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01.01.1970
2007 Gulgong Classic - Day 5






... After a night of hard rain ...



The central table lands of New South Wales west of the Great Divide are bathed in purple, the flowering of Patterson's Curse. It's a noxious weed as far as the grazers are concerned but to those of us touring through the country side it is a beautiful sight. I presume that those purple paddocks are those that haven't been sprayed with some obnoxious poison and are not under active management.


I've been very much enjoying flying the Airborne C4-13.5 here at the Gulgong Classic. The first one I flew had a left turn in it. It is presumed that Adam Parer did a top landing at Merewhether with it (it is Ricky Duncan's glider) and caused the trouble (maybe just an apocryphal story). I mentioned the turn to Scott Barrett who promptly adjusted and test flew the glider. Afterwards he made a further adjustment on the glider and it flew straight after that for Shane.


Shane Duncan said that I should fly the C4-13.5 that he is flying and he would take over Ricky's. Shane's glider didn't have a turn in it, but it was set to his preferences, which were to wind in and require a bit more high siding than I am comfortable with.


I flew it for two days just to see if I would be okay with that setting (which makes for easier turn initiation), but decided that that was not my preference. Scott quickly adjusted the eccentrics on the leading edges near the tips while I set up his glider. That did the trick and now it is a little harder to get a turn going, but doesn't wind up as much. Gliders can be custom tuned and it is very easy to do so. Airborne publishes the instructions for their gliders in their user manual.


I went back and checked my track log for the sixteen km final glide from Wednesday, the fourth day/task of the Gulgong Classic. It turns out that I crossed the goal cylinder with twenty six feet, and I was flying at best glide the whole distance. No stuffing the bar.


I had come across a set of power lines a few hundred meters before the goal cylinder and saw those at the last minute. They were low enough not to be a great bother. I had to come in between a few trees, but I could see that the field was open on the appropriate side of the air strip. Nice that it turned out that way, or I would have had to stop earlier and land.


The air mass on the final glide averaged 122 fpm down. That was why the Flytec 6030's prediction of 1000' above goal turned out to be incorrect. It assumes an average of zero up and down movement in the air mass. Fortunately I had a 10 mph tail wind, which I knew and so did the 6030 when it calculated my height above goal.


As I came in the altitude numbers at goal as shown on my 6030 were always positive which is why I kept going (that and it looked clear ahead). The landing area was actually thirty feet higher than the value that I had placed in the 6030 (and taken from the SeeYou vector maps). So I was cutting it pretty close.


The winds on the ground were light as I could see from the wind sock at the airstrip, so I could have landed down wind. But I was able to make a 90 degree turn to land side wind, given the twenty six feet of altitude that I had after crossing the line.


With the threat of more rain, cu-nimbs not too far away, and low clouds every where, the day was called early. I send these reports off from the Prince of Darkness (Wales actually) pub (whose kitchen has been burnt up) with $10/24 hours (continuous time) wifi hotspot (apparently the only one in town). So report may not be as fully prepared as when I have internet access in the caravan at the caravan park. Please bear with me as the real world intrudes on our cyber reality.

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