After some great days with northely winds, the trough moved trough and the wind changed to S-SE.
Ron towed me up a bit after 12 o’clock and I started off in to a scratchy thermal which wasn’t really working.

So I started flying back to the tow paddock to have another go, about half way there all of a sudden there was lots of grass from the paddock getting lifted in to the air and soon after I was in a booming 5m/s climb. I topped out at about 2000m and started flying towards Hay, when I looked down at my gps I thought it was broken, it was saying that I was doing only 45Km/h! I had hoped for 60-70km/h. Since there was not much wind I used the bar a bit more, and due to good climbs I still managed an ok average speed.

At Hay I came a bit low and had to fight a bit more, the skies to the north did look very good with more cloud development. After I survived this difficult section, I had to fly quiet a bit crosswind to stay on the road, which was getting increasingly difficult since the road went a bit more to the east and the wind was more from the south east. After a couple of K’s I decided to give up the crosswind flying and head for the tiger country.

And Tiger country it was! I overflew lots of rivers and lakes with all sorts of different “filling levels”. also clay pans started to appear more frequently, patches of red-orange dirt where nothing grows at all. In return I got rewarded with some great climbs and good glides. Base had gone up to about 3000m and it was bitterly cold!
I thought Ivanhoe would be closer, and I kept looking for it, but just couldn’t find it anywhere.

knowing that the road will turn towards the west at some point I still kept flying a bit crosswind and after a nice climb I caught a glimpse of the road again. I was never happier to see some bitumen! The clouds to the north formed a little street and I managed to hook my self under it, and on the horizon in front of a lot of trees Ivanhoe began to materialize.
When I overflew Ivanhoe I still had about 1200m left, but it was all shady and the trees in front of me limited the safe landing spots in this kind of wind. All this combined with the chance of sleeping in a bed instead of hugging some lonely kangaroo made me land a bit north of Ivanhoe. After a safe landing in strong but laminar wind I walked to town.

At the RSL club i bumped in to some railway workers and their manager. 2500km of railway between Sydney and Perth are currently getting rebuilt.
The manager and his men kept buying me beer until it was difficult to get across the road to get some sleep in a bunk beed they offered me.
The next morning after a long wait I was able to catch a ride to Hay with the milkman (yes he also sold a bit of milk). Distributing all sorts of goods, the milkman was well informed about the region and told me everything there is to know about Ivanhoe and the area Then from Hay a Irish roadtrain driver gave me a lift back to the farm.

Where I’m still recovering It was a great day of flying and maybe if I would of kept going I could of flown past the 300k mark, who knows….

Flight

osimo Uncategorized