Looks like similar weather conditions to yesterday, westerlies and high cloudbase, good lift.

We flew a 145km task, crosswind to the south, turning north crosswind to just east of Forbes, and headwind to goal at Bogan gate. Conditions were good, with 3000m cloudbase and some strong lifts here and there.

I was back in the towing order since I did not place well in task 1, and I took the first startgate 5-6 minutes late. I cought up with the main gaggle around the first turnpoint and had an OK run from there to goal. The final glide was into headwind and I nearly misjudged it, starting at 1:7 25km out I just made it over the trees into the goal cylinder to 6. place. Atilla won the day, Olav in 4. place.

Full results at https://www.forbesflatlands.com/results

Blue and windy, looks like a difficult task today.

Windy conditions make it hard for the safety committee to make a final call, and we postponed first briefings and then the towing was delayed several times. In the end we got off, but way to late to finish the 160km task. Nobody made goal, I was not on top of my game and landed quite early. But we finally got to fly, Wohoo!

Too windy and poor visibility due to smoke.

No task today, the winds are bringing a lot of smoke here, giving us low visibility and there are high winds forcasted for the areas around Forbes, making it difficult to have a task.

Some pilots will fly locally before the winds hit later in the afternoon, it’s a nice and relatively cool 35 degrees outside now.

As forecast we woke up to strong winds and heat, it was 43 degrees and very gusty already at briefing time at 10:00. The day was cancelled due to too strong winds.

2 years ago I made a new instrument pod and panel for my Dragonfly ultralight plane, the original one was from 1994 and was falling apart after many modifications. I bought a ready made fiberglass pod, and did some rough cutouts to make a panel for the existing instruments. Originally I thought I had to replace both the EMS, altimeter, and VSI, as they had started to fail, so I planned to get a digital EFIS to replace everything but the radio. But I took the altimiter and VSI apart, cleaned them, and they worked fine again, so I only needed to replace the EMS. (Engine monitoring system) This saved me around $3000 so it was well worth it. I flew 2 years with it, but it was ugly with the rough temporary panel, and the EMS was failing all the time.

I finally got around to ordering a new MGL Avionics EMS-1, which was just released to the marked this winter, I like the light weight and bright screen. I think it will be a good solution.

I designed the new panel in a CAD program, and had it produced in Germany. The design process took some time as I’ve never done any CAD work before, but it turned out OK in the end. The panel was cut perfectly, and I just had 1 minute of light dremel work to round the edges around the extra cutout for the altimeter where it was a little tight.

The final installed panel was cut from black anodized 2mm aluminium, total cost including shipping of around €100. I glued the new panel over the old fibreglass panel after cutting away the overlap. I am just waiting for new M3 titanium plated screws for the radio, the old ones were made of Chinesium that started to rust instantly.

I enjoyed the process of making the parts in CAD, trying to visualize the end result and how to avoid interference behind the panel, with all the instruments having different sizes and the extra space needed for power cables, pitot-tubes, signal-cables, and so on. In the end it was only one tight area between the fuse and radio that I had to insulate a bit extra to avoid unwanted contact, everything else fit tightly and as I had planned.

Now we just need spring to get started so I can get the plane back in the air and towing hanggliders again.