Thursday, December 16, 2010

A day out at Tambo

After early phone calls from Trev and Flocky saying they wanted to go flying it was off to Tambo. We arrived there and set up ready to go by 10:30am. We waited for some clouds to get closer as there were not many cycles coming through launch. We had just had some rain the day before so things still needed to dry out. Rob launched on his paraglider and had a slow descent to the bombout after scratching for awhile. Another paraglider launched and was also below ridge height when I ran off in Gabor's glider. I was out test flying for the day and flew without instruments for a challenge. I got low below the point and headed out towards the bombout and hit a thermal and worked it for awhile before it kicked. Flocky came in below me and big trev was stuck on launch as the wind was lightly over the back. After we had climbed out Trev took off and spend a long time low near the bombout before climbing out to base which was around 4,000ft asl. Flocky and I headed west towards his house where Ant, Rangi and Gabor were working. Flocky got a little low there and landed in his backyard to make sure the boys were working hard building his house. I flew down the chicken shed ridge half way then turned back for Flocky's. It was looking like a good place to land since Gabor was there to watch his own glider land while he was working away. Barney a usal suspect on the hill. The wind was SW which is perfect for landing there however it seemed to be NE on the windsock. Every now and again it would die down and turn west again. I was above waiting for that to happen and then did a high speed past the boys building Flocky's house. The wind has switched again back to the NE in the middle of the field. So I came in crosswind cross slope for a nice landing. Check the video out below of the days activities.