Yesterday we had a possible Airspace Infringement in OSL airspace, the pilot and copilot of a SAS airliner spotted a flying object at around 8000ft in the controlled airspace, and the news reported it as a hangglider or sailplane. The airspace was closed for more than one hour, and thousands of passengers were delayed and many flights had to be redirected to other airports.
Our airsports organization have been working intensively to clarify if it was any of our members, but it seems no sailplane, hangglider, paraglider or microlight was flying in that area at the time. It was too windy to fly hang or paraglider safely yesterday, and cloudbase seemed a lot lower than 8000ft.
Anyway, here’s the interview I made for the national news channel, they only used a tiny portion of what they filmed for the interview.
The Australian bid for the Hanggliding world championship at Forbes in January 2013 was approved at the CIVL Plenary. Bill Moyes was here presenting the bid on behalf of Australia. It’s going to be exellent to go back to Forbes again for a World championships.
Last weekend I invited our students to come flying, only Andrè and Lars showed up, but we did get to fly. Maybe the others were worried about the cold, it was chilly and then some with -21 at Sundvollen on Saturday and -26 at Bangsberg on Sunday.
Some pictures, mostly from Saturday as the camera did not like the -26 on Sunday :-)
Our LZ, hard to miss
Olaf before his first flight on his new Malibu
Andrè
Lars and Harald
Andrè after takeoff
Øystein
Øystein
Sara
Benedicte
Lars taking off
Layers of cold air producing a “mirror” in the air
Good to be back home, despite the cold and winter conditions. I had an efficient trip home via Singapore and London on British Airways, but as usual my harness bag was delayed in Heathrow. Now it’s a few months before we have thermal conditions again, time to get some work done.
The severe tropical cyclone Yasi is about to hit Northern Queensland, from floods to cyclones… Yasi have just been upgraded to category 5 according to this rather scary forecast remark from the Australian BOM;
“SEVERE TC YASI IS A LARGE AND VERY POWERFUL TROPICAL CYCLONE AND POSES AN EXTREMELY SERIOUS THREAT TO LIFE AND PROPERTY WITHIN THE WARNING AREA, ESPECIALLY BETWEEN PORT DOUGLAS AND TOWNSVILLE.
THIS IMPACT IS LIKELY TO BE MORE LIFE THREATENING THAN ANY EXPERIENCED DURING RECENT GENERATIONS.
The Cyclone has now reached CATEGORY 5 and will continue to move in a west-southwesterly direction during today.”
The last few days have been pretty good here at Lake Keepit, and two days ago I looked at the Blipmaps and decided to try for at least 400km out&return. The forecast was quite good, not much wind, and strong lift.
Late afternoon sky towards Manilla
I took off before 12:00 and spent a few thermals getting over the flats and on to the ridge over Mt Borah. From there it started getting better, but the day did not turn on as early or good as forecasted. The cloudbase stayed low(ish) at around 6500-7000 feet all the way up past Bingara, but as I passed Warialda the cloudbase got up to 7500-8000 feet, and the lift was better.
Close to North Star, 200 km done, time to turn back
The skies towards Goondiwindi and Queensland looked fantastic, and it was hard to turn back at 200km, but the clock was passing 15:00 and I wanted to be on final glide before 17:00.
Getting back was slower than I thought, as I had to pass through a few blue holes and stopped in a few weak thermals wasting time to stay high, but I made it back with altitude to burn, and in retrospect I could probably safely have stretched it to 500km, but 400 is not bad for my first real XC attempt in a Sailplane :-)
Over Bingara, clouds are thinning out
Yesterday Thomas (Tugpilot here during the week), and I set a 321Km FAI triangle task. The forecast was for a totally blue day, and weak southerly winds. I got off early and flew over Borah to Split Rock dam that was the first TP. I waited for Thomas under the clouds there for a while, but he had defect batteries and radio communications were not very good.
Thomas in front of his office
We met up before the second TP at Narrabri, but soon split up again as we could not talk and the FLARM from my LS6 was sent away for repairs. Going south from Narrabri over the plains I wanted to get back to the ridgeline and better clouds, but saw Thomas on the edge of the Pillagra scrub forest and followed him to the flatlands.
The Pillagra scub forest, it disappears over the horizon, around 100km wide.
By now I was having a very upset stomach, probably from some dodgy noodle dinner we ate at Tamworth the night before. I was in pain and really needed to get on the ground and to a toilet. I made one last attempt to fly on after getting high on the Kelvins ridge, but in the end I gave up, turned around from 8000 feet and dived for home with air brakes out.
Today is a somewhat forced rest day as I had to share the LS6 with another pilot here visiting from the UK. The next few days should be OK, but probably not 500km weather. I will fly tomorrow and maybe Tuesday before going to Sydney to fly home to Oslo on Wednesday.
After packing up at Forbes I got into Lars Olav’s old moyesmobile and drove the 6 hours to Lake Keepit to get more airtime in gliders. I had the first day to get checked out again since it’s been a while since I flew gliders, and preparing to fly some XC. I needed a few flights to get my glide angles readjusted from hanggliders to a sailplane.
The weather’s been OK, not super good, but very flyable every day. Yesterday I set my first task, a 300km FAI triangle to Bingara, Narrabri and back to Keepit. I was a bit late to grab a parachute from the club store, and someone else had the one I normally fly with, so I took one that was made to sit on. When I sat down in the plane to get a tow I found my position strange and a bit uncomfortable, but I decided to fly anyway since the day was turning on and I wanted to be in the air. I tried to make some adjustments to the parachute in the air, but that is quite hard since I’m sitting on it in the cramped cockpit, and after taking the start and flying to Mt. Borah I had to go back as my back and neck was starting to cramp after only 15 minutes flying. I did a fast glide back, landed, got another better chute, and towed up again into an OK thermal.
By the time I was back south of Barraba the predicted storms had started to develop over Bingara, and there was shade and a big blue hole. I stayed in weak lift just south of Barraba waiting to see if it would clear, but the storm did not move and I did not risk flying into the shade for the next 50km to get the TP. I flew around enjoying the good lift and nice air, and went back to land at 17:30.
Today I took a break from flying, the weather was nice and very flyable, but with a high probability of storms. As I write this at 16:30 the rain is pouring down, with thunder and lightning every minute. Tomorrow looks better on the blipmaps, and I will probably retry the 300km task.
Big rabbits
Outlanding checkout at the Manilla Skyranch
Not a single car or glider at Borah. Wonder where they are?
Cancelled due to strong winds. It was gusting over 50 km/h at the airport, so no point in going out there.
I’m now at Lake Keepit, close to Manilla. Had 2 checkflights in the two-seater yesterday, and a short flight in the Junior, the cirrus shaded over and shut down conditions. Today seems similar with much cirrus and shade. I will get familiar with the LS6 and take it up for a flight or two.
I guess it was cancelled due to wind and gray conditions. It was flyable, maybe borderline taskable. I spent the day at the coffeshop, working on preparing some material for the CIVL plenary, and had a nice run in the rain in the park along the river and lake Forbes. The park smelled strongly eucalyptus from the trees, intermingled with rotting fish from the floodings.
In Queensland its going from bad to worse, with close to 100 people missing in the floods and massive rainfalls. We are lucky here to just have to cancel a day of hanggliding, while 1000 km to the north people are drowning.
It was a gray and windy day today, we got a task of 130 km direct to goal, with a forecast of 25 knots winds from the east, and slow lift. The first pilots were towed upwind and almost to cloudbase. Most came back and landed, but some stayed up over the airfield. The mood was subdued at the launch lines, but slowly pilots got ready and started to tow up into the grey skies.
I got in line and got towed up nicely in the strong winds, but soon the tugpilot turned downwind and dropped me off beyond the point of no return where I could not glide back to the airfield to retow. I was dropped off low under a gaggle of pilots slowly sinking out, and half of the pilots glided back to the airfield, while I was too low to do anything but try to stay up. I was not very happy at that point.
I found a few broken thermals kicking off the trees, but the windy conditions did not help in finding anything useful, and I had to land within the 15 km start circle. Olav got dropped off in a much better position, got up and flew the task almost to goal, he had to land 2km before goal just as a shower dumped lots of rain and wind on us. Emil and I drove to pick him up, and after some exiting driving on wet muddy farmroads we found him and managed to get out again without getting stuck.
Packing up inside the start cylinder, windy and grey
The next comp started off yesterday after a much needed rest day, we got a 160 something task to Grong Grong (sic). It should be a OK task for the conditions, and as we started from cloudbase at first startgate I was on top and in control. Unfortunately that lasted only until the first glide when I ended up nearly landing and spending a long time getting back up again. The next glide with a few more pilots was OK, but I missed the thermal that they screamed up in and had to take shit lift to stay flying.
I was on my own for a while until Conrad came under me and we spread out to look for lift on glide. I managed to miss the next thermal too, and had to land watching Conrad thermalling up over me. As I started packing up I started to feel dizzy and a little sick, and I realized I was dehydrated and probably had been the whole flight. 1 liter of Gatorade and 2 liters of water helped, but I did not piss until I had one more liter of water in me, what a stupid mistake!
Today we got a 180km task directly west with early start, as we had a forecast of bad weather coming in from the east. We had lots of clouds coming in over us, shading the ground. I took off as one of the first, had a weaklink break just as I came out of the dolley, and had to go back for a reflight. I released downwind of the airstrip where a few other pilots were turning, but soon drifted outside of gliding range back to the airport.
My thermal died out, and very soon I was down on the treetops, desperatly hanging on to the tiniest bit of lift I could find. I spent the next hour drifting 30 km low over the trees, working broken and weak lift just to survive and stay in the air. The day slowly turned on, but I was all alone and had to take it easy and safe. I finally got to cloudbase after around 100 km, and the last 80km was quite fast in good conditions. I got a 5 m/s over a dustdevil from some dark fields.
I guess around 30 pilots in goal, Olav was there when I landed. On the drive back we met a massive thunderstorm with the gustfront picking up red sand. The forecast for the next days is not very good with more storms, wind and rain.
Todays eagle was just courious
Finally at cloudbase, only 80 km to go
Gustfront meeting us on the way back to Forbes
Blog, pictures, videos, and articles from my flying adventures aound the world. Content in English.
