Day 4 saw a repeat of last years task to Grenfell, and back north via Eugowra ,160 something km, when I misread the conditions and landed at the valley NE of Grenfell. This time I told myself to not do that again. I did not listen to myself, and did it again, being in the lead with Atilla and diving to his thermal that died, I was pushing too hard. Next time I will not fly through that valley no matter how good it looks.

Day 5 saw good conditions and a long task of 318km to Hay, via a few TP to keep us out of water and close to roads. I took off early and waited for over one hour for the first start gate at 13:15. From there I took it easy and safe, had nothing to gain now in this comp, and wanted to get to goal for such a long task. Conditions were good, quite low cloudbase in the start of the day at 16-1700 meters, bit it slowly rised and I had nearly 3000 meters under the last clouds before it got blue.

I never got really low, but got stuck once around 200 km from goal and spent some time from there and the next 60-70 km to get to cloudbase again. I was alone then, but found Shedsy under a cloud at around 120 km, and we flew together until the final glide. I could see the main gaggle ahead, and slowly cought up with some of them, including Jaimie on a Litesport! The last thermal was at 19:30, I started the final glide 30 km out at 16.9:1 angle, but we got sink and it did not work out. I stopped in some good air and topped up to a 14:1 glide from 24km out, and got magic air all the way in to Hay. Olav got in a few  minutes before me, and around 25 other got in. Plenty of pilots close to goal.

That was a long day in the office, and the 400+km drive home did not help on sore muscles. Emil did a good job as driver, and was waiting for us in Hay when we arrived.

Today is rest day, prizegiving and so on, before it all starts again tomorrow. Life is good!

A blue day from the morning, but we got some clouds around 10:30 and the sky was filled with nice looking cumulus while getting ready to tow up. The task was 167km with three TP, coming back to goal in Forbes. I got up nicely, and went upwind to the edge of the 10km start circle to wait for the first start at 13:30. The clouds and thermals there died off a bit and I got a 4 minutes late start, but with a few big gaggles up ahead it was not too hard to catch up again.

The run to the first and second TP was OK and I was flying fast with only a few gliders ahead of me. I went on a long glide under crappy clouds after the second TP, and got a little low coming out under the shade aiming for a nice sunny hill with a tractor working the field. The thermal was there when I came in around 400 meters over the ground, after a few turns I heard screaming and saw the biggest wedge-tailed eagle I’ve seen here. It was really agressive, screaming at me, and attacking my glider again and again while I was struggling to get up in the broken thermal.

I tried to yell back at it, and push out when it tried to attack me, but it would not leave me alone. When it started hitting my wingtip hard and I saw it had teared holes in my top-surface I had to admit defeat and glide away from the thermal in hope of finding another themal quickly. I found another bit of weak lift after a km, but the eagle was still not satisfied and kept coming at me so I had to keep gliding and get away from it.

I was low and desperate for lift now, but the last farmhouse and treeline in the sun did not work, and I had to land 10km from the last TP, swearing and cursing . Maybe there’s room for a sawed-off shotgun in my harness… I have to bring out the tape tomorrow, and tape up the sail. The same eagle also got Grant Heaney when he came after me in the same spot, he was a bit higher and managed to get away from it.

Olav did well, but landed in the same paddoc as Grant 1 km from goal, Neil Petersen is the last man on our team, he had to land near the second TP.

Canned.

Reason;

Looked like an OK day, but with some clouds moving in from the west. We got a short 113km task to Peak Hill, via 2 TP. I got in line and towed up in the middle of the pack. By then the cloud were shading the start area, and we could see further development to the north. I got a less than average climb in the start circle, and had to take the first start gate quite low at 1400 meters, with a group of 5-6 other pilots.

After taking a climb on the edge of the next clouds it started to rain, and we glided through some light rain to get the first TP, and then continued out to the edge of the clouds and sunny ground. Looking back I realized we had just passed under a towering CU, quickly becoming a nimbus, and within a few minutes we had the first lightning strikes just a few km away. I turned an went on a long glide to get away from the OD, it was not moving that fast, but I do not like to play with cu-nimbs.

I suspected the task would be cancelled, but I decided to fly the task at least to the last TP as that would take me away from the storm. Conditions were OK, and at the last TP I got a nice 3 m thermal so I could take a final glide back south under the shade to goal. The air was very unstable by now, and I had a hard time getting down on the glide.

Today looks OK, but there are some development already at 08:30 so it will be interesting to see what happens.

Today we saw 42 degrees at the Airport, it was much nicer to be flying in the cooler air. I flew a short 100km out&return, while Olav flew locally to check out his glider after Gerolf  had been very nice and spent some time helping him out to get better handling from his RS4.

It was a very blue day, but good smooth lift up to 2200 meters, it probably went higher later in the day, I landed just before 16:00 after a nice final glide.

The forecast for the next days looks promising, with very warm days.

I picked up Olav at the airport late Monday night and we drove through pouring rain to the Blue Mountains, and slept there before doing the rest of  the trip to Forbes on Tuesday morning. The weather gradually got better as we got closer to Forbes, and Olav got a flight there in really good conditions in the afternoon.

This morning I got up at 04:30 and drove back to Sydney to get my glider out of customs. That went without a hitch, and i got a rather beat up looking glider box out of the freight company warehouse. Luckily I could not see any damage when I met Steve Moyeas at the factory and unpacked it. So around 12 hours in the car today, and tomorrow lookks like a good day for XC flying. I will get up early (Which is no problem because of jetlag), and have a test flight in the morning to make sure glider is OK, and that my new harness is all good.

On the road again;

Here’s something new at the airport in Forbes, there’s standing water! Olav said the area around the airport had lots of new small lakes. It will probably dry out over the coming days, and some of hte pilots said the thermals were much smoother than earlier years.