Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Budgewoi Dune Gooning

The weather was looking good for a trip up to the Central Coast which is about 1.5 hrs north of Sydney. There was a group of us from Sydney heading up there along with a bunch of locals. We arrived around 11:30am and it was already on and many were flying. Launch at Budgewoi We quickly checked out the site asked questions to the locals as most of us had never flown here before. I had a quick chat to Cameron about flying my Litespeed RS 3.5 there as I knew he had flown his C4 there before. He told me it would fine except it was off to the south just a little and to be careful. I took all of this on board and quickly set up with Wayne, Rob and a few others who had made the journey up there. Rob has only 10 hrs of airtime is the only grand child of Bill Moyes to ever learn to fly. We made sure he knew what to do and threw him off the hill to watch him fly like a natural. Rob in the Malibu 166 I could not wait much longer and grabbed my glider and jumped off the small dunes. It was amazing to see how well the Litespeed handled the dunes and the possibilities to be had. After a few runs up and down I decided to land and ask about the potential of a XC flight. I talked to Cameron and he said if you can get up to the big hills to the north you could potentially fly all the way to Newcastle. He did tell me that it was something that no one had ever sucessfully done before. That only got me more excited but I knew that there was good odds I would land on the beach before reaching the big hills as the dunes drop down to about 2m high. Looking south towards launch with Rob flying below me. I told the boys where to come and get me from if I did not come back within the next hour. I took off raced down the ridge got to the end with not quite enough height to dive back to the big hills as there was a lagoon I needed to cross. I ended up flying back along the small dunes after comitting to the crossing. I was unable to get back up to the big dunes and landed about 1km from the closest road. I hiked my glider up the dunes as far as I could and managed to get flying again and headed back towards home. I was still not high and ended up landing again before the big dunes started. I walked up again but had a dodgy launch spot and as I took off I clipped a bush and crashed in half way down the dune. Hmm I checked the glider hoping I had broke nothing a tried again with a little bit more care this time. I got off and flew all the way back to the car where I had started from.. It was a great day and about 12 of us enjoyed the monday afternoon flying around. There were lots of Malibu's up there which was great to see. Here is a short video of some of the days activities, unfortunately I did not get my crash on video..:-(