Cue the rain, I've left for Sydney

I gave back the keys to my apartment, stored my remaining stuff in my car, and parked it underground in the dark. I locked my bike next to it to keep it company. An unnamed pilot took a plane full of people, including me, to San Francisco where I visited my sister, her dog and cat for a couple days.

Mussel Rock / The Dump in San Francisco

Parawaiting at The Dump: obligatory shot
including my boot as proof I was there.

On the day of my flight to Sydney, I spent the morning in cafes plugged into the internet, too lazy to lug all my luggage to Mussel Rock / The Dump, a coastal ridge soaring site near SFO airport since conditions did not look perfect. Luckily internet overload occurred, so I left around noon to the flying site where I met a bunch of pilots just warming up to para-wait. Most were very optimistic which is usually a bad sign (if we think it will work hard enough, it will). I succeeded in spending the afternoon there, but instead of flying I practiced my para-waiting and para-chatting which was rather pleasant.

Got a ride to the airport from a pilot who was similarly worn out by para-waiting. The early arrival at the airport led to me rediscovering the incredible expense of airport bar beer... a rant on unfettered free-market madness has been partly suppressed here (where does all that profit go? eventually to the metal detectors that can't even detect the metal in my leg?). This was my last known beer. From here on in, it's Australian. And so, that evening I folded myself, my wing, and at least one pair of extra underwear into a 747 and headed to Sydney, Australia, where I arrived at 6am after an uneventful 14 hour flight. I suppose that Australia is unique enough, as the flora and fauna have been isolated from the rest of the continents for a long time, that the customs procedures should be and are rather strict. No food, no wood, and no dirt on your shoes.

Subway train

The Morlocks.  Sub the subway.
I couldn't stay down there too long.

Three days and I've used the subways, buses, and ferries to procure a mobile phone, a laptop holding backpack (try walking for hours a day with a shoulder bag!), and a very small car.  The trains are double height: you can get on a subway train and then walk downward below platform level into the sub-subway seating area.

Big Bunny at Hyde Park

Even the chessboards are big. I can't
wait until I meet the spiders!

I also watched people playing chess with knee-high pieces and saw a large rabbit made of plastic bottles.

Obligatory coathanger picture, from
the Manly ferry.

I'm right now drinking a flat white (a local name for a small latte made properly with ultra small bubbles) in a suburb called Glebe which is walking distance from the center of Sydney: every several square kilometers gets its own name! My continued survival here depends on my GPS which enables me to go to pubs in random parts of the city to sample new (to me) Australian beers without worrying about getting lost on the way back. I like Sydney so far: it's a big city (4.5 million) divided into small livable sections with very good transit. You can escape to the water and natural beauty if you want with just a short walk. Too bad I don't surf.

New toys: U-Turn Airwolf

Airwolf from the classic 80s TV show

Me on my
 U-Turn Airwolf.
Pic from a video
by Claudia

I received my new small U-Turn Airwolf paraglider about a week ago.  The color scheme is somewhat similar to that of its 80s TV show namesake. This is my first DHV 2/EN C paraglider, and I'm moving up from a U-Turn Obsession II (high end DHV 1-2/EN B).  So anyone considering a similar move up: I decided after 203 hours and 238 flights.

I've flown it for about two hours so far over five flights and kited it for about an hour.  The first thing I noticed is how easily it launches.  A little pull on the A's and it floats nicely above your head even in the lightest winds.  The cell openings and leading edge are defined using somewhat rigid plastic rods instead of mylar.  The wing seems to be built to last, which makes it heavier than the light wings from Gradient.

I pulled a few asymmetrical collapses at trim speed and the wing didn't do much.  Same with an induced frontal--- it recovered with ears in, which a gentle application of brake removed and it surged gently forward into normal flying again.  Entry into a spiral is controlled and the exit is also easy to control.  I could not get the wing to porpoise aggressively, it would just shoot forward from behind and park itself above me.  I'll update this with more information about the wing as I learn it.

I'll be taking this wing with me to Australia to fly Mt. Borah in Manilla in a couple weeks.  Here is an interesting video about a paraglider pilot who, while competing at this site, got sucked into a thunderstorm and catapulted to 30000ft and survived, as well as the story of another pilot who got hit by lightning in the same storm and died: Paragliding miracle/tragedy at Manilla 2007: Ewa Wisnierska and He Zhongpin.

My attempts to get flights with this new wing have been less than successful: once I drove for three hours for an 8 minute flight, and another time I drove five hours for a 7 minute flight.  That's the trigger for me to go to get in a plane and find some better weather.  To fly in Australia, I needed to get all my local paperwork out of the way, so I recently catapulted from being an unrated pilot (I'm too cool to be rated) to having an advanced rating.

EDIT: I've now flown it for 9.5 hours, still in only light conditions (thermals to +3.5m/sec).  I feel like it has much better performance than my Obsession II at trim and on bar.  I was able to keep up with a a pod-pilot on a Sol Torck on a very very light day, but most of the time he could climb slightly higher than me in the light thermals (they were sometimes averaging less than 1 m/sec, a day for patience!), but I didn't lose anything noticeable on glide.  Still finding it super easy to launch in low and high wind.

EDIT2: I've now flown it for 25 hours, in conditions up to about 4m/sec average thermal climb rate.

Having flown in the Canungra Cup, I can say the U-Turn Airwolf keeps up with all the high end DHV 2 / EN C gliders and the older 2/3 gliders in climbing and gliding. The presence or absence of a pod seems to matter most (I don't fly with a pod harness).  A small fraction of a point in glide really doesn't matter in reality --- it is what line you choose, how you optimize bar usage, etc. Climbing performance is, also, limited by the pilot, though in the really really light stuff the R10.2's seem to just float away... well they are the best pilots usually too. You'll be landing on XC due to bad decisions not wing limitations.

EDIT4: The Airwolf is super fun to throw around, but I haven't had a chance to do any real playing yet.  While flying in active air, it moves around a lot, even on bar requiring some active bar usage.  All collapses (only a few small asymmetricals) I've had have been non events, even the accelerated ones (though to be honest I was coming off bar the two times it went because I knew the wing was about to explode).  Even after 25 hours on this wing I'm still not keyed into it and am not reading the information from the wing well enough to prevent all collapses.  The Obsession II (high end DHV 1/2) I flew with before seemed to give more early warning, or I was just more in tune with it.

EDIT3: After 30 hours, finally did a full stall, nothing surprising.  Big wingovers and asymmetric spirals are as expected.  I'm very happy with the wing!  Still haven't flown in Big Stuff yet, but I'm feeling almost ready for it (now if the weather would just cooperate...)

EDIT4: After 43 hours.  Launching is still wonderfully easy --- I wonder if this is true of all the new gliders with plastic stick reinforcements in the leading edge.  I haven't gotten enough flying time to do any significant amount of acro, the few times I've tried I still am not getting wingovers dialed nicely in --- probably just because I keep flying XC instead of throwing the wing around. I finally feel tuned into the wing in terms of reading the input from it and preventing collapses and thermalling well with it. It really did take 30-40 hours for me to get there... I suppose the same was true of when I got the Obsession II.  Anyway, I'm quite happy with the glider.

EDIT5: After 50 hours. Did a few asym. spirals to loops and I still *heart* loops. If this wing doesn't last 200 hours you'll know why. I haven't figured out the SAT timing yet (only tried a couple times starting with late entry attempts), it's obvious the Airwolf has a smaller entry window than the super-easy-to-SAT Obsession II.  The few full stalls I've done have been non-events and easy to control recovery.  I don't get real collapses anymore (wing tip flutters at the edge of thermals only) despite conditions being stronger now.  I'd say my previous estimate of me taking 30-40 hours to get dialed in should be closer to 40-50 hours.  Still happy with the wing... bonus points because it looks cool!  Neophyte acro pilot that I am, I unintentionally spun a wingover (while trying to get it up to loop size) into an ugly MacTwist with bonus riser twist action (I blocked it before it went farther than a half riser twist)!

EDIT6: After 65 hours. I still *heart* looping. SATs work now after a couple more attempts (yes, it's not a late entry SAT-er... if you enter late you have to haul the breaks crazy hard to get it to finally break out of the resulting SAT-an spiral into a SAT). Still easy to launch. Thermaling is fine, but I can't seem to get fully in sync with the glider when I want to bank it up tightly.  It tends to get pushed around by every little bubble in the thermals. On glide it is also very pitch wobbly making flying on speedbar (even with my best effort at active speedbar flying) or even at trim inefficient as far as I can tell. Could be pilot inexperience... Have had a few collapses on full bar (it's stable enough at 1/4 and 1/2 bar, but at near full bar the wing seems, somewhat expectedly, prone to explode).  You can tell easily before it goes just because any change in air gets communicated by pitching or rolling (see my complaint above), so I was already releasing bar somewhat before it went all times and as a result the collapses were non-events... Anyway, not sure why I keep flying on full bar, maybe I've been flying in too much -3 m/sec sink while trying to go upwind, err translated: pilot idiocy.  I've done a few more full-stalls and it's still easy. The wing has lulled me into a probably false sense of security... it wants to be a tiger, but it's really a pussy-cat even during my semi-regular beginning-acro-failures.

Over the water

I had a few towing flights on Lillooet Lake in Pemberton with Ted at zone paratowing.  I spent some time/height perfecting my fast full stall and recovery which I keep in my toolbox for cravats.  Of course, I fly right now a 1-2 glider which has only cravat'ed a couple times on me, all pilot induced (unloaded wingovers while I was learning).  As a reference point for people learning, I feel reasonably comfortable now that I have done about 40 full stalls.  Similarly, I've only spun my glider 20 times or so (most almost a year ago), so am not that comfortable with the spin behavior and am a bit spastic in the controls when trying to exit a spin or failing while trying to heli my glider, which usually makes the exit way worse than it needs to be... always practice acro with your chest strap fully open.

I also worked on asymmetric spiral to loop.  While I managed a couple good well loaded loops, my last flight I didn't have the rhythm right in the asymmetric spiral but I went to loop anyway since I was getting a bit tired and wanted one last try.  Tired and with a "just try it" attitude?  Of course I had too little energy and ended up with a slack-lined collapse moment.  The recovery was simple and the glider didn't cravat.  Similar to what happens at 40 seconds in this video (not me): failed paraglider loop.

So, I know what to work on over land now: burn all available height with asymmetric spirals until I've got them perfected.  A tip for safe loop practice from asymmetric spirals (this same tip holds for wingovers when they become inverted) is to pull the brake early, before or just as you reach the bottom of the pendulum, which keeps you safely in front of the glider.  Then as you really get the timing dialed in, slowly push the brake later and later until you achieve your desired vertical-ness factor (you'll notice in the video that the pilot pulls the brake way late after the bottom of the pendulum).

My glider is a U-Turn Obsession II (S) and I fly close to the top end of the weight range and it's very dynamic --- I can wingover into inversions, though I'll admit it took me a year of flying this glider to get to that point.