The Race and Rally has moved north to Gulgong and we'll be towing out of here for a couple of days, maybe three, before we move over to Forbes on the 31st. I don't know about this business of moving the tugs along from place to place. It seems like a lot of work for them without much reason. And with the wind blowing the "wrong" way (from the east south east) we are not going toward our goal of Forbes.

We all met at the Prince of Wales pub in Gulgong for breakfast and a weather briefing at 9 AM. It's the only hot spot in town and we called up the RASP and XC Skies forecasts for lift and wind.

Armand has joined us at the motel and is walking around with his arm in a sling and in pain. He'll go in Monday to check his X-rays as there appears to be a small fracture. He tried to land on his wheels when he saw that he was coming in down wind at Rylstone. He was on the base bar, with his arms fully extended rolling through the tall grass when the wheels caught and the glider nosed over. Because his elbows were in the locked position (not on purpose, of course) they didn't flex when the glider stopped rolling, and his arm popped out of the shoulder socket. Perhaps wheels didn't cause this accident, but they did contribute to it.

Out at the glider port we called a task to the north northwest. It would be a bit cross wind, especially at first and would send us into wet territory.

After looking at the wind on the ground for a while and noticing the predominant east flow we called a second task to the west to the glider port at Naromine. We knew that Tomas Suchanek would be there and maybe we'd have a chance to talk.

The sky was blue so there were no inviting cu's to get me off early. All the pilots were waiting around and I didn't launch until almost 2 PM. For some reason the glider keeps "sticking" to the cart that I'm using, so I'm having a hard time (as our others) getting the glider in the air. When I do get in the air, I'm too high on the tow plane. On my first tow I pinned off at 400' because I was too high and almost made it out of the airstrip.

On the second tow, the glider still sticks, but I kept it down low behind Lee on the tug and he took me to a nice thermal at 1000' AGL. I pinned off and climbed as I watched four pilots higher than me climbing just a bit down wind. I hooked into a better part of the thermal and then climbed right through them. I was off to a great start.

While the wind was out of the east down low, it was out of the south east up high, so when I topped out at 4,600' AGL, I turned northwest and headed downwind along the track of our first task. No one went with me and I was in contact with Belinda at the airport checking to see what task pilots would take given the wind conditions up high.

At 18 km northwest of the air strip I heard that they had decided to go west to the Narromine. I was drifting to the west northwest in a nice thermal, so now all I had to do was head west southwest and I should be able to go to Naromine also.

It was a 13 km glide to this first thermal and I had hooked it off a small rocky ridge. All the fields were green, you'd think that you were in Florida, so I had headed for a dry slope as a likely source of lift. It was the first of what turned out to be many good guesses regarding where to find lift on this blue day.

After a bit of a radio conversation with Belinda on just how to hook up with some paved roads going toward Dubbo and Naromine, and holding onto weak lift over areas far from paved roads (and maybe not that accessible), I found the Golden highway and worked it to the south west to stay away from the upcoming airport at Dubbo. Again I was making decisions about where to find the lift and being rewarded with good guesses.

In fact, it would turn out that every guess I made about where the lift was, by looking at the ground ahead of me, turned out to be right. This was not necessarily because there was lift every where, as I had to do plenty of long glides. I can't remember having a flight where every single guess was rewarded with lift.

I looked for rocky hill sides, bare fields, dark ones preferred, and upwind edges of forests. I searched around those areas not just taking one stab at them. I went for the closest area that looked good. If I was in weak lift, not high, but didn't have an obvious place to go for lift, I just stayed in it and waited for it to turn on, which also happened in every case.

Approaching Dubbo from the south east (I had been heading southwest to get around Dubbo on the south side and stay away from the airport on the north side of Dubbo), I came upon a large patch of trees with fields that looked too green and wet on the down wind side. I decided to search along the upwind side of the forest for lift and was soon rewarded with a thermal that drifted me over the trees and high enough to get away from the poor looking fields downwind of them.

As I went around the south side of Dubbo I noticed a coal yard, dark black amongst the green fields. I was getting lower than I had been on the flight and as it was right on my course line I headed over it at 1,200' AGL. I searched around when I got there and found one of the strongest thermals of the day, averaging 350 fpm.

One more weak thermal that turned on and it was a 18:1 down wind glide to the glider port, which looked a lot better than when I saw it years ago. Green grass every where and heaps of high performance ships flying and landing as the end of the day approached.

Balasz was the only hang glider pilot at the airport when I arrived. He had been flying with Attila to my south. They found a wet area and were gliding low over it approaching a hill. Balasz went to the right of the hill and Attila to the left. Attila landed 40 km out from Gulgong and Balasz found a thermal.

Later Lukas, Michael Fiesenbichler, and Gerolf arrived. It looked like my accidental route to the north was the way to go. I didn't notice large areas of wet fields on my route and always had some options for finding lift.

Tomas showed up at the end of the day (they say at Naromine that he is always the last glider in, taking full advantage of the day), after a 670 km triangle. Attila and he got to talk for a few minutes before we headed to town for dinner.

I'm flying a Moyes Litespeed RS 4 in the Race and Rally. I'm getting used to it and it's flying well without any turns. When I first got on it, it seemed big and hard to turn, but I had been on Airborne Funs and Stings for three weeks, so my body had forgotten how high performance wings feel.

My Flytec 6030 says I'm flying at 25 - 30 mph (except when I shove the bar back and then it only goes to 46 mph) so I'm wondering if I've got it calibrated correctly. I didn't notice that it was off at the Gulgong meet, so it is a bit of a mystery. I'll have to check this out.