Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Gulgong Classic Day 2

Another great day with the forecast of stonger winds we fly north to Manilla 209kms away. The day started off slow and the launch line was taking forever to get into the air. I finally got off the ground after waiting in 40 degrees for 1.5 hrs. I eventually got off and climbed up to the inversion 7,000ft asl. My headset was not plugged all the way in so I was not sure where everyone else was. I figured out the problem and soon heard Dave on the radio saying he had wound down and landed with Adam. I did not know that Adam had actually broke his glider the one named (Jonny beater). This is the glider that Ricky Duncan flew and beat me on up in Canungra. After some violent spins Adam was seperated from the glider. Sounds very similar to Andy who did this a couple of years ago at Forbes. It is said that he fell for maybe 10 seconds feet first before throwing his parachute. His parachute with stood the free fall which is believed to be a High Energy, one of the only chutes tested for free fall openings. Adam was flown to John Hunter hospital in Newcastle where Conrad is looking after him in intensive care. He is in good spirts and is conscious with a seperated rib cage. Early reports say no spinal damage but he has a collapsed lung with some fluids inside. Adam was flying very well placing 4th on the first day. There were about 4 pilots that landed to assist Adam, we thank all of guys for looking after our dear friend. I eventually started and just took it easy as it was not that pleasant in the air. There were some very rough thermals and felt like a day to tumble. I made the turnpoint low and then got up to high for the first time as we now reached the clouds. Base was very high not that I ever reached it but the sail plane guys said it was like 14,000ft. This made our last leg straight downwind for 145kms. There were some climbs more than 1,000 FPM and we did this leg very fast. I think I averaged over 90 KPH and on final I saw ground speeds of 150 KPH on my GPS. Atilla won the day, Curt will be second and I should be third about 10 minutes behind Atilla. Scott did good finishing with Curt but he started 15 mins before. we had a total of 8 pilots in goal including our up and coming Canungra boy Joel. He did his PB flight in so many ways and to make a 209km goal is very impressive. Today the weather is looking similar again today so we should be in for another great day. :-)