When in doubt, adventure

Near the beach landing zone at Stanwell
Park. Launch is on the top of the knob.

Looking down while scrambling up.
Steep!

On Sept 28th, I headed to Stanwell Park, a coastal ridge soaring site a bit over one hour south from Sydney by train. I didn't bring my paraglider since the winds were predicted to be cross and too strong. I arrived armed with my backpack with laptop, gps, mobile phone, and a sweater. It wasn't too hard to find the landing zone, as a couple hang gliders had just finished folding up. I wanted to see the launch site though, and decided to eschew automotive transport and hike up. I wandered along the roads for awhile and then followed a rough trail into the woods. Quickly it forked with one direction going into a very dark underground tunnel with a broken gate that felt to me like an ideal criminal hideout, so I moved past it too quickly to even take a photo. After awhile of walking I was frustrated with not actually going up the hill, and took what I figured was an overgrown side trail that headed straight up the hill. After a few dozen meters of vertical scrambling I had to decide whether to go back down or keep going. 

Who left that here?  It was joined by
many broken beer bottles on the hike
from the beach to the top of the hill.

Up was a lot easier, and I judged the whole hill wasn't higher than a couple hundred meters, so no problem, eh? Scramble, scramble. I passed by a broken car embedded in the scrub that someone had recently committed to nature via high speed off the hilltop.

Arriving at the Stanwell Park launch.

Finally just after failing to clear some spiky plants which left bite marks on my hands, I arrived sweaty and tired at the top of the hill to the surprise of a local who was smoking in the strong breeze (more Aussies smoke than Canadians; probably the extra heat from the sun causes spontaneous combustion). I gave my recommendation that the scramble was one way and best avoided anyway. But, no blood, no adventure, so I was satisfied.

Bondi beach in the distance.  The
people weren't so pretty at 11AM, so
I took a photo from far away.

Tired from adventuring, I spent part of the next day at Bondi beach in Sydney mingling with the pretty people. As I result I have to update my Sydney summary: If you displaced Tofino with Vancouver, grew some real transit and pushed the density a bit, you'd have a very rough approximation of Sydney.

Since cities do not have night skies, we are left with the possibility of ocean, forests, and the mountains to cure city-induced mental ills. Save money on therapy and just move to a beautiful place and use our evolutionarily developed anti-depression medicine.

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.

Anarchist in Osoyoos

I postponed this post hoping for pictures, but no go, I'll add them later.

Back from a week of driving and flying. Got the first speeding ticket of my whole life --- my police detection circuits were temporarily off line while I was fiddling with the radio looking for CBC.  I went into full American mode when pulled over: I put my hands on the wheel in plain sight and didn't move.  Not necessary.  The police officer asked if I happened to have my license on me, as if it were an option, and then wrote the ticket and further apologized for taking up my time... I love Canada.

The high point of the trip was flying a new-to-me paragliding site called Anarchist in the town of Osoyoos right at the US border.  When we asked a local pilot if there were any places I should not land, he simply said "Don't land in the USA".  The site is listed as "super-sensitive", mainly because there is no real landing zone, so Andrei and I scouted out a few small spots on Nk'mip (pronounced in-ka-meep, a First Nations band) desert land.  The weather predictions were strong winds in the afternoon, so we went up early and both us had a great time exploring the area in moderate lift and winds.  I declined Andrei's offer to chase me in the car while I flew cross country due to the potentially scary weather.  On landing I quickly recalled why I hate deserts as I placed my hand right on a prickly-pear-like cactus while packing up my glider.  Deserts are dry, so we were forced to swim in Osoyoos lake for awhile to rehydrate.  Somehow, though, while the desert is super dry they grow the best peaches there: we had camped the night before in Andrei's friends peach/nectarine/plum orchard and, of course, I ate many many peaches.

TL;DR I ate peaches, went flying, swam in a lake, and told you about
it: Life is good!

Lumby: wireless in your tent

Andrei and I left somewhat early in the AM, and after some coffee
stops arrived at Lumby and drove straight up to Coopers launch.
Straight up to cloudbase (1650m) and then a small Lumby triangle in
somewhat light conditions.  Later, we swapped wings (me flying the
Aeros Style, Andrei flying my U-Turn Obsession II) and I tried to
build up some huge loopy wingovers, but the Aeros Style is a bit more
damped than my wing.  Sometimes the stupid is me, I didn't give up and
instead tried to force some energy into the wing through an
asymmetrical spiral to a reversal.  All I got was an unloaded wing and a big collapse instead.  Oh well.  Next time over water.

Why is Lumby so nice?  No mosquitoes, wireless in your tent, and you
can land at your tent.

I'm going to buy a camera so I can post some pics and vids of where I
am.  Otherwise all these words are going to bore even me.

Day One: Miracle Valley

I adventured!

I planned a day consisting of hiking up Bridal Falls and then flying.  Simple fun, but not to happen: Al called me while I was driving and suggested that we take advantage of the good conditions and fly Mount St. Benedict in the Miracle Valley (seriously, who named these?!).  Of course, I agreed.  Some real 4x4'ing in Al's vehicle, and we arrived at the new Flying Jewel of the West Coast Soaring Club.

A quick introduction to the site (here is the house thermal, and there is a field to land in) and Al set a task for the day of flying to Bridal Falls (50 km away)... of course he didn't set a task, but just mentioning it makes it so in my mind.  I had done some Google Earth'ing and knew somewhat where I was.  New site and I'm going to do an XC flight from it right off?  Hah.

Some new site "sink out" jitters set in so I launched after the cycles became somewhat regular.  Straight up to cloud base (1550m) and, well, the XC bug could not to be held back, so I headed straight over to the next mountain (Sylvester Mt.), and then with the help of a friendly bird found a thermal to take me up to the top.

I was supposed to look for an upside down Z clearcut into some mountains, but I couldn't find it.  I headed to a likely looking mountain at the edge of the Fraser Valley, which turned out to be Big Nic (everything needs a name --- it is actually called Nicomen Mountain).  Then from there to Harrison Hill (yes, the hill is that boring) where I creeped up in some very light thermals.  Radio chatter had Woodside Mt., my next destination and a local reliable flying site, being rough and unpleasant.  Not so easily deterred, I glided toward it, wishing I had a better wing.  I barely squeaked over the lowest clear cut where I found a strong thermal.

After a few climbs I usually have a good feeling for the day.  If everything is working then you can go on glide confidently.  At this point, I knew the day was good enough to get me almost anywhere.

So, there I am at one of my local flying sites, Woodside Mt., where I have soared numerous times, usually landing comfortably at the Riverside landing field.  My only XC flight from there was basically just a glide to an alternative landing zone after one big climb.  The LZ beckoned, though a field can't really motion "Come Hither", so the thermal won the argument and I followed it up and over launch.  All the details of the local site (don't go here, venturi, or RotorZ Here) disappeared once I was high enough and I went over the back and around the edge of the valley.

On the way is a CYR: a no fly cylinder centered on Kent Prison.  I was plenty above it and off to the side but was too busy flying to fiddle with my GPS at the time to make sure of that... so I had fleeting visions of cells, bad food, and flashbacks to my broken leg hospital stay when I met a former prison guard from there.

Al had informed Rob that I had no idea where I was going, so they got on radio to give me some advice and also to ask where my car keys were.  Of course my radio battery chose right then to run out of juice.  Some interesting "click once" or "click twice" communication until finally after going on glide across the mouth of Harrison Hot Springs I swapped batteries.  Despite their best efforts, I understood nothing of the advice, partly because I knew none of the local landmarks and I have a broken speaker in my radio helmet kit.  Soon enough I was high above a set of crossing high voltage power lines both going where I wanted to head to.  A weak attempt to get to the front of Green Hills (caught a thermal just a few dozen meters above the deck) and I finally landed at Seabird just as Al pulls up with my car!

Many thanks to Al and Rob and others for pioneering this new site and the days of work they put in.  The air is great in the Miracle Valley and I think you should all fly there.  Here's my Leonardo track log.