The flight.

The results.

We really had some flying today. It was spectacular. Lots of mid level clouds throughout eastern Australia. The morning satellite showed just a small clear area around Mt. Beauty, but generally the overwhelming presence of clouds. The regional BOM forecast was for showers turning to general rain throughout the area.

The BLIPMAPS and RASP model does not handle mid level clouds well and can way over estimate the solar heating as it may not be aware of these clouds. This leads to all sorts of mischief with regard to the soaring predictions. Also it can miss the winds, as it doesn't know about local effects due to gust fronts caused by the cu-nimbs and rain. I have run into this problem previously and know enough to ignore the RASP output if I see a lot of non cumulus clouds.

The task committee and Heather, the meet director, sent us to Mystic Hill next to Bright given the forecast for light northeasterly winds. We could have just as well gone to Buffalo, but Mystic is an easier hill to get to. It's lower, so marginal lift conditions would make it tricky to stay up and might cause a traffic jam in front of launch. I'm concerned about this. Also with light winds, the launch will sporadically be allowing pilots to get off the hill, something at Ollie wanted to avoid the day before, which is one of the reasons that we went to Buffalo on that day.

The clouds continued to cover most of the sky as we set up at Mystic. The task committee called a 106 km task out into the flats again, like yesterday. There were patches of blue sky and sunshine on the ground around us. There were a few cu's under the clouds, or in areas of sunshine off to the north.

The French driver for the French team launched in a borrowed Airborne Fun 170, with a borrowed harness (no parachute), and a borrowed helmet. He didn't have a vario, but found lift to the right of launch and circled up over launch. This was a pretty good indication that here was lift. Also the paraglider pilots starting launching after that and they were able to stay up by going to the right.

Given the prospect of weak conditions in front of launch I didn't like the idea of having to share that air with 54 pilots. Given that the paragliders were getting up I saw no reason not to go as soon as the launch window opened. It was an open launch. I knew that Attila was going to launch right away. I was setup right at the top of launch, so there was nothing in my way.

Attila launched, another pilot was right behind him and I let Balasz into the launch line. I waited for a slight breeze to come up the launch and took off. Lukas Bader was right behind me and then Jonny. We went to the right around the ridge line and found lift on the back side ninety degrees from launch. Lukas got there first and was just above me with Jonny just below.

The sky was completely covered with mid level clouds and all the ground as far as one could see was shaded. We were in a nice thermal and I wanted to stay in it. I radioed back to Scott Barrett that we were going up at 300 fpm. Later the message was 400 fpm, then 600 fpm, then 800 fpm. It was completely smooth and as I grabbed better and better bits of it I climbed about 1000' above Jonny and then climbed through Lukas.

Attila and Balasz had headed out to the "Clear Spot" to the north after getting up. But they seemed to leave before the top of the thermal. Maybe not. Nearing 7,400' I noticed that we were under a small thin cu. I hadn't seen it under the generally gray sky. I pulled in to get away from it and headed northwest.

Lukas headed over to the north to the cu's under the ridge line which followed the course line. Because the start cylinder radius was 10 km, it was possible to get up on this ridge line and still stay within the start cylinder. I knew this from previous hard won experience. I followed Lukas out staying to his left to see if I could find lift on another line over the tip and toward the nearest cu.

I flew slowly at best glide speed because the sink rate was quite low and the air was smooth. While it was dark and shaded all around there was a long line of cu's under the mid level clouds along the range and it looked like it was another spot for some good lift. I came over the fire lookout station at Mt. Porepunkah and found weak lift well into the forest. Lukas was a couple of hundred feet over my head.

The lift here proved elusive after an initial climb and after a while I was low enough that I had to work the western slopes of the hill sides instead of the top of the ridge line. By now, fifty minutes after I had launched, there were about a dozen pilots low along the slopes nearby trying to get back up. Things were not looking too good.

Down to 1000' AGL, I started working zero sink with Ollie, Hans and later Nick and Rolland. Rohan and a French pilot landed soon in the field below us. For the next half hour we worked lift that averaged for me -13 fpm. I was just above the rest of the pilots so I could easily stay out of their way, but that didn't help much. Finally, I went searching around for something that was actually going up and that got me just below them by twenty feet.

After a while I decided that we were going no where as the clouds got thicker and it got much darker out to the north along our course line. It looked like it was raining out on the flats. I came in and landed with Rohan and Rolland. Hans, Ollie and Nick continued circling at 500' AGL and slowly began to climb as the wind picked up and blew them back toward launch. They continued for another half hour or more until finally they all came and landed with us.

It really looked like rain now to the north as went went over to the Porepunkah air strip to pick up Scott, who had flown back to it when he saw all the rain ahead. Some pilots had stayed on the other side of the Ovens valley and been able to get up on the ridges by Mt. Buffalo. Some had been able to fly down the ridge line from Mt. Porepunkah. After we got to the airstrip we got a message that the task had been canceled.