On Saturday, the blipmap encouraged a task to the north. Four of us, Christian Linnet in the Standard Cirrus, Chris Carr in the LS6, and Ewan Crosbie and I in the Twin Astir, launched at about 1 pm (EDT), flew 234 km, and finished within minutes of each other at 4 pm. Matthew Minter and Jim Hackett also flew cross country a bit later. (All thanks to Geoff Neely flying the eTug.)
Christian had a slow start, and Chris waited for him. Ewan and I went flat out and did 85 km/hr. I was very happy to get the Twin up to a decent speed for the first time since November.
Ewan and I got a good thermal in the blue off launch: 4 to 8 knots up to 5900 feet. Ewan said he had never had a thermal as strong as that. We set off, but got nothing until near Jack Gainey's airstrip. It was a bit of a struggle to get to a cloud over Mt Borah. From there on it was cumulus all the way. Ewan felt it would have been more of a challenge without the clouds.
We had declared Bingara airstrip as a turning point, and all arrived there together just before 3 pm. Cloud base was 9000 feet.
Christian suggested we should try for Warialda, but I thought we might run out of time. I had thought of going south later, but that also seemed a bit ambitious, as there was quite a blue hole from Keepit to Breeza.
So we simply flew home from Bingara - at 105 km/hr.
Garry Speight
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