Saturday 12 January 2008

I've been a bit slow writing things up this week.

I cried off going home for the weekend this week as I was so tired, I couldn't face the flight, and there were thunderstorms forecast on the way.

However, as it seemed to be shaping up as a good gliding day, I couldn't help but put the Mozzie out. We set a 500 km task at briefing Ashley (25 km north of Moree) Quirindi and back to Lake Keepit. I had noticed that the tailwheel of the Mozzie was a bit soft the day before but had taken off anyway - today I decided that I had to fix it as I intended to fill it up with water. Inflating the tail wheel is a chore because you have to take it off the glider. While I was at it, I put some slime in as well. The main was a bit soft too, so I had to do that one as well.

By the time I had done all that, filled up with water and so on, I didn't get into the air until 1 O'Clock. Luckily three generations of Trigells were present on the airfield, at various stages of instruction, and so I had a wing runner.

Geoff Sim the in the ASH 25, SI, Jim Staniforth in the Nimbus 3, VJS and Trevor West in the Ventus LP were attempting the task, but they were an hour ahead of me. John White flew the LS7 . Vic Hatfield took off just ahead of me in the Cirrus and we were going to fly together.

Vic had a struggle to get up, and so did I with all the water on, but I managed to get to 5000 ft QNH and set off. Vic didn't think that was high enough, but there were little bits of cloud beckoning us on. Saved by the brown paddocks near Rangerai, managed to get onto the ridge that leads up to Kaputar. There seemed to be a fairly pronounced easterly drift higher up, and the lift was on the eastern sides of the clouds.

Managed to grovel up the spines and get to about 6000 ft, and eventually got near the aerials only to meet Trevor coming back! Wow he must have flown fast! I could hear the others up ahead and they decided to turn Gurley, before Moree.

Once I got past the aerials on Kaputar, the conditions got better, and I was able to wind the McCready setting up to 5 at times! As things were going well, I went to Moree and then decided to do Ashley as we had planned. Probably a mistake as it took an hour to do the 50 km to Ashely and back to Moree across a blue hole.

From Moree back to the hills was reasonable, but then it all went blue and the day seemed to be shutting down early. I stuck to the spines, but got nothing much, and had to go round the back of the aerials - not high enough to go over the top. Eventually had to decide to head out to the flat country just to have more distance between me and the ground in which to search! Just as I tried to contact base to say that an outlanding was imminent, I got a nice save over some more brown paddocks. Managed to dribble home from brown paddock to brown paddock - going anywhere near Quirindi was just not on!

Posted the flight on the OLC and it came out at 398km, so improved my score a bit. flight time 5 hours and 38 minutes. So much for being too tired to fly.

Vic did not follow me to Kaputar but turned south instead but never managed to get much height. Found that Trevor had turned Belatta not Gurley like the others, so wasn't as fast as we thought. Geoff Sim did complete the task (50 km circles around both turnpoints) but had to use the iron thermal near the start so it didn't count!