Ashley Wilmott <>
writes:

Last Saturday was a big day for the Byron Bay boys as well as the
Canungra crew. The club record was broken, and the first hundred mile flight
achieved from one of our sites. Previously the club record was 146 kms from
Boogarem (behind Mullumbimby) to Warwick, held jointly by Geoff Ward and Brian
Braby in 2002.


Geoff Ward, Matt Colbey, Gavin Ray, Ward Gunn and myself launched from Boogarem
with a 3500' cloudbase, which always makes the first crossing over the back a
bit tricky. Mick Mackender missed his ride up the mountain, so he settled for
Monties, a much lower hill closer to the coast. I knew I had to fly further than
Mick to have a chance at the record, and he's been on fire lately winning the
Joe Scott Memorial competition from Killarney. Matt is an up and coming cross
country pilot who is putting in some great efforts now that he's on an Airborne
C4 13.


I had the goal of 160 km, 20 kms past past Warwick, and managed to just save
myself early on when Geoff and I got real low at Barkers Vale. I scratched in
dribble while he negotiated a very tricky landing in the last available put-in
at the end of the valley. After seeing him pull it off, just, I tried harder to
get up and luckily found one as I drifted out of range. Taking that one to 5000'
was a relief, and the rest of the way just boomed.


Once I crossed the Great Divide over the Acacia Plateau, the sky was filled to
the horizon with clouds at 10,000' stretching all the way to the western
horizon. Reaching my goal past Warwick with lots of height still, I had to push
on. The only thing was that I was out of radio contact with the retrieve car, I
assumed they were way east in the ranges picking up the others.


I knew Mick was down near Grevillea, but last I heard Matt was still making good
progress past Woodenbong. Just before Inglewood I came up under another hang
glider in a great 1000 fpm climb to 10,000', but lost track of them while I was
trying to stay above a wedgie coming up below me.


I decided to keep going past Inglewood hoping I wasn't going to cause any
problems with Kerri, our driver, who thought she was in for a shorter drive than
it turned out. I kept radioing my position, but no response. I was on my own
again past Yelarbon, until I caught up with a paraglider who turned out to be
Andrew Horchner.


Not knowing what lay beyond, it was looking quite remote, and I started thinking
I'd better land soon. I left Andrew and began to pass up climbs to glide out
along the road. The air was so bouyant that I glided for ages and took the best
landing I could find near a farmhouse in case my phone was out of range. When I
checked the GPS I was elated to see it read 282 kms to Boogarem, I was thinking
I'd be happy with 250 kms. Then I realized that I was only 23 kms from
Goondiwindi, which would have been over 300 kms. Still, this was my PB and the
club record, I had to be content with that.


I am certainly loving my C4 13.5, thanks Rick and the crew at Airborne for the
best glider I've ever flown. Turns out Matt flew to the east side of the Acacia
Plateau, at 95 km, but didn't get across. The crew were waiting in Warwick for
me to contact, and were happy to finally get a text message with my position. We
didn't get back to the Mullumbimby golf course until 3:30 am, I drove all the
way home, still high from the flight.


Gav had the dubious honour of having the longest retrieve drive for the shortest
flight, 1000 km round trip after landing very early at Palmwoods landing. He
wanted to make sure that Kerri found Geoff at Barkers Vale, what a guy. We still
had to drive up to Monties to get Mick's car, so it was a very late one for us.
It's great to know that we are able to do big distances from Byron, we'll be
pushing harder every time these sort of days come along.