Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

Ebbs and I headed up on the back road from Jerry's Plains under a sky with high cyrus and I was expecting a typical inverted day. And it was, in fact you can see it in each of Billo's photos.

The thermals were typical too, with a strong side and a weak side. Or was it just that I could not find the core. Anyway there were lots of them which helped make up for the fact that they only went to about 2500ft ASL. I managed to punch through the inversion to 3500ft ASL once. Just high enough to see into the surrounding valleys and to see the fact that there was a different air mass moving in up north and triggering a lot of CUs there. This caused havoc latter in the day when we wanted to land as the wind became very twitchy. Pete was towing every one out to the hills on the eastern side of the valley. Steve Crosby and Camo circled there while Ebbs and I set up. It was cycling a bit and a lull brought them back low and just short of the strip. It also had Scott circling low around a pimple on the lee side as I pined off above him. We worked the light lift over a tractor ploughing a field until it firmed up and Scott out-climbed me and headed back to the eastern hills to join Ebbs who had just been dropped off. I drifted back closer to the strip and the rocky outcrops of the southern hills. Later Scott had drifted back up a little valley on towards the southern hills and was climbing out again with Ebbs. I saw Scott pull on a handful of rope and head straight for me. He came in real close and said hello so I pulled on a handful of rope and followed him to the northern side of the valley. We lost very little height and found that set of hills to be working too. This is where I punched through the inversion and radioed to Ebbs who was back at the eastern hills with "Evil One and Evil Two". By this time we had been in the air for over 2 hours and the thought of talons in my sail did not entice me to join Ebbs so I followed a big flock of birds in the centre of the valley until they started circling. It was such a big flock that at one stage they split in two and showed that the thermal we were in had multiple cores. They were heading further west than I wanted to go so I went back to the northern hills. When I finally decided to land I circled over the twitching wind sock for ages and still managed to land downwind to spite Alby's best efforts on the radio to get me to do otherwise. Once on the ground, having played all around the valley, I was content and happy to run the dolly for a while. And as it turned out I was not the only pilot to wack in. Millennium Dave was there and maintained at 1000ft above the strip for some time. Keiro dropped by. Actually he rang Monica and requested a fly-by. She said "That's a negative Keiro, the pattern is full" but Keiro buzzed us anyway and we all spilt our coffee. Scott took Rob for a tandem tow instruction earlier in the day and although there was some dispute very early on in the proceedings as to who's aircraft it was the experience certainly did wonders for Rob. I helped him launch solo at the end of the day and he did very well and came back to the strip to show us all how to land.