Friday 11 January

Looked like a reasonable day looking out of the window this morning. Only Gerhard Stuck, Paul Roche, Garry Speight, John White, Jim Staniforth, Christian Linnet and myself were at the briefing. After much deliberation over blipmaps, Garry set an AAT task to Edgeroi Silo 30km, Bingara 40 km and return. Garry seems to really like flying to Bingara, I really hate it! Much prefer the flat country.

As I had no students, I did office work in the morning but couldn't help myself but got the Mozzie out again. No water as I was the last to launch and had to do a wing down take off. Boris was left in charge at the field - it was very quiet.

The forecast height was about 7000 ft increasing to 8000ft I think - that is what we got. Boris dropped me straight into a good thermal over Sport and Rec, right under the Twin Astir (containing Garry and Paul). Christian Linnet came over in the Standard Cirrus and we three set off more or less together. Jim Staniforth went ahead in the Nimbus and tried to find some thermals out in the blue for us.

We headed for Rangerai first, the onto the hills going up toward Kaputar. Initially we could only climb to about 5000 feet, but it got better once we reached the clouds over the hills. After a bit of gully gobbling, we all got up over the aerials on Mt Kaputar, and headed off under a line of cu to Edgeroi Silo. I had a good run in this bit and got a bit ahead of the others. There were good clouds out on the flats, and I didn't fancy heading to Bingara which involved crossing a large blue area. I decided to head toward Togo airfield, near the far edge of the Edgeroi circle, and then to Warialda on the far edge of the Bingara circle. Christian waited for Garry at Edgeroi, and then they set off for Bingara. They sounded on the radio as if they were having a bit of trouble.

I had a good run around the blue, staying with the cu toward Terry Hie Hie but the clouds finished there. I lost track of Jim, and heard Gerhard once at Narrabri - not sure what he did. I just got within the 40 km circle of Bingara to the NW of it, and then decided to head back to Lake Keepit. The others also just clipped the circle, but further south, and they were way ahead of me. They still sounded as if they were struggling - or perhaps they were only talking during the bad bits.

Had a long glide across a blue area back to the hills leading up to Kaputar, but then managed to climb back up under the clouds, but the thermals were not as strong as earlier. Managed to get to 9000 ft over the aerials by going up the side of a cloud. I kept flying along the ridge, and had 1000 feet under final glide for ages, and eventually got another thermal north of Rangerai. The others were all back by this time. This one gave me about 500 ft about final glide, so I set off. However I was losing it steadily, and the airstrip definitely was not moving up the canopy. I was thinking about landing by the side of the lake, but then I found a 2 kt thermal that got me up another 500 ft, and everything looked much better. Of course all the rest of the way was in lift and I ended up coming in at 90kts.

Ended up doing about 350 km, and posted it on the OLC, along with Christian's flight.

But wait there's more.....

After all that we went round to the other side of the lake to do some more nocturnal water skiing. Boris was better than yesterday, but I was worse! Thanks to Christian for the use of the boat and equipment! The water was an ideal temperature for swimming, but the mosquitoes (insects not gliders) were hungry!