Hi
The weather yesterday was not terribly good out west. The forecast
wasn't brilliant (blue to about 6,000ft with medium strength sw winds)
but I quite like blue days, so I tasked a bit over 300km (the Gums,
Millmerran - giving as a downwind run on hte way home) and Alice and I
set off (no water). Approaching Broadwater things were getting worse -
rougher, churned up and hard to use thermals with strengths of about
3kts and finishing at about 5,000ft, leaving only about 4000ft agl. We
got down to about 2,000ft agl near Broadwater.
The scrub narrows at this point and there's a sort of 'gap' leading out
west and there are landable (cultivated paddocks) - if one is high
enough to see them, which we were not. Unfortunately, the wind was more
west than south and was up to around 10-12 kts. Somewhat unconvinced of
the possibilities, we pushed on into the edge of the scrub (having
picked out a 'bug out' paddock) in the hope of a better climb that would
give us the height we needed to definitely pick a cultivated paddock as
a target to head for.
The better climb simply wasn't there and so we decided to head north
round the edge of the scrub, heading for Chinchilla. All along this leg
it just wasn't quite bad enough to give up and turn for home. So Alice
and I soldiered on finding thermals that promised hugely but within a
turn were just more of the same rubbish: there were obviously very small
bubbles in these thermals - and they appeared scattered around the
horizontal extent of the thermal, which made centring difficult and also
gave interesting 'edge' effects when one wing tip or another of a 20m
wingspan entered one!
Around Brigalow we scounged up enough height for a final glide to
Chinchilla, which was conducted through very flat air. I had visions of
landing there and trying to get Alice into a hangar until the Easter
comp next weekend. In the event, we found another typically broken
thermal just short of the airfield. In the climb, monitoring 126.7, we
heard an aircraft call departing Dalby for Chinchilla at 6,500ft. This
was well above where we had been getting but might be a conflict if we
lingered long at Chinchilla. In the event, we set course back down the
Warrego Hwy with the wind (at last) largely at our back just after that
radio call and were soon too low to be of any worry for a conflict.
'First base' for the return trip would be Dalby airfield - and in the
afternoon haze we couldn't see it from Chinchilla. As we struggled along
in the rubbish that was the best the day had to offer out west, I had to
admonish myself for being so critical - even in these conditions I was
having enormous fun. It wasn't the exhilaration that comes from
screaming along under cloud streets worried about Vne because the lift
is sucking so hard, it was more the satisfaction from reading the
conditions and extracting the best possible lift from them.
We eventually scraped together a final glide for Dalby and following the
energy lines (turning down wind in lift and then back across it once out
of the good air) we found the best thermal of the day - a steady 7kts on
the averager that peaked at over 8 on the averager for a couple of
turns. This carried us up to 7,000ft and although we were still below
final glider, I felt pretty certain we would make that up along the way,
which we did.
Hopefully, we'll get some boomers during the Chinchilla comp next week,
but days like yesterday are fun because they challenge different skill
sets - and, after all, even on bad days, gliding is still the best fun!
--
Robert Hart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
+61 (0)438 385 533 http://www.hart.wattle.id.au
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