Ridge soaring

Ridge soaring
Beechmont Mountain in Canungra, QLD Australia

While the weather has been somewhat unsettled, Elena and I have managed to get at least a couple days of flying in the last two weeks. All recent flights were ridge soaring. The first was off Beechmont Mountain in Canungra. First flight was an intro flight for Elena in moderate winds and she landed in the "bombout" landing zone. The "bombout" landing zone for Beechmont is a 40 minute drive from launch, making a roundtrip retrieve about an hour and a half. There is a short-cut hike up the hill which takes about an hour, though I haven't done it yet.

Nerang and the Gold Coast seen from above Beechmont

After the intro flight was done, the winds picked up enough to make ridge soaring easy. We boated around a bit, and I got bored and started playing with my wing. I had already added "do not practice wingovers while ridge soaring or close to the ground until you have them dialed perfectly" to my list of rules, but somehow I forgot it once I was a few hundred meters above the ground. Well, suffice it to say the onlookers got quite an unexpected show when I got a bit too aggressive in wingovering.  Let me say it again: "do not practice wingovers while ridge soaring or close to the ground!". High winds while ridge soaring make mistakes potentially very dangerous, even if you do have a lot of height. Anyway, we continued ridge soaring until it started getting dark, and by the time I picked up Elena in the bombout she was busy winding up her flashlight and starting to worry about getting attacked by bats (a not so unreasonable fear since this actually happened during one of our evening hikes, though it is up to interpretation whether the bat was just doing a fly-by or attacking).

The launch for Rainbow Beach; the Carlo Sand Blow
where the sand is gradually drifting over the top of
 the ridge into the mainland.

A few days, and probably 1000 km later, after an interlude of small hikes and tourist drives we ended up at Rainbow Beach, about 4 hours away, a 12 km long ridge above a beach. This is one of Australia's more famous coastal soaring sites with a beautiful sandy launch.

Elena ridge soaring Rainbow Beach.  Not enough room
to land on the beach; so top landing only except exactly
at low tide.

We both put in some time ground handling and ridge soaring over a couple days of flyable weather. The Rainbow Beach season evidently starts around now (November). This was my first wing plus sand experience, and I've got to agree with everyone when they say that you never get all the sand out of your gear.

Elena's first landing in high winds at Rainbow Beach was quite entertaining. After a couple back and forth of me shouting "Do not flare!" and she responding "Why?", Elena managed an unintentional backwards somersault which was captured well by a visiting pilots camcorder.  Hopefully this comedy show will show up on YouTube.  Learning by experience, I think she gets it now.

Coastal ridge soaring at Rainbow Beach.

I also had some trouble getting my wing under control after landing.  I can get my wing on the ground no problem with the D's, but then being able to walk to the side of the wing (which folds it up and allows you to rosette it up) is tricky.  I will try the C's or collapse one side stall the other side next time and see if the resulting pile of wing I get is better (EDIT: the collapse one side, stall the other worked great!  The wing ends up in a nice pile with no tendency to reinflate.  EDIT2: Not every time.  EDIT3:I've settled on A's and C's for all strong launch conditions now, though I still use A's and D's for moderate conditions, and A's and brakes for light stuff, and C's for killing the wing in high wind.  I've learned a lot coastal soaring and also flying the coastal thermic sites which have conditions I would never have considered launching in in the mountains before, whereas here they do it all the time).

Rainbow colored sand dunes?  Maybe.

Rainbow Beach is named after the "rainbow" colored sands on the dunes behind the beach. Well, I couldn't find any purple or blue or green, but there were many shades of yellow, red, white, and black. There is an even longer, but 4x4 access only, beach called Teewah a short distance from here which is flyable as well. Without a 4x4 we didn't try it.  There is a great collection of 4x4 beach misadventure photos near the tourist information spot here.  In fact, walking on the beach we ran into a recently destroyed 4x4 (it doesn't take long for the salt water, waves, and sand to turn a brand new SUV stuck on the rocks into a rust bucket).

More rainbow sands cliffs --- they look solid but it's all
just sand.

Sometimes the weather was not
so nice.  This day it was rainy so
we walked on the beach in the wind.

Surprising myself, I actually swam at the beach.  I got slightly sunburnt having my shirt off for only 5 minutes!

Self portraits never look good, but that's me squished
into my helmet.