Attila Bertok writes:

After I think 28 years coming to Forbes (except a few years when it wasn’t held) and losing at least 5 un-losable Flatlands, I finally can put this in the collection, too. Josh came 2^nd with brilliant flying and Jonny came 3^rd.

It all started as doom and gloom. The country was on fire and the smoke was delivered to us via the varying winds. Visibility was occasionally nil either due to smoke or dust or both. The first 3 days were cancelled. It surely looked like that we are going to see the worst Forbes Flatlands ever. A few pilots decided to pull out of the competition and head somewhere smoke free. I don’t blame them, time off work is quite precious for most of us. I guess any flying seems more attractive than no flying at all.

The Queensland vs NSW golf tournament was shaping up well. Some rumors mentioned cheating, but it was just some fake news.

The 4^th day our fortune turned and we woke up for a much better day, at least for a taskable one. I was one of the task setters and I must say that we’ve never faced such a challenging forecast on any previous Forbes comps, but we did our best considering the circumstances. So, on day 4 we set a task down south to Old Junee partly because the fires were burning in the mountains and a SW wind change was anticipated. Finally it turned out to be a distance task, largely due to the 1 hour delay initiated by the safety committee. I strongly disagreed with both of the half hour delays, because it didn’t improve safety, but I respected their decision. Contrary to popular belief, I didn’t call them wimps. Trent took the crown for the day pushing ahead as usual followed by Josh then Pedro. I’ve felt the day was quite turbulent, but it was partly due to the upcoming SW wind which created some convergence at first and later stopped us from completing the task. But we’ve had a day in the bank. Lukas also encountered a large brown snake which made his waiting for the retrieve car in the dark a lot less boring.

The 5^th day promised better conditions. Again, we had winds from the west, so we’ve decided on a cross wind flat triangle down south and back via a short final leg to the Bogan Gate goal which is not at all in Bogan Gate. The safety committee has obviously learned something from the day before, so we just got on with preparing instead of spreading pessimism on the ground way before setting up. On course, we encountered strong lift, most thermals were marked with dust devils. Due to the wind there was some ‘interesting’ climbs for me and this made me quite restless pushing ahead. I’ve learned from my previous day’s mistake and didn’t push too aggressively into the cross wind, but everybody did which gave me an early 10 km advantage which I’ve managed to hold the whole way and winning 1000 points for the day. Jonny came 2^nd and Filippo 3^rd. The air was very good on the final glide and despite the strong headwind everybody came in very high.

6^th day. Similar weather but the Skysight forecast seem to get it wrong every day. Cloudbase prediction usually way off, but not bad. Winds are turning out to be stronger. Windy gets it quite right. This is hindsight of course. So again, we went for a flat triangle, this time up to the north turning at Peak Hill, then back to Forbes via a turn point at the corner of the state forest east of Forbes. We had the best conditions on this day, big thermals both in size and strength. It was nice to fly with some people for a change, but it only lasted up to the 1^st turn point, after that was lonely flying again. It is my Hungarian accent, I think.

So I was flying fairly upwind and things were working out nicely until I didn’t find a strong high climb before turning at the forest. So I was quasi-ahead, but it was just that I had a longer fruitless glide. I was quite desperate to find lift turning into the strong head wind and being low, when I noticed a ninety degree wind direction change on the surface of the small ponds which told me which way to go. As soon as I hooked into the 3-4 meter lift I saw the dust picking up.

A little while later I was climbing right over the eye of our micro tornado. The dust tube of the dust devil was so perfectly formed that it was mesmerizing as well as beautiful to look straight down the pipe while going up. By this time everybody was all over me below and above, but I was happy to see that the ones above didn’t have the turn point yet, so I still had a chance to place well. I ended up winning the final glide giving me another 1000 point day, Josh came 2^nd and Rohan 3^rd. A lot of happy people arrived in goal shortly after.

7^th day. A weather change was happening. It complicated matters even further. The temperature diagram looks bad, showing a max climb to 1000m at the beginning of our flight but slightly improving later, however a blue day, for sure.

I even make a little joke about how bad the day looked like. We settled on a short 90km task to Tomigley, fearing bad conditions if we go any further north. I know it is a “pussy” task but we could only make a decision on the information we had.

Anyway, we got going and the prediction was spot on at the beginning of the task, however it was rapidly improving. I climbed out with Jonny quite well and he made a perfectly good decision by going for a large dust devil. This made it obvious to me that he wanted to go early, but I didn’t follow because I wanted to minimize risk by having people ahead of me, about which I usually don’t care. I was on the lead by ~170 points and I didn’t want to lose yet another Flatlands comp, so I hung back. I almost overdid the waiting game, because I wanted to do a better start, but finally I went with about 5 minutes deficit, but with people in front of me. Thankfully I had Lukas with me, so I wasn’t too worried.

As the task progressed I got closer and closer to the gliders in front. It was very obvious, that it is a very short task, so it was much more than just a matter of finishing, the time had to be good, too. Finally I made goal being quite sure that I had done enough. Rohan took the day by completing the task in 1:11 followed by Josh and Trent. I did 1:15 which was already 100 points less than first place, but the plan wasn’t trying to win the task today anyway.

Fun fact: 350 km to north east in Lake Keepit the Womens World Gliding Championship was going on. The very same day the task setters got it so wrong that everybody from all the 3 classes out landed. The closest pilot was 70kms from home in case someone thinks that task setting is easy!

While I am writing this it is raining outside and my mind still keeps looking down to that perfectly formed dust devil.