Last Weekend in September flying Tamborine

The weekend of the 29th and 30th of September was the start of the Canungra Cup paragliding competition. Jon Durand who is in the top ten ranked hang glider pilots in the world has ended up being in the Paragliding comp as well as the hang gliding comp this year. Unfortunately conditions on launch got unsafe so most of the paragliders never got to launch on Saturday, including Jonny.

The goal was Rathdowney and one paraglider made it apparently. Anyway quite a few of us hang glider pilots managed to launch and have good fly on a windy blue sky day. We also tried to get to Rathdowney and some pilots did and flew back towards Tamborine. The headwind was very strong and our progress towards Rath was very slow. I managed to get about 20km from Tamborine and had a nice two step landing on my feet in the Kerry Valley. Joel picked me up just after I'd finished packing up.

Cam setting up. Rangi to far right.

Sunday was similar conditions with a strong W/NW wind. About 13 of us hangies launched and the day was cancelled for the paragliders. So poor Jonny has yet to fly in the comp and the rest of the week may not be too good either. The headwind seemed even stronger than Saturday on Sunday and we had no goal named as well.

Henk launching

There's a hangie and a paraglider in this shot somewhere.

I managed to get across the valley ok and made it to the model airfield (about 7km from launch). So with no where really to go I pulled out my camera to take some pics, but I think my camera has developed a fear of heights as it wouldn't work properly at all. So here is a pic of the the Witheren range from about 5,000ft. It seemed to work fine once I was back on the ground though.

Over Witheren Range at around 5,000ft

Jon Senior came over to my thermal and I asked where he was headed. He said a few had landed at the Turf farm near Flockys and was headed there. So I decided to go there too only I didn't make it and had another good landing in field just near Flocky's place. Joel and some of the other low hour pilots, such as Simo, Dan, Courtney, Rob and Ant, had some good flying at Tambo also.

The field I landed in with Witheren Range in the background.

Overall it was a hot weekend with some good flying and some great thermals up to 7,500ft. By the way I'm now wearing knee pads and my knee is healing up nicely.

The Canungra Classic Hang gliding is now less than two weeks away, so Joel and I are looking forward to flying in that.