Norwegian Hanggliding

Resurrected from old webserver

I have been thinking about going flying in Australia for some time, and when Tonny and Ronny arranged a tour to Manilla I really got excited. I quickly got a few more hangglider pilots interested, we arranged vacation and ordered tickets. Part of the plan was also to pick up new gliders in Australia, as Moyes have come out with the Litespeeed and I really wanted one. It ended up with all three of us ordering new Litespeed’s.
Manilla, NSW, Australia

We met up at my place in Oslo early Friday morning, flew KLM to Sydney via Amsterdam, and got on a Quantas Dash-8 to Tamworth. Taxi from there to the Royal hotel in Manilla and there we were, 8 pm. local time, after a total traveling time of about 24 hours. It’s quite painless to get to the other side of the planet if you ask me. Morten had to take another route via London, and came in the next evening.

Manilla is a small place, a supermarket, a few hotels and restaurants, a internet café, and not much more. Then there’s Mt. Borah just outside town, with 2WD (barely) road up, launches in all directions, and great flying most of the year.

The view from the west start;
Gliders rack up

Our gliders was supposed to be in Manilla when we came, Vicki at Moyes sent them with Dustin Martin from Sydney on his car since he was going to the comp anyway. The gliders were there all right, but my harness was not. A call to Moyes the day after cleared it up, my harness got sent on the same plane we came with to Tamworth. An Australian pilot lent me his spare harness at once, when he heard mine was missing, everyone was really friendly and helped us out as best they could.

Setting up the gliders for the first time was like unwrapping Christmas gifts as a kid, Dustin had to correct the velcro tabs between the upper and lower surface on my glider before I could fly it, and we mounted the speed bar on the gliders.

The only thing missing now was a roof rack for the minibuses we had rented, and that turned out to be quite an exercise. The buses were Toyota’s 12 seaters with high roofs that made normal racks too low. We tried Toyota first, but they needed 3-4 days to deliver original racks. We then tried to get another car that had racks, but no one rented cars with usable racks. Finally we found a shop that could get racks that would fit the next day. We ordered those, and went back to Manilla to fly locally. The next day only one rack had been delivered, so we had to fly locally again. The day after still no racks had showed up, they got sent on the wrong plane. Argh… When you really need something, there’s always trouble. On the fourth day the racks came, we finally had everything ready, and could start going XC. (There where jubilations at take off when we came with racks – “The Norwegians have racks, yeah!!!”)

Ken the driver (left), Kjell, Per-Arne and May-Britt hiding to the right
Flying with thistles

Thanks to all the friendly and helpful comp pilots and locals we got up to start every day while searching for racks, but not as early as we would like. Alberto from Spain really helped us out when he let us use his car a few days. Thanks mate!

The first day we set up our gliders, and took off expecting a nice first flight. Dustin had told me he had his hangpoint in the same hole as my glider, and since he’s my size I never thought about moving it. What happened was that the bar went way out in front of my head, and it was difficult to control the glider. The same thing happened to Olav who weigh 20 kg more than me. We definitively had to move the hangpoint forward. Some not so elegant landings followed, Olav went downhill downwind, and took out a DT. Kjell and I landed hard but without damage. My new harness have a much tighter boot section, and I had not tightened my shoelaces enough, so the shoes stayed inside the harness when I landed, ouch…

We also found out why nobody chose the big field next to the cramped bomb out, it was full of thistles. These plants have extremely sharp thorns that go into your skin and stays there. They also fall off and fill your shoes if you don’t have something covering around your ankles. It took forever to rig down, and I was full of thorns and small wounds on my legs and feet.

A few lessons learned – move hangpoint, tighten shoelaces, fly with long trousers, and stay away from the thistles.

High and away

Conditions the first days were gray, as a warm front passed, but the comp had tasks around 100 km, and a few usually got to goal. After the front passed the pressure went up, and thermals got tricky and turbulent. Mt. Borah is quite low, and you only have 400 meters in height difference to search for a thermal. It’s new for us to go out on the flats to find thermals, and it took a few days to get familiar with the conditions so we could get up. There’s usually lot of paragliders taking off, and those are great thermal markers. If you see one getting up, take off and fly to the same thermal immediately to get up, that’s a safe bet.

Kjell and I took off quite late the last day before we got the rack, I got up quite high and tried to fly to Manilla and back. I made it to Manilla, but had to land before I got all the way back to start again, first XC, 17 km.

The next day Kjell and I got high and went over the back to go XC. We had not prepared our GPS or memorized maps, so we got lost. We tried to follow a road that was supposed to go through the “Gap” to Boggabri, and then north towards Narrabri. We followed a road through what we thought were the Gap, but figured out we were lost when we came to the town at the end of the road. We went down from cloudbase at 2500 meters, to land on a nice cricket field by the river, and discovered we where in Gunnedah, 45 km from where we were supposed to be. A good flight anyway, 48 km. We got picked up by Bill the driver, and went north to Narrabri to pick up Andreas who had been left behind by the other car. I’ve never seen a pilot so happy to be picked up, he thought he had to spend the night there.

Climbing to cloudbase west of Borah;

Next day all 3 of us got up early, and went west towards Boggabri. Olav never found lift after we topped out after start, and had to land after 7 km. Kjell and I got some more, but never got high or far, we both landed out in a field next to a small lake, 17 km out. There were giant thistles, lots of big ugly spiders, no wind, 45 degree, and we had no radio contact with the drivers. Eventually a farmer picked us up and drove us to the main road, where we got a lift pretty quick. We went back to pick up the gliders later that night, and saw lots of kangaroos, almost hit a few as well….
Distant fences

On the last day of the comp the goal was in Coolatai, 166 km north of Mt. Borah. Olav took off early, but I got stuck at start with bad conditions and got off after waiting one hour. Kjell had to fly PG that day, while waiting for a new downtube. It was a good day, but the broken thermals made it exhausting to fly, I had to work and correct all the way up to cloudbase in every thermal until late afternoon.

Good clouds and flat lands to the horizon;

I flew north catching up with gaggles of hang and paragliders, the Litespeed glides at high speeds, so it was easy to catch up with the thermals ahead marked by other pilots. It was easy all the way to Bingara, where I passed the 100 km mark just north of the town. I guess my jubilations from passing 100 km could be heard all the way from cloudbase. South of Warilda I spotted Stein-Tore and Per Arne where they were climbing up from low over some big dark fields, I glided in over Stein-Tore and waved hello. By this time conditions had slowed down a bit, so I decided to fly a little more conservatively and take weaker lift along the route.

Passing Barraba;

From Warialda there’s a long stretch without any dark fields, so I topped out the last thermal with Stein-Tore and pulled the VG on. The Litespeed wants to go really fast with full VG, so I had to pull the bar forward to slow it down in the tailwind. After 25 km I came to some dark fields, and took a 2 m/s up to cloudbase again. Ahead there was a big area in shade from the clouds, so I topped out, and went for a new long glide. A few hanggliders came gliding far below me, but had to land when they could not make it to the sunny areas. I found some weak lift out in the sun again, and could now make it to goal. I had contact with Olav in the retrieve car by now, and they were catching up with me. I came in over goal with 1000 meters to spare, and considered moving on, but decided to land in the goal field next to the road as the day was definitively over. When I was on final Olav came on the radio and told me to look for black poles on the field, I could not see any poles and asked him what the problem was but never got a reply because his radio was out of battery and turned off.

I found out as I landed – There was a electric wire fence across the LZ ! I did not see it as it was getting dark, and the sun had gone below the trees surrounding the field. I flew over but my knee hit the wire, and took a few layers of skin with it. Morten got it all on film. A few centimeters lower and my speedbar would have hit the wire…

It was a bad ending to a good flight, I doubled my personal best with 166 km in 4 hours and 15 minutes, and got really dialed into the Litespeed. Two 100 marks passed, 100 km and 100 miles.

This is the GPS tracklog (Click for a bigger image, 145 Kb)
166.jpg (149393 bytes)
The next day I stayed on the ground while I waited for my knee to heal up, it got infected and I had to go to the hospital to get it cleaned and fixed up again. It was a blue day anyway, few pilots got far.

Tuesday the route was west to Boggabri then north to Narrabri and Moree. It was a blue day, with inversion at 1800 meters and little wind. Olav and I got away early, I got really low over “the gap” and we were both unzipped and ready to land near Weewaa, but managed to hang on to narrow and weak lift over some fields to get up and high again. From Narrabri towards Moree it’s really flat, with big brown fields everywhere. We flew together all the way, and landed just outside Moree after 6 ½ hours, at 19:05, it was dark before I had packed up my glider. Morten was there to pick us up right away. The route was 196 km, 149 km free distance. We picked up Ronny and Stein-Egil who had gone 116 km.

This is the GPS route we followed, I was too tired to download the track from the GPS. (Click for a bigger image, 137 Kb)
149.jpg (139771 bytes)

The next days I had a bomb out, and a few show flights. Kjell flew to Bingara three days in a row, and landed on the same showground every time. We named the old racetrack “Kjell’s airfield”

Friday we went North again, trying to go over 200 km. We flew fast towards Bingara, it was quite easy going but Kjell and Olav got low over Barraba, and was behind me. I flew into strong sink just south of Bingara, and fell like a rock in 8 m/s down. I did not get out of it until I was 100 meters off the ground, I found some 0 sink over a dark field, but by then I was circling 10 meters off the ground and had to land on that field. 87 km in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Olav went 150 km, just south of Coolatai, and Kjell landed in his Bingara airfield as usual.

The GPS track to 87 km (Click for a bigger image, 53 Kb)
87-track.jpg (91816 bytes)

Good clouds south of Bingara from here it went down fast;
Sydney and beyond

We wanted some aerial filming and one of the guys at the roof-rack shop had a friend who had a trike. We arranged for him to pick up Morten and fly over Mt Borah the first day of the Paraglider comp to get some shots of the paragliders starting. Unfortunately it was too windy, and the start got delayed. Olav and Kjell took off to soar in front of start when the trike came. We did get some good shots, but it was a bumpy ride in the trike with strong wind and thermals. In the evening it overdelveloped into a spectacular thunderstorm while we were eating at Tom and Vic’s. We had a great farewell party, and I fell asleep in the bar next to the pool table.

The next day we packed up and went to Sydney to deliver the gliders at Moyes for transport back to Norway. Cool to see a hangglider factory from the inside. 22 hours later we are back in the northern hemisphere with snow and ice. Soon it’s spring and Bassano in Italy is next on the schedule.

Next year mate?

Yep! Unless I’m broke…