Today I left work early and headed up to the hills, in hope of getting some flying. The weather was beautiful, but nil clouds.
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[ published on Sat 11.09.2004 00:50 | filed in interests/flying | ]

That's my current flying tally after 2.5 years.
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[ published on Thu 09.09.2004 15:15 | filed in interests/flying | ]


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[ published on Tue 03.08.2004 22:19 | filed in interests/flying | ]

The weekend of 12./13.6. we spent at Killarney, camping, freezing a bit in the cold evenings, and as usual flying.
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[ published on Sun 27.06.2004 17:13 | filed in interests/flying | ]

Last weekend was extended because of the ANZAC day public holiday, and the flying was quite good.

Friday we wasted sitting on the wrong hill, hoping for the right kind of wind. Just another case of parawaiting, like in the pic below.

 2004_03_26-parawaiting2.jpg

But Saturday and Sunday were quite good for ridge-soaring Tambo, not exactly a common occurrence. A frightening site, low saves guaranteed with "landing" in trees always possible to likely. Had four nice flights, could have toplanded but didn't know we were allowed to again. Anyway, it was quite good - despite sinking out on Sunday when others went over the back or to Canungra.

Me airborne in front of Tambo, one of the very few relaxed moments at that site:

 2004_04_25-airborne-over-tambo.jpg

Mark said once about the difference between rock climbing and paragliding:

In rock climbing you spend most of your time in a very safe situation feeling shit-scared whilst in paragliding you spend most of your time in a very dangerous situation feeling quite safe.
And that's so true.

We're insane/addicted enough to take to the air in our oversized shopping bags with a couple of strings attached like this:

 2003_04_18-under-wing.jpg

and then we regularly bunch up parts of our wings while flying to reduce lift. As long as things are bunched up symmetrically on both sides results are benign. However, for my upcoming intermediate license practical I'll have to show that I can deal with asymmetric collapses, too, so I played around a bit with inducing such collapses (you reef in hard on the front riser lines on one side, that half of the wing goes slack and floppy like a real shopping bag and you brace for the more-or-less violent turn and loss of lift). Interesting.

One of the hangies nicknamed "T-Bone" because of his initials has recently switched to paragliders - which immediately got him rechristened "TeaBag", as that's what the other hangies think of what he is flying now :-)

The weather on Monday wasn't too flash so I slept in, but the addiction got the better of me and I drove up the hill, and It was Good. Two nice arvo ridge soaring flights, both with good face landings at the end.

Other People had more interesting landings, as per the picture below: look for the glider in the middle of the road. Its pilot had misjudged his final, bounced off a car's hood (bumping it) and landed on the road. Another reason why only fools park in this particular spot.

 2004_04_26-beechmont-busy.jpg ian crawling off the car

After that a few pilots had...interesting launches, too, but I myself had a perfect record for the day.

[ published on Tue 27.04.2004 23:38 | filed in interests/flying | ]

The Easter weekend Andrew ran the Easter Bunnies WE comp at Killarney, 160k west from here. And I got to second place!
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[ published on Sat 17.04.2004 00:37 | filed in interests/flying | ]
gin02web

(The picture above shows Phil Hystek, my instructor and mentor.)

After years and years of longing I've finally found the time to do a paragliding course in the beginning of 2002. It took me about four weeks (one full week and some weekends) to achieve the first licence for it. Since then I've spent most of the flyable weekends (which means almost all) on the hills around here, either flying, parawaiting or lugging the pack up the hills again.

Currently I'm also running the net presence of the local club, the Canungra Hang Gliding Club (which despite its name also caters to paraglider pilots).

So far I'm still alive and I'm really enjoying this challenging sport.

[ published on Mon 12.01.2004 00:25 | filed in interests/flying | ]

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