On the day after Boxing Day (December 27th) we met at the Rylstone airstrip (which Bill Moyes leases from the Mudgee Shire Council for $1000/year, the Rylstone Shire Council having been disbanded due to fraud) at 9:00 AM to get ready for the Race and Rally. The task for the day was local flying and given all the cu's around and local over development at 9 AM, that was a good idea.

We did get some local flying in. I pinned off at 900' and caught 50 fpm for a 15 minute flight, coming down as the storm approached. Others had test flights later after the rain.

The next day the sky was much clearer with friendly cu's in the morning and a light southeast wind (unlike the forecasted north). It looked like our task would be 66 km to Gulgong to the north, and as the sky looked good and our gliders were set up from the day before, I took off at 10:30.

The lift was light to 2,000' AGL and I was continually able to climb back up from 1,000' AGL and stay near the airstrip as I waited for the others to have their noon meeting to decide for sure on the task. Other pilots did little test flights but no one wanted to stay up and wait around in the sky other than me.

Finally at noon after an hour and a half of working little wispies I headed down wind having worked my way a few miles north of the air field. Others would start launching at 12:30, after their meeting.

I was now getting to 3,000' AGL and there were some dark bottomed clouds to the northwest, on a line between Mudgee and Gulgong. I found good lift under the dark bottoms and continued up the east side of the valley near the forested ridges and under the darker clouds finding good lift.

Twenty kilometers out from Rylstone I saw that the cu's thinned out toward Mudgee to the west northwest, but were dark to the north toward Gulgong, our destination. I had passed most of the forested areas that were to the north and now there looked like a reasonable path way to Gulgong to the north.

Seeing semi-reasonable landing areas and dark clouds I headed north only to have all that good lift disappear. The dark clouds that had just represented good lift were now representing old lift and just heavy moisture. I dove into the ridges over rock faces under dark clouds only to find weak or no lift at all.

I probably should have stayed in the slower sinking stuff but the landing fields were far away and there was another dark cloud upwind a bit that looked like it was worth a go. Unfortunately it didn't work out and I landed a long ways from the paved road.

Fortunately, Belinda was on the case and found me right away and I was feeling sorry for myself having left way earlier than any one else and then not getting all that far. As we drove back out to the main road there was a glider right over our heads. As we got to the main road the pilot landed near us and it was Attila. Now I didn't feel so bad that the World Champion had landed close to where I landed.

We took Attila back to Rylstone to get his car and found Bill driving Armand to the hospital to get his shoulder put back in place. We packed up Armand's glider and headed to Gulgong. Gerolf and Frederico were the only pilots to make it to Gulgong. Gerolf later said that the day was more difficult than the longest day of the Worlds in Texas (the world record day).

We spoke with Armand last night. We was about to call Bill to come get him so that he didn't have to stay in the hospital last night. He was feeling good, but maybe that was the morphine. His glider just suffered from a broken down tube and two broken bottom brackets. Balasz saw Armand land from the air and said that it looked like a normal landing.

The wind continues out of the southeast and will be pushing us into recently flooded areas (Gilgandra and Coonambla) and away from Forbes, our destination for the 31st. We'll see what the story is soon. We meet this morning at the Prince of Darkness pub for a weather briefing and breakfast.