Armand went out to Forbes again to tow up pilots. They took advantage of the Dragonflies stored out there. He writes:

On Saturday, Grant pinned off at about 300m. I told Tove about it. So, she pinned off at about 200m and climbed to cloud base.

On Sunday, Steve (a pilot with out five flights) in a Wills Wing Falcon 195 soared from 10:30 to 11:30.

The guys didn't start until about 1 PM with a task of 175km. Big dust devils. Trent said he got over 7000' asl.

On one tow a pilot released, I powered back the tug, diving at 50mph to the ground, and I was still going up at 300fpm for about 15seconds. Half the day my feet where coming off the rudder pedals.

Trent Brown <<email>> writes:

Saturday was great. A tail wind run to Condobolin. Most of the crew landed at town with Grant, Tove and myself stretching it out to 100km. Phil continued on into the boonies for 160km and a character building retrieve in a constantly overheating van.

Sunday, the wind was blowing us towards West Wyalong. Once again almost everyone made it to goal landing at WW Airport. Base 7000 amsl.

Tove was high over West Wyalong but Grant “persuaded” her to land in order to look after the kids while the rest of the crew returned to get the cars from Forbes. A shame, as I was looking forward to sitting in a pub in Hay with the person that originally taught me how to fly one of these things.

I missed West Wyalong (some bugger moved it) as I only had Hay in my 6030. By the time I had a visual on West Wyalong I was downwind. I couldn’t fight my way back SE (wind was 30km/h from east by this stage) so just headed South instead until I met up with the Newell Hwy. Lucky Peter Garonne gave us a description of where the Hwy tracked as it went south so I knew I should hit it sooner or later. This would make for a much faster trip back to Canberra that night. I ended up just short of Grong Grong, of Forbes Flatlands 2008 fame. Andrew, Nath and Deb were in my landing paddock as I descended on final glide.

Scotty Hannaford replied:

I had the same issue with the downwind drift, but realised I was losing touch with the course early enough to correct it - my track when you look at it is going to be pretty ugly - there was plenty of flying backwards to find lift, following wrong roads and generally faffing about. Of course there was oodles of lift over the airport when I arrived, making it very difficult to get down. If I wasn't already buggered I would have followed you down the road, but in hindsight it was probably wise to land where I did rather than risk a boonies expedition!

I was flying Dave May’s Airborne C4 13 as opposed to my usual C4 13.5 on both days. A nice feeling glider but it does not do the whole self coring thing that makes the 13.5 such a breeze to fly. Glides were quick as you would expect from the higher wing loading. Following lift lines in this glider also seemed to be easier due to the super responsive nature of the glider. Landing either glider is a pleasurable experience with generous flare windows and a crisp rotation with a bit of VG on.

Flights:

http://xc.dhv.de/xc/modules.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=26840

http://xc.dhv.de/xc/modules.php?name=leonardo&op=show_flight&flightID=26839

Pics will be up tonight on www.thebombout.com