The
flight.


There was only minor smoke in the Bright area December 27th through January 1st.
Then a few days later the rain came through and the fires died and the air was
clear while we were in Forbes.


Two days ago as we drove from Forbes to Mt. Beauty, we heard that there were
lightning strikes in the mountains and the road up Mt. Buffalo was closed in the
afternoon as a fire started up. The fires flared up to our south in Gippsland as
the temperature heated up.


Check the map
here or
here (click Media map).


Today the Kiewa valley was full of smoke and we couldn't go down to the Pines
near Albury to launch as there were fires nearby there so we went up to Emu.
Thankfully the wind that was over the back down on the flats by Albury was light
and the thermals were slowly coming up the face of Emu on and off.


The task committee called a 90 km task up and down the Kiewa as we had about 10
km visibility, and we could just see the ridge line on the west side of the
Kiewa valley from launch on the east side.


I launched soon after the launch open time and got quickly to 7,300' AGL in very
mellow lift.  The smoke was thicker over the back of launch and there
appeared (as we can see the air) to be a bit of a convergence at the ridge line
with the west facings slopes heating up and causing thermals which allowed us to
launch and kept the thicker smoke over to the east. We might as well have been
flying at Kagel or Marshall.


The smoke was plenty thick enough especially if you went a little east of the
ridge line and it diffused the background making it hard to have any depth
perception. Still you could see all the gliders nearby so that collisions
weren't much of an issue.


I hung out for an hour and a half with my radio volume down so I didn't know
that the task was canceled a half hour after I launched. I was thermaling with
Oleg, and Jeff Shapiro, just basically hanging in zero near the edge of entry
start circle ten km down the ridge line. Everyone just seemed to be in the wait
and see mode.


We started to lose a little altitude and looking around I noticed that we had
drifted back to the east and lost contact with the valley. There was nothing but
trees below me. I immediately turned and ran four km to the west to get back
over the ridge line and found much better lift. Jeff followed me and after a
while I got on the radio with the volume up and found out that the day was
called. We all landed at the airport after I searched around and finally found
some sink.


The smoke was quite thin out in the valley. Gerolf reported that he could see
Mt. Buffalo at one point (30 km away). It seemed that there wasn't a really
great reason to call off the task, given that similar conditions prevail in LA
and Bassano. About a half hour after we landed (and before many others did) the
winds out of the east picked up to 20 km/hour and brought in the smoke that had
been on the other side of the ridge line. The visibility in the valley
dramatically decreased.


An article in the Australian claims:

On average, about 135,000ha are lost to fire each year in
Victoria: this year it will be more than 1,000,000ha, and there are almost two
months of high fire risk left. Just four years ago, the 2002-03 season saw
another 1,200,000ha burned out.

A million hectares is 3861 square miles. We were here for the
fires in 2003. And now the fires are back at 10 times the extent of their
average rate.


Seems to me that we could have easily run a task today, and pilots would have
been on their own as they wouldn't have had much depth perception and they
wouldn't be able to see pilots thermaling way ahead. They just aren't used to it
here.