Oz Report

The Ramp

Fix the ramp (Henson s Gap ramp, TN)

oliver gregory <<olliettt1955>> writes:

If you have ever flown from our great RAMP or ever hope to, we need your help now!  Y'all send in the bucks!  The Tree Toppers are fund raising to get our great radial ramp rebuilt.  It is the most recognizable hang gliding launch in the world, but it needs a lot of work.  We have accepted a bid to replace the old wooden trusses under the radial portion with rolled steel beams that will tie in with the present steel beams under the flat portion.

We need to replace the decking as well.  The bid for the steel radial portion is $15,300.  The decking will be about $3000 and TTT labor will replace the decking.  Overall cost is projected to be $20,000.  We are raising money, but still have a ways to go!  We have many pledges, but need your checks!  Here's a list of the Ramp Fund contributors who've sent in checks:

Steve Lee <<tttprez>> wrote: If you made a pledge to re-vamp the ramp but have not mailed your money yet, please send the funds now.  The club has received donations from the following members:

• Ollie Gregory (BOD member)
• Buddy Cutts (BOD member)
• Jeff and Allie Dodgen (BOD members)
• Steve and Kathy Lee (BOD members)
• Keith Atkins (BOD member)
• Steve (Flytec) Kroop (member)
• Nate Newkirk (member)
• Ray Helman (member)
• Terry and Linda Presley (members)
• Donald Banas (member)
• Phil Brown (member)
• Kinsley Sikes (member)
• Tom Primavera (member)

Show your support for the #1 club in America by sending your donation to: Re-vamp the ramp: TTT, PO Box 1286, Dunlap,TN, 37327, Attention Bill Colvin (Interim Treasurer)

We need your help!  You can send donations for the Revamp the Ramp project to the address on the TTT website.  www.treetoppers.org or www.tennesseetreetoppers.org.  We are about to pull the trigger on the construction and will need to cover the start up costs very soon.  Thanks in advance for all your help.  We are in need, but we know our flying friends will help us get this great job done!

Click here to donate whatever you can:

You can go to the website, or send checks marked for the TTT Ramp Fund to TTT Attention Bill Colvin interim treasurer PO Box 1286 Dunlap, TN 37327

Come join us for our Mayhem Mini Meet with Team Challenge like tasks, Arkansas Drop Streamer contests, spot landing contests and a great covered dish dinner provided by the locals.  We'll have great prizes for the winners and costs will be nominal ($25 to enter).  All proceeds will go toward furthering our many projects to promote hang gliding at the #1 hang gliding club in America!  Look forward to more information on Tree Topper activities soon.

The Oz Report has sent $200 to the fund.

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Hanging out in Mudgeeraba (means swamp)

Close to Beechmont and Mt.  Tamborine (Beechmont, QLD, Australia) (Mudgeeraba, QLD, Australia)

http://goldcoasthgpg.com.au

We are staying in a room at Raef's house (one of three available for rental), which is not far from the launch sites near Canungra.  We are up from the Gold Coast (as you can see using the link above) and down a bit from Beechmont and Mt.  Tamborine.  It's about half an hour to Beechmont and similar to Mt.  Tamborine.

You launch from Beechmont in south east or east south east conditions, and Mt.  Tamborine when there is a west component.  Looks like it is on for the next three days, with the hot days being Sunday and Monday.  Jonny just flew back from New Zealand, missing the last day of the Nationals as it looked bad for the rain there and it looks good for flying at Beechmont.  He said be ready to be at launch at 7:30 AM on Saturday.  Be ready to go big distances on any of the three days.

We're enjoying our stay here visiting with Lee and Kathy as well as Judy Durand.  John's got a new heavy duty massage chair (for his birthday).  After pounding in hard the other day in the long grass, he can use it.  We had a great time in it.

We are enjoying our stay with Raef and Tracy (his wife), with only a wireless server missing (we plug into the ADSL server) and Belinda and I have to take turns.  Raef is great cook (his mother bought a restaurant half a year ago) as well as being the president of the Cunangra Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club.

If you are coming to the Gold Coast and want to go hang gliding, check in with Raef and stay at his place if you like.  See the URL above.

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Looking around

Going through the streets of Boise in panoramic view in Google (Boise, Idaho)

See here.

Discuss Looking at the Oz Report forum   link»

Big sharks

Flying through the air

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/17/eashark117.xml

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Flying from Beechmont - swinging for the fence

(This topic is in: Feb.19 Feb.18 )

Launching really early (Beechmont, QLD, Australia) (Mudgeeraba, QLD, Australia)

http://goldcoasthgpg.com.au

http://ozreport.com/ozweather.php

I'd called Jonny Durand Jr.  on Sunday morning at 7 AM, and following his advice made sure that I got to the Beechmont launch at 8:10 AM (7:10 AM Day Light Savings Time, which most of you use for summer hours, but which is not used here in Queensland).  I was there first (other than Matt, a paraglider pilot who was still sitting in his car as the wind was too strong), and the wind was 19 mph on launch gusting to 23 mph.  On the previous day, we got there early also, with the winds at 20 mph gusting to 25 or 28 mph.  No one flew on that day.

But the winds seemed to be quite a bit less than on Saturday (the tall trees under the high voltage lines next to launch weren't roaring as they had on Saturday) and soon Jonny was there and said it was time to setup and fly.  I was a bit concerned about flying given the strength of the winds, the cloud base at 3,000' (the launch is 1,800'), the apparently likelihood of rotor in the bomb out LZ in front of launch but behind a high range of hills, the fact that the sky was almost completely grey with cu bottoms, and my unfamiliarity with the site (in spite of checking it out with various pilots and on Google Earth).

I was about ten minutes behind Jonny setting up and he got off before me.  I wasn't going trying to be slow, it was just that I wasn't quite as motivated to get going.  Jonny got up in ridge lift and worked the bowl to the left a bit before getting 800' over launch and heading over the back.

I got out and up soon after (9:09 AM) and worked the ridge lift until I heard from Belinda that Jonny had gone over at 2,600' and that the guideline was to leave the hill at 3,000'.  They were concerned that Jonny had landed behind the hill.  Raef and his brother had just arrived at launch and were setting up.  Other pilots would come later.

I waited around at 600' over launch until I found a nice thermal and took up to cloud base at 3,100' drifting in it over the back.  Now the Beechmont launch is on a thin plateau, only a couple of kilometers wide and you quickly find yourself over a narrow valley, then over a lower range, then over the next valley and up against a hill side that is at about the same level as the Beechmont launch.  I headed for Hinch Cliff which is the hill side to the northwest and a turnpoint in the Canungra club's list (you can down load the list here).  This was a recommended spot to get up.

Down to 1,300', a mere 800' over the valley floor I started working ridge lift and broken up thermals thinking about the ridges upwind of me and not wanting to land in the narrow valley below.  The sky had opened up and there were lots of little cu's around.  Belinda and Laura had spotted Jonny getting up here but he was no longer around when I got there.

It took a while but finally I found another nice thermal and drifted with it over the back for almost two kilometers climbing to 3,600'.  There was a thin range of hills behind me (to the west) with a larger hill in the middle of the range.  I had heard that this larger hill was the hang out of a notoriously evil Wedge Tail eagle that had shredded many gliders, and as I was plenty high, I avoided that hill and flew directly into the next valley, a large open flat area (finally) south of Beaudesert.

The wind was averaging about fifteen to eighteen mph out of the southeast.  I had heard earlier from Jonny that it was thirty knots, but thankfully it wasn't.  I really appreciated getting onto the flats (although there were plenty of hills including the Great Dividing Range ahead) as the thermals smoothed out, there was clear landing areas, and the fear of Mr.  Rotor subsided.  Unfortunately, it also meant that there weren't obvious spots to go to find lift, although there were plenty of thin cu's overhead.  It was raining twenty kilometers to the north.

The valley was 20 kilometers wide with open farm areas.  It was as green as Ireland (or western Washington).  The last time I had flown in this area it was brown and devoid of plant life.  I searched around for lift under cu's and in the lower hills in the valley but didn't find much.  It looked like I might land so I headed out to a landable area that unfortunately was under a blue spot in the sky.  As I approached I saw the wind go ninety degrees to the prevailing wind across a small dam (pond).  I headed right for the area that it was indicating and sure enough there was the first good thermal in the valley.  It got me to 4,000', the highest I had been in the flight.  Still no sign of Jonny.  It was 10:15 (9:15 your time) and I was a mere thirty one kilometers from launch.

I now had another small range to cross before the next wide open valley and then the high peaks of the Great Dividing Range and the next turnpoint south of Toomwoomba (on a plateau just over the mountains).  After I got high I headed for the cu's over a small but sharp southwest/northeast ridge line.  The highway west went around this ridgeline but the sky near the highway was blue.  I wanted to get under the good looking cu's.

I had heard that the area along this ridge line to the south and north was likely to be behind closed gates, at least that is what I remember.  I dove back into the ridge heading west south west (down wind) under the black clouds.  No lift.

I started off 1000' over the ridge line, but down to 2,700'.  I lost a mere 400' going almost two kilometers down it, but I was going way off the highway into territory where I didn't know how long it would take me to get out.

After going under a bunch of clouds and finding nothing I turned around when it seemed that I was too far back in.  I loss 800' coming back out against the wind watching the one landing area that I knew I could make (lots of trees back up in the valleys).  Finally I had to peel off on the lee side to be sure that I could make it to an LZ.

It turns out that Jonny had already landed not too far away and was watching me.  He had gone on the lee side also and had his butt kicked.  He went and found the biggest nearby LZ and landed.

I braced for Mr.  Rotor but it wasn't too bad (or not as bad as I thought it would be).  I ran away over the trees as far away from the ridge line as I could, first coming over one field that looked okay, but was still close to the hill, then going over to another smaller field, with the wind blowing like stink, which allowed me to soar a little knoll at the down wind end of it.

Then I jumped back to the next field and then one more behind it which had an uphill slope into the wind and was the biggest field so far.  It turned into a smooth landing in light winds.  I walked the glider out a kilometer to the highway and Belinda found me.  I had landed an hour and twenty two minutes after launching going a mere forty one kilometers.

The sky was filling up with thick clouds from the north, but still it looked good to the south and west.  Jonny called me later to say that he had watched me fly on the ridge line and that an hour later the other pilots who got off behind us were flying over his head.

Maybe tomorrow.

It sure does seem strange flying here.  You launch in pretty high winds.  The sky is grey.  It is very early in the morning.  You've got to get over a large mountain range quite a ways away to the west and over little ranges before that.  You've got to worry about Mr.  Rotor.  The cloud base is very low at launch, but rises as you go west.  You really just want to get out onto the flats which are 130 kilometers away where the good lift and high cloud bases are.  You are looking for the east winds to help you go far past Dalby.  It is emerald green below you.

In addition, there are monsoons to the north, not all that far away and towns are getting flooded.  It's cloudy all day at the beach and at launch.  Other pilots were able to get to Toowoomba (130 km) and Warren Simmsen apparently flew past Toowoomba trying to win the Canungra Challenge.

The Queensland RASP showed less lift than you needed to stay up at 10 AM, and we were in the air an hour earlier and staying up.  The XC Maps showed even less lift.  They both got the winds about right.  They both called cloud base about 1000' too low.

The flight.

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Drought here

All the rain is to our east and north (Dynamic Flight)

Rohan Holtkamp at Dynamic Flight <dynamic> writes:

We have been looking at the news reports with some degree of envy regarding rainfall on the east coast the last few months!  It has been totally dry here, no rain this month at all and only a few drops that failed to settle the dust in January.  Many dams and most lakes are absolutely dusty dry, the fields are bare and the winds blows dust up most days.  We are just 250 km south west of Mt. Buffalo down here in central Victoria.

Not all is grim though, we are getting good airtime and teaching a lot of new pilots to fly.

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Beechmont - it continues to amaze

There is not supposed to be any lift according to the RASP (Beechmont, QLD, Australia) (Mudgeeraba, QLD, Australia)

http://goldcoasthgpg.com.au

http://ozreport.com/ozweather.php

It's cloudy, the moisture hangs in the air, the cloud base is low, there are mid level clouds also.  The winds are pretty strong at launch, but not too strong.  It looks like there are plenty of mid level clouds and low hanging clouds out to the west.  How could there be any lift at 8:30 AM (7:30 AM daylight savings time)?  The ground is soaked.

The 10 AM Queensland RASP is showing less lift than is needed to keep a glider up in the air (the graphic is light and dark blue).  How could we possibly stay up in this?  The 1 PM lift forecast is mottled, multi-colored, with spots of blue, greens and yellow all mixed up together east of the Great Dividing Range.  All you can tell from it is that there will be a lot of clouds around blocking out the sun but perhaps sitting on top of good lift either that or raining on you.

But the winds forecast looks pretty accurate from what we see when we get on launch, so the RASP is good for that.  Actually, it's good for the lift forecast too, but you've got to do a bit of "interpretation," which in the time honored fashion of the wise man school of meteorology, is take a forecast compare it with what happens on that day, figure that on a future day given a similar forecast it will forecast a similar day as happened in the past, but not necessarily what the forecast forecasted.  Got that?

Any way, the RASP models should be handled a bit differently here than they should be at Forbes or Mt. Beauty, where they were stunningly accurate (especially relative to the wise men at Mt. Beauty who were actually asked to do the forecasting).

So still the mystery, what is up with this place?  It's just off the coast, but its cracking at 7 AM (not on the days that I've been here, but on some days).  It's got good lift at 8:30 AM on days where clouds cover 80 percent or more of the sky, with mid level clouds that should be blocking the heating.

The Beechmont launch faces south east and we are here, of course, on days where the wind is out of the southeast.  So that helps for sure.  But there are cu's forming in front of launch and you get up in the cu's and you can get to cloud base in six minutes (1,400' over the 1,800' launch) and you are on your way over the back playing with the wispies (the cu's are only a few feet thick).

On Monday Raef, Belinda and I got to launch at 8 o'clock and soon Jonny and Martin joined us.  Martin lives up at Beechmont also, like Jonny.  I was already setting up when Jonny arrived as I didn't want him to get ahead of me this time.

I was off first and just kept climbing the whole time to cloud base.  There were thin cu's going down wind for a few kilometers so I decided just to hang at cloud base and go down wind under them.  I now knew where Hinch Cliff was and with this good glide it was easy to get there with 2,300' instead of 1,300' like the day before.

Jonny, who launch about three minutes after me, saw me go, came after me, but was lower and had to stop at the low ridge before Hinch Cliff to get up.  At Hinch Cliff it was but a few minutes and I was up to 3,200' and drifting over the back toward Beaudesert.  The wind was about 14 mph out of the southeast.

There were cu's south of Beaudesert and I hung out at 2,200' (MSL - 2,000' AGL) until I found a good black bottomed one that was drifting to the northwest.  I could see Jonny about two kilometers behind me slowly climbing on the ridge line.

I was climbing well just east of Beaudesert and got back up into the wispies, moving to the side to stay out of the cloud and get around some lower portions.  I was going across he ground at 90 km/h, just to stay out of the cloud and head for the next one.  There were lots of cu's about and mid level clouds also.  Jonny was behind and below me racing along also just below the lower level clouds.

Topping up over a tip, to 3,900' I headed for the hills where I had gone down on the previous day.  There were black bottom clouds along the highway, but lots of shade beneath them.  There were some cu's and more sun along the ridge lines to the left.  I first headed for the ridge, then for the valley, then back to the ridge as I wasn't getting any lift under the black clouds in the shade.

Jonny knew just where to go and had headed left up the ridge line.  I saw him getting up a few kilometers away from me, when I was low over the end of the ridge.  I moved up the ridge line and started working light rough lift that averaged 60 fpm.  Jonny said it was often better on the lee side of this ridge, and I should have stayed where I was and worked my way up, but I jumped over the back and didn't find much.

I was able to glide down wind to a nice field though and land as Jonny worked an even smaller ridge line just a few hundred feet above me.  I landed a few kilometers short of Boonah and Jonny decided to end his flight a little later west of Kalbar, before diving deep into the Great Dividing Range.  The sky was dark, and the cloud base was low, and it didn't look all that great for getting over the range.

It's been overcast all afternoon here at the coast, with little bits of rain.  I assume that it is just the heating of the ground by the sun combined with the cool air that comes off the ocean that makes it so unstable here in the morning (and too unstable in the afternoon), just like an Zapata, with its early morning cu's.  Lately there have been a lot of clouds to the east over the ocean blocking the early morning sunlight (so we don't get to launch at 7 AM (again 6 AM daylight savings time)).

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