One of the unreal things about this sport is that every time you fly it's different.  Especially when you fly cross country.

Sometimes you meet some weird and wounderful characters when you land out. I was thinking of a  recent experience just after Easter:

The weather turns it ON for Task 4 and 5 at Dalby.  Most of the hang gliding pilots attending the competition realise we'd better soak up all of these strong-lift days before returning home (NSW, VIC, ACT, SA) where we won't be finding strong conditions like this for months!

Task 2 for the Dalby Big Air Comp was 80kms zig-zagging to the west. The mostly cotton farmland below had checkered sunlight, sometimes with large areas of shade that required long slow glides. I saw great pilots working ridiculously hard to make extremely low saves...sometimes getting away (Rohan), and sometimes not hooking in and landing (Jonas).

Top 3 for the day:

• Lenny Paton
• Myself
• Conrad Loten

Task 3 was amazing that we actually got to fly. There were rain patches around the tow-field, but

Day 1, Task 1.

With a low base and very overcast sky,   a short 60km down wind task with 1 Turn point was set.  

Shortly after launch the sky started to improve. Sweet Cu's started at 4500ft and climbs to 5500ft were found on course. After a major fark up with my start times I had  a real fun fly to goal.  The sky seemed to really cycle today, maybe due to the percentage of clouded sky/ shadowed ground at the time?? Rohan, Jonas, Adam, John Smith, Nick,Cam had fast times.

Day 2, Task 2

You gotta Dream!

After finishing our Aerotow Clinic at the Fly-In, Dave, Patrick, Benny (who drove) and I started on our own free-flying rally.  It's a plan something Dave and I had been scheming for months...and it all came together!

Slide show below.

Too windy to fly safely today so we hung- out at  the Durand's beautiful home until, On Big Jon's recommendation  we decided to go for a serious walk.  There's a very steep remote Canyon close by and getting to it is just the beginning.
In hindsight i think he was taking the piss ;)

Did I mention how fun Hang gliding road trips are!!

Today we woke up in Manilla and with the strong SSW winds we had Mt Borah to ourselves.

It was quite rough but very doable and after a long Scratch around I got a low save^? that turned into 1000ft/min which took me on a white Knuckle ride to 6000ft. A few climbs later I was over Barrabah and

Easter Friday

A bigger crowd turned up at Gulgong air strip today than the Royal Easter show. And everyone was super pumped! I guess they checked the red hot forecast! The weather looked about as good as you could hope for in April, so it should be a fun 4 days!

Being a young hang gliding pilot I though it would be cool to introduce a few of the young ambitious pilots to look out for.

I recently got the chance to catch up with Jeff Galvin. Not only is he an amazingly talented pilot, he's got style for miles, looks that turn heads, a sense of humor that could tame a wild cheetah and an all round nice guy but is defiantly some to look out for!

Jeff on the way to Salt lake city