosty beverage several minutes before the official opening time. The beers and banter with the locals flowed with the rest of the lads joining us for a counter lunch, retrieving the Thief en route. I let the beers cloud my vision of the clouds which only seemed to be getting better and better. The season has well and truly arrived!

Dan.

Yet another top notch weekend has been had at Forbes as the fellas write below.

Barnsey Writes

180km triangle in October!

BOM had predicted light and variable winds with isolated showers and thunderstorms, so it was either going to be really good or OD and shit.

Guy turned up early with task in hand. He’d worked out how to keep us out of the any over development and set a 180km task. Forbes – Marsden – Grenfell – Forbes.

Guy and Len where already on task when Dave and I where climbing out. Our next thermal was nothing special and soon after I found myself scratching up out of a paddock with the aid of 2 big eagles. By the time I got my self back up, Dave was already at the top of the next thermal and on the way to catching up with Len and Guy… charging!!! So for the rest of the flight I spent playing catch up on my own. I got with in 6 km at the first turn point, but got slow on the next leg and their lead just got bigger. By the time I go to Grenfell they had 30k on me.

At around 5pm the guys were calling they were on final but I still had 40k to go and the day was slowing down and I was regretting not having had anything to eat since breakfast. I really didn’t think I was going to make it, so I took a cloud street toward Forbes town keeping the main road underneath my rather than following course line and landing in the boonies.

I got to the edge of town with not enough height to get over it. I called that I wasn’t going to make it and chose a nice paddock to land. But as so often the case, just as you’ve given up you find lift. It was only going up to 4g but that was enough to give me a 10/1 to the airfield. I landed 100m short in the next paddock but seeming it was just weekend flying the guys reckoned it was close enough to claim the 180k triangle.

Dave Writes

Well after Guys ridiculously precise forecast yesterday we all arrived at the airfield with anticipation of today’s task. Guy and Len sorted out another Triangle task of 150km. Starting off with light NW then apparently swing SW by the time we where on the final leg for a tail wind finish. Attila arrived to test fly his new Moyes LS5 and so too Gerolf, Katherine and Noma. So the towing began and I joined Guy, Pete, Geoff and Len at base which was only going to a blue 4500asl at this time. Pete getting used to the Moyes LS5 (hopefully converting from the Atos) stayed within glide to airport with the others to get some airtime up, while we thought as a gaggle we should set off on course as we had good searching power and a long flight ahead. With a Light X wind first leg we were going fast until clouds starting popping ahead, the inversion lifted leaving the ground in front to heat up from scratch and dumping sink in front of us. I got low with Len just above and Guy and Geoff a bit higher. Almost out of the race I was working some broken crap averaging zero. The guys above slowly climbed out in something a bit more solid and with enough height headed for the clouds over the hills. Still scratching low Len made me feel better by saying "well I’ll say bye Dave cause where off and we won’t see you again" thanks mate!!! But my persistence paid off and the thermal cracked building up to a 4.5m and going to 8000ft/asl. So I glided straight past the others to TP1 (how your day can change with one strong climb). Now we had clouds so from there it was a game of join the dots, the dots being beautiful Q’s at 8500asl and if you chose the right ones it was slow but steady X wind leg to TP2.

Just as Len and Guy said it would the wind had turned SW, so the light tail wind and nice lines made it a fast run home. Geoff smoked the last leg catching up to Len as they both made goal. Attila got round and almost chased us down after leaving later and flying on his own. Unfortunately Guy landed a frustrating 14km short.

Monday brought more pilots with Nick from Canberra and Jorg from Stanwell cruising up for day. Wind was also on the cards and hoping it would have north in it I planned to fly home and thanks to Geoff who after a fly would retrieve me on his way back to Canberra. But when Len told me his thoughts on the weather I wasn’t so confident. Len called storms to the south and with WSW wind. His forecasting had been spot on so things didn’t look great. But for Geroff and Noma it looked awesome as they planned to fly east so they some fun ahead. Geroff, Noma and I launched into a blue sky with a 5000asl base to get a head start on the over development, I headed X wind to the south with caution until the clouds starting forming lifting the base to 9500asl so I started pushing harder but with 25k wind form the WSW up high and overdeveloping ahead I could only stop for strong climbs and after pushing through some average lift I found strong sink between streets and quickly ended up on my ass 90km on course.

All in all it was yet another amazing Forbes flying weekend with everyone having an awesome time in and around the airport. The highlights for me were Barnsy’s gutsy effort to never give up on the 180k triangle flying it solo and making it round in more than 6 hours. Also Len’s dominating flying after a year on the side line. Guys precise forecast and task call. The great laughs and atmosphere with my flying friends.

And Steve’s endurance and skill in the dragon fly to get everyone safely in the air, with out the support of Moyes and Steve’s time, Forbes would be just another dusty paddock.