EPIC

On the way to Warialda

The weather has taken a turn for the better recently. Four days after my previous personal best of 97km, I crushed it by flying 130km north of Manilla (flight log). The north route is easy to fly as it is by a highway and passes over a couple of towns. I've also done the early parts of this flight many times including defeating the dreaded Tarpoly Sink Hole and sneaking by the Tarpoly Eagle. I landed instead of adding some more kms because it was getting late and my chance of retrieve or hitchhiking back was getting low. As it ended up I still had to use the "call a friend" option.

It doesn't get any better than this!

A couple days later the Manilla XC-Camp, an informal online XC competition began. There are about 70 pilots competing here, including many from overseas.  I've had two long flights during the first three days of the 11 day event (and the other short flight was not too shabby either)! Partially this is enabled by flying with groups of people... think of them as confetti in the wind marking thermals. Daily updates on the comp by Godfrey can be found at Paragliding Forum Manilla XC-Open.

My first flight of the XC-Camp was to the east, a direction I have only gone a couple times before, and not nearly as far as I went this time. I almost landed after the first couple climbs and it was only a low save that kept me going. In this case the low save was actually easy, I was getting hammered with sink while heading toward a slope facing the sun, and as I approached I could feel the drift from the air being sucked into the hill top thermal and I circled in the light lift as it pulled me toward the slope and then up the slope and into the thermal. Due to a failure in radio communication two guys on the ground who were watching me were convinced that I landed (they looked away just as I caught the ripper to base) and spent some time looking for me.  I'll be using my SPOT from now on for live tracking. The later part of the flight involved flying over the so-called tablelands, where the ground rises from 350m to 1000m (higher than launch!). There are very few well traveled roads up there, and quite a distance to fly before the main highway.  Since I did not have an organized retrieve that day, I was focused on keeping landings near houses within glide, even going so far as to fly into the wind once (there was also a potentially soarable hill there too). After some epic adventure flying exploring the tablelands looking for roads and lift from the rocky hills that dominate the scenery, I finally found the highway and landed near it for a 76km flight.

After landing on my Mt. Kaputar flight.
It was 42C in Moree and felt hotter
in this valley.

My third flight was to the west then north passing by Mt. Kaputar, a 1500m monster of a mountain with tree covered fingers extending for huge distances from its peak.

The day was interesting with an inversion below 1000m and slowdowns around 1700m and 2200m. One key to this flight was patience while climbing out of launch as it took three distinct climbs to get up to 2600m. It's important to have a good picture of the day before going XC. I made a potential judgement error early on: the clouds we headed to to the west were big, and I flew without speed-bar and circled in light lift because I thought the final cloud we were heading to was growing too big and might start raining. In the end I lost a lot of time and ended up low at a mountain range crossing because I waited until the cloud started dissipating before getting close to it. That isn't to say my worry was baseless, but over many flights I have been learning first hand how slowly storms grow here.

Later, after crossing the mountain range I worked for quite some time on trying to get out from over the un-landable forests to the flat lands where I could then head north-west to Narrabri. Eventually, a combination of the forests and rough air convinced me to turn tail and run with the south wind away from the trees into a very lightly populated valley where I was happy to see one house that I could land near in case I started sinking out. I relaxed after a few more kilometers, because the valley became more populated (though I doubt more than 50 people live in it) and I found some more gliders around.

A badly chosen landing field.
Filled with thistles.

I figure that together these two bad judgements probably lost me almost an hour of flyable time. I somewhat made up for them later with good but easy decisions late in the day and managed to extend my flight by an hour by simply heading to the sunny side of the valley I was in and scratching at hill height until I found good climbs out. Unfortunately before finding those climbs I was below 1000m where there was a distinct change from somewhat cool air to super-heated full-on Australia summer. I was sweating by the time I scratched up again. My final glide (no more hills with safe places to soar) was gentle and I followed the overgrown fields next to the road until I finally landed in a field full of thistles. Oops. Still, another 100km flight! Woo-hoo! After quite some time in the sun freeing my glider and lines from the thistle I settled into the shade near the road. It was in the 40s as I sat there trying to keep up with my sweating by drinking water. My retrieve team soon arrived with cold beer and an air conditioned car.

Towering Cumulus blocking the
sun at sunset.

This flight was as special as the last one since I was flying terrain I had never been over before and I truly felt like an explorer. With that came new flying challenges, and as well simply new scenery. While I cannot capture the feeling here, these two flights, for me, were epic adventures.