Kiwi Open, Rain & Clouds

Somewhere nearby, I haven't looked at a weather map, a cyclone is hanging out sending unstable moisture all across the continent and numerous troughs sit over NSW. The past 3 days have been weather days and this morning I awoke to rain pounding on my tent. We are all hoping that the day clears up but nature seems to have other plans. Tomorrow is the final day of the Kiwi Open and so far we've only had two tasks.



Godfrey's vineyard is in the forground of the above photo and Mt. Borrah barely rises above. Yesterday I wandered around this area helping David look for a lost arrow from an unsuccessful hunting endevor. A sample of the grapes sent a tastey tingle to my tastebuds. The sky today is unfortunately overcast.

There are 2 practice days before the pre-worlds start on Sun. March 5th. I just recieved some exciting news that there's a Boomerang Sport, Gin Glider's new DHV2/3 wing, I'll be able to fly during the pre-worlds. Thanks Phil for making this happen! Mr. Gin, the designer himself, is expected to show up any day as he's competing in the pre-worlds.

Kiwi Open, Task 2, 56km

Task 2 was an interval start from Borrah to 4Ways to Manilla with goal at Godfrey's house with a distance fo 56km. Upon arriving at launch in the Scooby Doo Mobile, our retrieve mobile that David bought, we headed to the west launch based on the advice of one of the locals. We had almost an hour before the masses wandered over from the east launch.



One day talking with a friend I refered to David's car as the Scooby Doo Mobile, I'm not quite sure why because it isn't like the van the kids in the cartood drove, but now the name's stuck. Dave, James, Rich (a wind-dummy who's been hanging out in Manilla for months from CA who flies the cage) and myself all pile into the Ford for getting up the hill and retrieves. The seals on the rear doors are shot which sucks as most of the roads around here and the road up Mt. Borrah are gravel. It's a double-edge sword as keeping the front windows closed reduces the dust coming in the back by 75% but then we start roasting inside, but at least we can breathe.

It was easier and quicker to climbout from Borrah today and the cloud development was much bigger. While working my way to the 4ways turnpoint 16km from launch the course skirted a large cumulus cloud which was developing a very dark flat bottom. From cloudbase the lead gaggle passed me returning from the 4ways turnpoint and I departed for the 4 km to the turnpoint. When I turned around a blue hole sat where the big lifty ominous black cloud was just 10 min. before. Pilots in front of me were getting lower and lower not finding any lift and I short followed suit.

I continued on course looking for lift and as pilots started to drift closer to the road to land I headed toward a recently plowed field. I hit some light lift around 50m up and the little bubble was drifting more than going up. A Boomerang 4 came and joined me, I lost the lift and we soon landed. I flew just 21.3km today and placed 102 of the 137 that flew today. grrrrr.

The Borrah Chingones placed 4th today and now sits in 5th place of 18 teams.

Kiwi Open, Task 1, 74km

Today was task 1 of the Kiwi Open here in Manilla, New South Wales, Australia. Sun and cumulus clouds made everybody smile today. We flew off the East launch and pilots fought to stay climb out and stay up as an inversion 300m over Mt. Borrah made it hard for pilots to get away and caused numerous pilots to bomb-out and take reflights. There were 4 start times as it was an interval start race with goal 74km to the west in Turrawan.

Conditions were beautiful today and except for getting low once early on course the day was quite straightforward, after getting away from Borrah, which took 40 min and numerous climbouts, each drifted me rather low over the back, where I'd need to punch forward again to get out front and look for stronger lift. A group of 5 Noregians left early, low, in the first window, and were the top 5 pilots for the day, being the only pilots to get departure points. The fasted time was appx. 2hrs 15min. I made goal in 2hrs 43min and finished 56th for the day. 79 of the 150 pilots made goal today.

There's team scoring as well. Teams consist of 4 pilots and the top 3 results from each team are compiled to rank the teams, just for fun and extra prizes. I'm on the Borrah Chingones which consists of David Prentice, Godfrey Wenness, James Lawson and myself. Our team finished 11th of 18 today.

Bright 321 Pix

These are a couple of pictures I took the one day I flew with my camera. It was the only not so windy day and on windy days 6l of water ballast gets priority over the camera in my flightdeck.

Bright Results, Sydney Bound

Yesterday was the final day of the Australian Paragliding Nationals here in Bright, Victoria. We had a total of 5 tasks, with 3 weather days due to strong winds. Nikolay Shorkhov of Russia won followed by Takagi Nozomu of Japan in 2nd and Semih Sayir of Turkey in 3rd. Craig Collings took 4th and is the Australian National Champion. Viv Williams finished 24th overall and is the Australian Female National Champion.

I flew terribly and suffered from numerous things such as making bad decisions in the air, hitting massive sink on valley crossings and ending up in lee-side rotor, and getting pub suck. I finished 65th out of 111 pilots. Sorry for the lack of posts here in Bright, I've been called on it and I'll do better....

Tomorrow I'm off to Sydney for a short visit before I return to Manilla for the final two comps. in Oz.

Task 1 Bright 62.6km

Today was task 1 of the Bright 321 paragliding comp. The 321 stands for $3000 for 1st $2000 for 2nd and $1000 for 3rd. Today I flew 20.96km and I finished in the top third overall for the day, and second in DHV2 class. A front pushed in during the task and high cloud cover shut off the thermals making it a struggle to stay up.

The days here in Bright are very hot and nights chilly. Unlike Killanrney where I awoke very early to talkative birds and intense warmth from the sun around 5:30 every day, here it's easy to sleep until 8am and beyond in the shade; it's so easy to stay under the covers during the chilly mournings, plus the birds here sing a sweet lulaby instead of the obnoxious screeching of the Killarney birds.

Manilla

I'm traveling S from Killarney to Bright with two other pilots, Max from Greenland and Matt from England. We stopped in Manilla for some flying on the way, and there's a hang gliding competition going on. Keri, Cookie and Brian (Bri-dog), some other yanks, are here paragliding as well.

Finish: Task 5 Killarney 58.4km

The final task of the Killarney Paragliding Classic was stopped at 4:30pm due to overdevelopment and rain. I made goal at appx. 4:40, but due to the stop task no-one made goal. I had my best finish today finishing 8th and was scored to 46km, where I was at cloudbase and almost had goal on glide. A few turns in some light lift about 4km out sealed goal, though upon arriving at the goal field I made one turn and landed, definately cutting it close.


After some chaos at the awards ceremony due to applying the FTV twice, the scores were finally sorted. James Lawson won followed by Craig Collings in 2nd and Andrew Horchner in 3rd. I finished 17th overall and was awarded the 2nd place trophy for DHV2 class.



We had a great dinner followed by some rowdy fun on a mechanical bucking bronco.

Day 5 & 6 Killarney

Strong winds prevented us from flying days 5 & 6. We monitored the conditions from town, and every 30 min pilots were updated via radio until the tasks were called around 1pm each day.

FTV. Fixed Total Validity is a option with the scoring system OZGAP 2005 which was new to me. The Aussie's pick their national team based on a pilots 10 best task results, unlike we do in the states by looking at a pilots overall results. The Aussie's look at tasks vs. overall results because historically in the World's they've had solid but slow pilots, and the system picks pilots that are good but also fast. If FTV is incorporated for all their comps. then they can begin looking at pilot's overall results instead of task results because the system encourages racing and can reduce the penalty of pushing hard and dirting on one day. Below is a description of how FTV works.

Pilots will be able to have "a bad day" without being immediately eliminated from overall contention. However we won't be doing it on the basis of rejecting their worst day, which is not a fair system when days are of different validities, because most pilots reject the low validity days rather than their truly bad days. We will be rejecting a fixed number of "bad day points". This system is called Fixed Total Validity (FTV) which just means that the total available points to every pilot has to be the same. If the total points available during a competition is 5000 points ( sum of validity of all days is 5.000 ) then applying a FTV correction of 20% means that the fixed total available points will be 5000 - 20% = 4000 points. This means every pilot rejects their worst score for 1000 "bad day points". They could reject their worst fully valid day. Or they could reject their worst two days that were only half valid. The system is even flexible enough to reject their worst half valid day and half of their next worst fully valid day. This way everyone gets a score out of 4000 available points and the results are fair.

Task 4 Killarney 78.9km

Goal! Today I finished 12th, and only 16 pilots made goal. A few pilots landed just short of goal today as the winds switched and created a headwind shortly after I landed, eliminating the sweet tailwind we all had coming into goal. Flying in Killarney is addictive and I love flying here. The mountains were launch sits are quite beautiful and then we've been heading west over the flats with small foothills on the north edge of flats.