After the first five days of the Manilla XC-Open being not much more than rain, yesterday we finally had a task to try and fly. There was cloud overdevelopment in the area and the potential for much more. Due to this, Godfrey called a race to goal task that was kept the pilots in the local area between Manilla and Mt. Borah. Typically the tasks in this comp will be open distance, but the special conditions yesterday called for an atypical task. The task was 67k or so; it was a triangle from launch to town to upper manilla to launch. The task was a 30k triangle that we were supposed to fly twice, and it was an elapsed time start.

After launching I climbed to cloudbase and started out on course with a dozen other pilots. Soon after we exited the start most of the plots stopped for a weak climb though, though I did not. I continued flying further down course under the big dark cloud, mashing the speedbar as the climb got stronger and stronger. This move was only executed by myself and 2 other pilots. We left everyone behind us and we were out front leading the day, flying just under the dark clouds at base all the way to town where we tagged the first turn point. Soon after this as we were heading back towards launch and the next turnpoint the task was stopped due to overdevelopment. It was a good call to stop the task as conditions were getting potentially dangerous with rain and the distance and BIG clouds overhead and all over the course. So in the end, even though I and two others were in the lead the task was not worth any points at all.

I would love to go further into the details of this flight, but I need to go eat breakfast (muesli, mango, peaches and milk) and rush off to the pilots meeting. Today looks better than all the days past, and the days ahead look better than this. We are in for some epic flying. If anyone reads this today I will probably be at cloudbase mashing the speedbar on the edge! Think about that! Yeahhhh!

I did not take any pictures yesterday as I was on the bar the entire flight. Meredith did get one pic of me after we had landed. In this shot you can see just some of the dark skies that we were flying under. Woop Woop.

Another Wet Day in Oz.

Rain rain go away please come back another day (or in two months when I am out of the country). Another windy wet day here at the River Gums Caravan Park, really not too much of both but it isn't flyable that is for sure. I can feel the good weather approaching and am anxiously awaiting its arrival.

Manilla xc-open

The Manilla XC-Open started yesterday; this is a paragliding competition that will run for 8 days in total. There are approximately 100 plots participating in the competition. Only 25 or so pilots are from Australia, the rest are from all over the world. There are pilots here from Germany, Spain, Switzerland, England, Poland, France, New Caldonia, South Africa, Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand, China, Canada, Norway, Czech, Japan, USA and others. There are only two pilots here from the US, myself and Meredyth Malocsay.

The format for the competition is open distance racing. So, everyday (weather permitting) all of the pilots go up to the launch, we wait for the conditions to get good with enough rising air (thermals) to allow us to get high above launch, and then everyone launches and attempts to fly as far as possible throughout the day. The idea is to climb high in a thermal, glide for a few miles downwind, find another thermal, climb in it and repeat as necessary. It sounds simple but it is not always so easy, there is a ton of decision making involved; often one wrong decision will put you somewhere where you can't find any lifting air and you will be forced to land. During the day some pilots may only make it a few miles from launch, and some may make all the right moves and go very far. On the decent days flights will range from 50-200 miles or more. Each day you get a score coresponding to the distance you fly relative to the other pilots; at the end of the week your four best scores are taken to determine what place you get. The competition is primarily an individual competition but you are also scored as a team. You select your team mates before the comp, I am on a team with my three swiss friends. Our team name is Agent Orange because our gliders are all part orange and for other reasons as well.

So, yesterday was the first day of the Comp. It rained all day and we didn't even go up to launch, today is the same. I will try and post results and stories as the occur, other info can be found on the competition website www.xc-open.org.

The first picture below was taken of me by my friend Dominik Dusek. The second I took of the local caravan park wildlife; the birds are ground parrots and they are everywhere here. The last photo is of me in the campground looking preppy. Note the pants and sweater; it was actually cool out yesterday!

Some Nice XC Action

Today the conditions were good for flying west towards the town of Narrabri. There were at least 60 people on launch today. My 3 Swiss friends and I pushed out onto the flats first and rode the lead for a few K moving slowly to let some others catch up to help along the flight. There were nice puffy clouds developed all around and down wind as we flew from one cloud to another moving west; dipping into the mist of each cloud as we went on and sometimes climbing deeper into the whiteroom was amazing. I and most of the other pilots furthest down wind had an easy time until around 45k where, though the clouds looked good, conditions deteriorated and the climbs became light. I landed after flying 42 miles (67k), and many others sunk out around this distance. My last few thousand vertical feet were killed in 1.600 feet per minute sinking air which flushed me to the ground. When I returned to town after some hitching I heard from a Polish pilot that two Polish pilots were still in the air flying at 210K out!! I wonder how far they made it?

I managed to take a few photos today on the smooth glides. The pictures speak for themselves but i will say it anyway, IT WAS AWESOME!!!

The first pic is of Sebastian and Urs (Swiss friends) as they glided just behind me pushing west, the next two are of a boomerang 5 just as we popped out the side of a cloud. Yes.

Local Wildlife

Some of the local residents up on Mt. Borah's launch.





An adolescent King Parrot pruning a tree in the campground. Tropical birds fill the riverside caravan park here.


Have you seen this mustache? WOW!

Some Evening Flying

Yesterday was no good for flying the midday though we had a chance to do some evening soaring. The flying was OK; there were a lot of pilots on launch and a few took some pictures of me boating around.

Day 2 and 3

Yesterday was my first full day in Australia. Waking in the morning I learned, as I had suspected from the evening before, that Australia is HOT. Later in the day I realized that Australia is REALLY HOT. I haven't seen any thermometers here and my suspicion is that they have all broken through their tops. They say that we are in the middle of a heat wave; a heat wave in Australia in the summer. It was probably 105+ Fahrenheit (40+C) yesterday and today, but dry.

Yesterday I got to make my first real flight on my new glider the UP Edge. The glider is super fast and responsive and also quite demanding; there is no taking the hands off the breaks on this on, it can really get away from you quick if you aren't on the ball. Its definitely a step up from the Trango 3 in its performance and handling requirements. After a short hour long flight on it yesterday I still was not feeling confident in it or in my ability to handle it, it seemed really twitchy for me.

Today was different, the air was nice and I really started feeling great on the new wing. After launching a few pilots headed north and I managed to connect all the dots and complete a 57 mile (92k) flight north from Manilla (the town I am staying in) flying with my Canadian friend Alex for part of the flight and with Burkhard Martens (author of Thermal Flying) for most all of it. Burkhard and I landed on the edge of a small town after hitting a stiff headwind where we were promptly picked up by a few Swiss pilots who kindly took us back to Manilla.

All in all an amazing day. I had some big smiles and made some new friends. I even managed to snap a few marginal pictures during the flight.

Today I arrived in Australia. Getting here only took a 30 minute drive to the airport, a 2 hour flight, a 3 hour layover, a 14.5 hour flight, 2 hours of rushing through customs and to the train station, a 6 hour train ride, a 1 hour bus ride and a few minutes of walking. Now I am in the world famous Manilla Australia. Manilla is a small town of 1,000 or so residents, located in the norther New South Wales, 130 miles (200k) from the coast.

I will be in Australia for the next 56 days and I plan to enjoy ever minute of it. My primary focus for the trip is to paraglide. I will be entering in Australia's three big national paragliding competitions each of which will last one week. The format for the competitions is racing over a typically pre set course usually ranging from 30-100 miles with around 100 other competitors. I hope to learn a lot and maybe even do decently in the comps. I am on a brand new glider the UP Edge and I am super stoked to get it out and see what it can do.

Tomorrow will be my first chance to fly in Australia and I cant wait. For now I am off to bed here in the Manilla Riverside Caravan Park which seems to be a great place. I will post up pictures, stories and results as they come. Oh, I will also be posting on the status of my mustache as it is growing rapidly.