One way to get a lot of practice landing is to top land. The Newcastle area pilots are fortunate enough to have a number of interesting top landing/launch spots. One of them is a grassy spot just uphill and north of the monument (see the link to Google Maps and Google Earth above). You normally launch from Scenic launch just to the north of this area.

The monument is far away from any human activity making it a safer (for the general public) place to top land. If you mess up the landing you just hurt your glider or yourself. Most likely you'll just relaunch without landing or find yourself in the bushes further up hill. Of course, this is always the slim chance that you will fall down the cliff to your death in the ocean below. (Kinda hard with the wind blowing up the cliff face though.)

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to practice top landings at this spot and for me it was a matter of over coming my emotional aversion to being "near" the boiling ocean below.

The wind was out of the south at between ten and fifteen knots. The launch faces southeast so the wind is coming a bit from the right as you face out to the ocean. In this wind condition you come in down wind from the right of launch, over the south facing cliff face (it turns right there at launch from southeast to south). The downwind part is exhilarating.

You want to come in at about launch level or maybe just a little higher, but I had "trouble" forcing myself down. There was plenty of steady lift over and in front of the cliffs in this area north of Bar Beach so it was no trouble staying up. But getting down required going out to sea a bit (or going further south along the lower cliffs) to get out of the lift band.

The Newcastle regulars, especially Scott Barrett, had no trouble, getting well below the cliff tops and landing many times at at the monument. Of course, with all that lift there is not going to be a problem getting too low and then not getting back up. With all that lift you are not going to suddenly fall into the ocean, but my poor mind has trouble playing twenty five feet off the pounding ocean surf.

I must have made twenty practice runs (in an Airborne Fun 190) at the monument (all the time while Scott landed and launched over and over again in his Airborne Sting 2) before I finally got low enough to commit myself to the landing. Once committed you are committed.

I was able to top land twice and it was very exhilarating. You dive along the fence line and then turn your glider into the wind and slide sideways up the hill. Everything slows down when you turn sideways and it is easy to land smoothly. You'll want to stay ocean side of the path to stay out of the rotor. It's easier to land here when the wind has an east component. Launching is trivial.

While Scott was launching and landing Conrad Lotten was playing with his paraglider in the same area below the cliff tops and also launching and landing at the monument (just north of it). He would stay low and play on the lower cliffs, not twenty five feet above the ocean (but maybe ten feet).

Scott way outdid my nine flights from the other day with probably forty or fifty flights on Tuesday.

Again, if you are visiting Newcastle, you'll need to hook up with a Newcastle club member in order to fly these sites.