Nick Purcell <<email>> writes:

There were the usual suspects out at Dalby for the Australia Day long weekend, Yodes, Cam, Barfly, Frodo, Blaino, Smokey and the best driver in the world, Karen and myself. We were treated to typical Dalby flying with amazing looking clouds on the Saturday. We set a task from Dalby Airport to Jandowae, 44km away then on to the Silos on the eastern edge of Chinchilla 46km leg. We then decided to close the triangle and head back to Dalby, but there was some ugly development building to the south that forced us back along the same way we had just come.

The cloud and flying pictures here.

I flew with a juvenile Wedgie for two thermals. This little guy, well, he wasn't that little with probably 5-6ft across the wings, didn't know what to make of me and just cruised around me for at least ten minutes. What an awesome experience just flying with one of these magnificent birds. After that I ended up trying to jump a bit of a blue hole and decked it 15km short of Jandowae, Yodes was the star of the day making it back to the Airport with a 181 km dog leg flight.

A short video of flying with the eagle here.

Sunday was much the same looking sky with a light breeze out of the south west, we all got up easily from tow and headed down the road towards chinchilla, as we got to Brigalow the call was made to try and do a triangle back threw Jandowae then back to the Airport. The first leg was an easy run under good looking clouds with climbs around 500-700ft pm averages. From the turnpoint I found nothing which was surprising as the sky was working well. Cam was right behind me and found a good climb to the right of course line and was now out on his own leading the way. Yodes was now at the turnpoint with Frodo and soon flying over head as I finished my pack up. The day started to over developed to the south, east and the north east which made things interesting for Cam and Yodes. Cam got to within 9km of Dalby Airport and Yodes 11km having to fly around developing rain showers on the final leg. Frodo landed 5km out of Jandowae another victim of the shaded ground.

All in all it was a great weekend away from the city, good night out with everyone on the Saturday night with a few drinks. I'm looking forward to the Dalby Big Air in March if this weekend is anything to go by it should be an epic week.