Joel and myself decided to drive to Canungra to meet up with some other club members because the wind was light and we weren't sure which launch to go to. We thought it would be Tambo and Joel said that we should have just gone straight there. This was because we ended up waiting for Rod who had a meeting in Canungra which we were told by Henk and Ronald would last a half hour, so we loaded our gliders on his 4wd (we had permission to do this) thinking he would be straight over and we could go up the hill together very soon. Well one and half hours after we got to Canungra, we finally headed up to Tambo launch. This meant we had to rush to set up before the wind came over the back. And it did about 5 mins before we had finished setting up.
It was a very muggy day and we were completely wet with sweat when we got into our harnesses. Ronald did a virtually no wind launch and just got away. I waited with Big Jon for a cycle to come up the face as the breeze was from the NE now. After a hot wait of about 15 mins thinking I was going to have to pack up on launch, a light puff came up the hill and I knew this was my only chance so I ran as fast as I could. I got away safely and only found light lift. I was gradually loosing height. I got really low and decided to head to the landing field. Half way there I got a good one and took it to cloud base.
Joel managed to get off the hill too, thankfully and also found a thermal to cloud base. We headed off along Misery and Joel got low on Witheren where he got attacked by that bloody Wedgie. He managed to get back up to about 5,000ft and headed off into the Kerry Valley. Unfortunately he found only light lift after that and landed in the Kerry. He then had to walk about 5 or 6km before getting a lift back to Canungra which he was obviously not happy about.
Meanwhile I struggled across the Kerry not getting over 3,500ft until finally finding some good lift on the West side of the Jinbroken Range. I got to within glide of Rathdowney and settled on just landing there and having a beer in the pub. But then I found a good thermal just 700m from where I was going to land. I took it up to about 3,600ft where I saw a Wedgie who seemed to be in better lift than I. I went in under him, which I think pissed him off, because he then started to attack my wing. He got me twice and I could see some small holes in my topsail through my undersail. 4 to be exact. As they were quite small, I was not worried about the integrity of my sail. I had wanted to try and get over the border to try and find Dan who I'd heard on the radio had made it into NSW. But after my encounter with the Wedgie and the path ahead seemed to be lacking landing options and clouds, I decided the Rath pub was a nice option.
After my encounter with the Wedgie I still had about 3,500ft to loose so I decided to do a couple of aerial maneuvers to help loose height. Then I thought that it would be a good time to try something stupid, but something I've wanted to do for a while, a loop. I checked where my chute was. I checked the ground downwind of where I was, then I did a couple of wing overs pulled my vg on full, pulled the bar right back levelled out and let bar go out. Shit what I am I doing I thought as I saw nothing but sky. Then it got worse, I felt my hangstrap go loose. I pushed the bar out in a desperate attempt to get my nose pointing to the ground. My feet hit the sail and then suddenly my hangstrap went taught again. Thank god, I thought. Well, I'd done it, but only just. Yeh hah! Definitely the stupidest most dangerous thing I'd ever done. Gee it felt good.
I then continued to spiral down and landed cleanly at Rath, packed up under a shady tree. I checked my sail damage. Not too bad. A few patches should fix it. Then walked to the shop for burger. Had two schooners in the pub before Joel arrived and then we had to find his glider somewhere in the Kerry and drove home. Just another days hangliding.
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