Andrey Solomykin writes:

Southeast Australia is embraced by huge bushfires, which smoke has
even covered New Zealand. Everything burns, there are massive evacuations of
residents in large areas.

Unfortunately, due to the bushfires, hang gliding competition in Corryong was
stopped. We flew only three days out of seven, then we had to urgently leave the
disaster area.

This time I will fly a Moyes Litespeed RX3 and this is my first ever competition
on a topless glider. Before this comp I had only one two-hour flight on this
glider on a practice day, and also I had two quick 15 minutes long flights in
Austria in 2015. However, on all three tasks of the Corryong Cup I managed to
make goal, and according to the results of prematurely stopped competition I
took second place. One of the top Russian pilots, Konstantin Lukyanov, won the
comp. Another Russian pilot, Alexey Labzin, was in 4th place. There were 17
pilots overall in the open class (all the rest were Australians and one is
German).

Now the Russian team and many other pilots are already in Forbes. On January 4
the annual Forbes Flatlands competition begins here. It attracts a lot of top
pilots of our sport. This is one of the largest hang gliding competitions in the
World, and it is always really hot in every sense: 40° C in the shade, 5+ m/sec
lifts, dust devils, 3 - 4 meter cloud base, and 200-300-400 km tasks. Pilots
often get back to the camp after midnight, or sometimes even in the morning, and
so eight days in a row.

My minimum target is to survive and to fly my new personal record at a distance
of more than 180 km (I hold the 172 km personal record on Aeros Discus). My
maximum target is try to enter in top 20. Wish me good luck.