Date: February 28th, 2007
The thunderstorms started boiling about 7:00 a.m., and the first light rain just drove us under the awning at 9:15. The forecast is for improved weather starting tomorrow, we’ll see. It’s pretty cool to watch the landscape around here green up–after the worst drought in a century the rain is certainly needed. It definitely feels more like northern California here this morning than the blazing hot Oz we’ve come to love… We snuck a task in two days ago when I was sure we wouldn’t get one so anything is possible, but it doesn’t look good.
A friend of mine wrote and said that I should ignore the politics at the Worlds, the politics just get in the way of a good time. He’s right. Individually, most people in paragliding are really good people. But somehow it tends to get sideways a lot at competitions–I’m going to just ignore the politics.
Looks like a full slate of running, training on the local swing set and work today…
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 27th, 2007
Despite the sprinkles in the morning and the general air of, “No way in hell we’re going flying,” all of a sudden we’re up on top of the hill as the air clears out. I hiked up today, needed to spin the lungs hard, it’s been a while. Then I wanted to check my speed system out, so I went for a flap while the usual launch delay happened. Got back up on launh just as a task was decided upon, but a little rushed. Launched and spent the next 45 minutes doing circles at cloud base with the entire field–it was an individual start, and nobody wanted to go first. I think individual starts in paragliding are stupid, and this idiocy was compounded today by the fact that there were no points for leading or departure, so basically everyone was waiting at base for people to leave so the field could use the early pilots as thermal markers. I held off as long as I could, and finally gave in when Bill B. wanted to go so we did. It didn’t work out for us so well, we landed after only a couple of thermals. About 15 minutes later the first monster gaggle flew over our heads, followed about an hour and a half later by another massive gaggle. I was having a rest in the shade while enjoying a long hike so I got to watch it. There was some poetic justice in that the gaggle that waited for most of the field to get on course didn’t make goal as the day shut down. This puts most of the “top” pilots in a points hole for the rest of the meet. I have to laugh, what we call the “pimps” were owned today.
Individual starts, especially using the old GAP system without leading or departure points as we did today, annoy the hell out of me. There are various arguments for using them, mainly that it becomes more “strategic,” but the field starts acting like the bicyclists at the start of a veldrome race instead of going flying. I can not honestly think of one situation where an individual start is preferrable to having a mass air start. Some people like individual starts because it theoretically spreads the field out more, but the goal of a paragliding competition is to put all the pilots into the same mass of air and have at it. It’s called racing, not dicking about endlessly… Another reason people often want individual starts is to “reduce congestion,” but all that ends up happening normally is that the entire field circles above launch waiting for someone else to start. And if the day is so poor that people can’t effectively get up and fly then perhaps it’s a junk day… I’m annoyed by landing early, but when the entire field is circling at base literally for hours waiting for people to get out on course to use as thermal markers, well, that’s just retarded. Tomorrow is another day, and my goal is to become one with the individual start style, to be a good competitor you must deal with what is presented.
The good news from today is that Nicole made goal, and did so relatively quickly. Keith landed short (he went even earlier than I did, I wish I had gone with him but was trying to exercise patience), so Nicole is the top Canadian today, nice work Nicole! Josh and Tom made goal also, so North America is doing OK here.
The FAI/pilot politics continue, there are soap operas to be written about all of that. I’m starting to feel that perhaps big PG comps are missing out on the best parts of flying. I was reprimanded today for flying before the task–for me the flying is what I’m here for, the compettion is a reason to come fly in Oz. I knew the task would be delayed several times, might as well go flying while waiting to go flying, no?
Oz continues to amaze, saw a whole flock of parrots today as I walking out, plus the tip end of a snake and something that took a chunk out of my back when I lay down in the shade to rest. One thing for sure is that I’ll be back here to Oz, it’s got something that is special and good in both the people and landscape.
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 26th, 2007
The Paragliding World Championships are underway, but we’ve yet to fly a task. People are starting to joke about the “Curse of Pinzgau,” a town in Austria that hosted the Worlds a few years back. They flew two tasks there in dangerous conditions in two weeks… On the other hand we’re getting caught up on work, running, rain, etc. The locals love the rain as there’s been a serious drought on for years. When we arrived it was pretty brown, now it looks nice and green, a bit more like the province’s name of New South Wales. There’s even a fair amount of water in the formerly bucolic creek behind the campground.
There is, despite the lack of flying, an incredible amount of nationalistic bitching going on at the “team leader” and FAI levels. Various teams are conniving ways to get more of their pilots higher in the launch line priority, or whatever they can possibly do to improve potential position in the air. Our team leader, Nicole, comes back from the morning Team Leader meeting with tales that would warm the heart of the most cold-blooded lawyer. I look at the whole “National” competition concept a bit sideways–I’m proud to represent Canada and do my best for the team, but I’d like to think this is a more of a global gathering of good pilots to fly at a high level. Working the system for team advantage is somewhere between laughable and retarded. If we don’t get to fly soon this competition will end up in Manilla’s courthouse, or turn into a contest to race team vehicles up and down the launch road. We’ve got the best driver, Dave, so game on.
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 25th, 2007
After an insane week of flying, the best I’ve had in many years, the weather turned just in time for the first day of the World Championships. The development was big as we rigged up on launch, and a few of the wind dummies were getting parked up in high winds over launch. Hmmmm…. I decided to keep my flight clothes off and hang out in the shade. Five minutes before the launch window there were relatively few pilots in the launch lines and even fewer on launch actually ready to go. Keith was dressed and ready to go when they cancelled the day, and expressed his displeasure. I noticed that many of the older pilots hadn’t even got their gliders out… The wind went ballastic as we drove down, so a good decision.
Yesterday afternoon we were treated to an absolutely insane thunder storm–one of our tents was floating. This morning Bill and I had a run in the cool conditions, pretty nice to actually feel slightly cool on the morning run. Conditions today look wet, we’ll see if they send us up the hill or not. I’m still worked from the last week of flying, these rest days are nice. There’s a surprising amount to do here even on non-flying days–yesterday I spent the afternoon tweaking my risers with Seoung from the Gin team and a bunch of other stuff. Today I’ll update the Gravsports web site for ice conditions, sorry to be late on that, had some other writing etc. to get done.
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 22nd, 2007
We’re heading up the hill in a minute for the first practice day of the worlds, but a few wrap-up thoughts:
Our driver, Daniel, did a great job chasing us down and getting us back without hitting any Roos. Having a good driver is really important in an XC comp, thanks to him.
Flying here is incredible. We’ve had an epic, stonking week of conditions. Yesterday it rained hard in Manilla for the first time in weeks, but people still flew until early afternoon. This site is right up there with the best I’ve ever flown anywhere in the world, a combination of flat-land flying and hill terrain. It reminds me most of east Texas in terms of topography (hill country area).
The locals here have been super-friendly. They don’t exactly speak English as we know it, but getting to understand the dialect is part of the fun.
Our team, team Dirka Dirka (if you haven’t seen the movie Team America: World Police then rent it right away) placed second. Pretty solid. Funny to hear all the super-serious team names read off, then “And in second place, Team Dirka Dirka!”). Part of the fun of any comp is hanging out with the people there, it was fun to fly and hang with Keith, Tom and Nicole.
This wasn’t an XC comp like any I’ve ever been to–the field was extremely strong. The spread between first and 20th was only a few hundred points. It’s one thing to drift downwind for 6 hours, quite another to be holding as much bar as possible on every glide and working desperately to max climb rates. Each day felt like a task because it was on course line, and the competition was fierce.
I’m simply blown away by the level of flying I’ve seen here. When I show up to compete in North America I know there are maybe 10 pilots flying at a pretty high level; here in this comp there were at least 30 flying at a level I didn’t know existed. I learned from them and am happy with my result (eighth place and close in points to the podium), it would be arrogant to expect to be able to beat these guys with the relatively limited competitition experience I have. Part of becoming a better pilot is to admit my own limitations and then try to expand them. We can all start thinking we’re pretty good when we look around at our local scene, but the reality is that the true world level of competition flying is VERY high. Take any good competition pilot and put him in an XC comp like this and he will rock it. The same isn’t true of XC pilots (I’d put myself into that category) at a world-class competition. As with any sport, competition defines the pinnacle of pure technical skill. That said, going fast all the time is not what paragliding is always about to me. In fact, I’m not sure it’s the best part of the sport at all. For me flying is a method to explore the atmosphere, new places/people and my own head. Competition is extremely useful for honing the technical skills of moving well in the atmosphere. When XC flying you can make a poor decision and blame it on luck, but when you’re racing with 30 other pilots who make a different decision and do better, well, obviously you made a bad decision. I learned a lot last week, and am really looking forward to taking those skills back to my home sites and seeing how they work…
OK, up the hill to practice for the worlds, yeah!
WG
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 21st, 2007
Yesterday was the last day of the comp. After flying seven of the last eight days I was pretty pounded–I’ve flown over 35 hours and more than 900K for the week. But I got all fired up on launch when Gin showed up with a van full of new Boomerang 5 gliders, yeah! By the time I had mine sorted I was a bit late off of launch, and spent the first half of the flight trying to figure a new glider out. I was slow until about the half-way point of the day, when I realized I needed a better result than one of my other tasks and went out hard–it’s a good thing I did, as one pilot made it out around 125K by the four p.m. task end time. I wound up at 110.5, good enough for a decent score. The results weren’t done last night until 11:30, but did well enough to end up in eighth. The scores are incredibly tight from second to 20th or so. On task seven, where I thought the lead gaggle had gone down, they hadn’t–they just went well off the course line but more with the wind, that was enough to put them around 20K up on me. The power of the gaggle is strong… I’m happy with who I flew, but in retrospect I was just plain wrong about them going down early. I stayed on the course line, but they must have been able to hammer it less cross-wind. I’m still happy with my decisions through this comp in terms of safety and reading the sky, but I have some things to learn about using the gaggle. I’m fired up for the worlds now, game on!
This was an interesting comp as it started out as pure open distance, then turned into gaggles racing along a course line. I think the open distance format has good validity, but pilots must take responsibility for their own decisions in the air regarding safety. One part of the sky may be insane and the other 300+ degrees from launch fine, so the organizer can’t cancel the day because one direction is bad. It turns out that day one wasn’t all that important in terms of scoring because we had so many other valid days, but it forced the organizers and jury to make this more of a “normal” comp. I hope Hans and Andreas can come up with a solution ton some competitors feeling the organizers must cancel days where the field is doing something stupid… The open XC comp idea is great, I’d do it again. This has been the best week of flying I’ve ever had, truly amazing good fun and educational.
The Boom 5 is a very good glider–more stable, faster, very easy to fly. I didn’t fold it up once yesterday even when I went into chase mode and started hammering to make time up on the course in very strong conditions. It doesn’t turn as well as the 4, or I haven’t figured out how to make it turn as well, but everything else is great. Gin is working on the trim a bit to improve turning, the glider is again a big leap forward in performance and stability. Paragliders just keep getting better, amazing.
Today is a rest day, time to catch up on email, sort gliders, fix things etc. Looking forward to NOT flying, that’s a nice feeling to have.
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 20th, 2007
Yesterday turned out way better than the morning clouds made it look–200K better. Super fun flight with a very technical section between about 100 and 140K that dropped most of the lead gaggle. One thing I’ve learned here is to trust my own judgement–I’m not very good at gaggle flying when it comes right down to it, and if I just do what I think makes sense I usually do better than trying to chase the gaggle down. In a non-XC comp you have to play the gaggle game, but with this style of flying the gaggle is often wrong–one person will lead out off the gaggle, and they all chase whoever that person is. So really it’s decision making by one or two guys anyhow, might as well be me on my own. The gaggle does improve the odds of finding lift, but around here that’s not normally a problem. Yesterday I flew the gaggle for the first 1/4 of the flight, then on my own after that, although I kept crossing paths with the gaggle as the day wore on. I made one good tactical decision to stay upwind over some rising terrain, that’s what made the difference at about the 130K mark–most of the lead gaggle went down. Chrigel did whatever he does, I didn’t see him all day but must have landed within 5 K of him.
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 19th, 2007
Turns out I did better than I thought the last comp day, doing OK in this comp. Scoring here is a bit of a mess, the server system isn’t working, so no real scores but I’m doing OK overall. Chrigel is winning for sure, but beyond that it’s fairly open. I didn’t have the best flight yesterday, ended up being overly conservative about a big cloud and landing pretty far out. Nice to land somewhere totally peaceful, then have a bit of an adventure hike out to a farmhouse. Found the ranch owner, Grant, and a couple of hands gearing up to fix fences. I didn’t have anything else to do and one of them was heading into a town in a few hours, so I spent the afternoon fixing fences and driving around the ranch with them. I didn’t fly well, but the afternoon sure was fun–people here are really good. Very well travelled too, these guys had been all over the world, fun to talk about Oz and the world while bouncing around. Got to chase some sheep around too, nice to have a sort of “normal” day of it after all the travel and flying. Sometimes the best part about flying is not the flying but the random stuff that happens on the ground. Saw lots of wallaroos and kangaroos, they’re like deer here (they even jup in front of cars too, all the vehicles here have ‘roo bars up front for a reason). Thanks to Grant and Steve for the lesson in fence technique and the ride into town, hope to see these guys in Canada one day.
Not sure how everybody did yesterday, but all safe. Today doesn’t look stellar, but we’ll see, you never know. A lot of the World’s pilots are showing up, the energy level is rising for sure. Me, I’m thrashed after flying over 25 hours this week but psyched to get it on today. The biggest thing to remember here is sunscreeen–two coats in the morning, one in flight, same with the lips. If I lived here I’d have to get a genetic mutation toward some aboriginal coloring, I’m way too damn white to survive.
Woke up in the middle of the night last night because a couple of possums had decided to stage an Ultimate Fighting Championship on the roof of our trailer. Not sure who won, but they are noisy beasts when irate. Off up the hill now.
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 18th, 2007
I woke up and hit my head on a window sticking out of the trailer, then spilled some coffee and then forgot some stuff. In the air this pattern continued–I can normally keep my wing open, but I think the head-rattler made me more stupid than usual, the first half of the flight was an exercise in patience and self-tolerance… The second half was sort of the same but with slower thermals. In the end I went about 173 despite having one of the more “stupid” days I’ve ever had in the air. My goal became simply to stay in the air until 6:30, everytime I tried to make a move I ended up low and grovelling…
The evening drive back was the best part of the day, Oz sure is a stunning country. Saw lots of Kangaroos (yep, they really do exist in the wild, not just on the tourist T-shirts…) and other animals. It’s an odd landscape here, everything is just slightly different. It reminds me most of east Texas in terms of terrain, lots of trees but stil very arid. It’s wetter around Manilla than to the west, every day the climbs have really improved once we get through a relatively wet area about 50 K to the west of launch.
Up the hill to do it again now. I’ve flown almost 20 hours in my last three flights, starting to feel that, but in the World’s we could fly six days straight so I want to train up for that.
WG
PS–had a good dry tooling session on a local swing set the other evening, I may have the only ice tools in Manilla. Elbow holding up, not going hard on it but finding little bits of time to train here and there. Looking forward to a rest day…
Posted in: Blog
Date: February 17th, 2007
Apparently Eva’s wild ride in the sky made the news around the world. I was in the air that day, but choose to go land early. It’s a competition, but responsibility for safety rests with the pilots. It was dead obvious that conditions were totally out of hand–if I were free-flying I would landed earlier, but at some point reason still kicked in. About ten pilots were flying about 5K from me (toward the storm cell), I was pretty surprised to see them there. Apparently of these ten only a few hundred meters decided who got sucked up and who didn’t (the organizer has the track logs). A Chinese man died, Eva lived. I hope all of us in the air use the experience to think carefully about what’s actually important to us as pilots and humans.
Yesterday was epic, with many, many pilots going over 200K. I had a decent day until I got stuck low for an hour, which allowed the field to catch me. Ended up landing with the pack at about 220K, lots of good flying fun. This place is awesome.
The protest was resolved, I’ve pasted the text below. I was on the protest Jury, and the discussion was a long one. I felt strongly that conditions on the first day were safe–those of us who flew North made a bad decision. Many pilots flew south, where they had a fine day. The premise of this competition was open distance with pilots choosing their own lines, which means the organization has no responsibility for pilot decisions. Many of the pilots here are used to flying in competitions, where the organizers make a decision about course safety. With no official course line there is no chance to make a decision on the safety of it. Still, it has to be recognized that a large percentage of the field, myself included, did not make a great decision by going North…
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Protest text (slightly different than final but close enough)
Re: Protest, 2007 Manilla XC Open
The protest brought to the organizers was just about the first day of competition, but it raises much bigger questions. This XC competition is based on the idea that pilots will take responsibility for their safety in the air. A tragic fatality and a several near-fatal situations on the first day prove that pilots need better guidance. The ultimate responsibility always rests with the pilot as described in section 7 of the FAI sporting code, but:
To improve pilot safety in future tasks the organizers and protest jury have decided on the following:
All future tasks will be along a defined course line. This will allow organizers and the safety committee to more closely monitor conditions, and also to set a line in the best possible direction for the day. In the event of a missing pilot this will greatly increase the odds of finding the pilot, as well as keep pilots looking out for each other in the air. Distance will be measured at 90 degrees to this course line. Pilots must still make good decisions about flying around hazards and thinking of retrieve, the course line only sets the general direction for the day.
The task may be stopped by the meet organizer or safety committee if the conditions on the course line are judged unsafe. Scoring will be done 10 minutes prior to the stop time. This encourages pilots to get out on course early.
Pilots will also have the opportunity to express their opinion of the day’s flying at the mandatory evening check-in time by marking “Safe” or “Unsafe” on the check-in form. If more than 20 percent of the pilots believe the conditions were unsafe then the day will be cancelled. It’s important to note that this puts a large amount of responsibility on the pilots to make an honest and sporting judgment on the day. This system has tested in some German meets, we will test it here now. Even pilots who do not launch must write a check-in form.
Tonight’s check-in form will also have spaces to mark “safe” or “unsafe” for the first two tasks. If the majority of pilots mark the first or second task as “unsafe” then they will be cancelled. If 20 percent or more pilots mark the third or any future task as “unsafe” then it will be cancelled.
We hope that the above system will improve pilot safety.
Hans Bausenwein
Steve Ham
Stefan Mast
Will Gadd
Andreas Reik
Posted in: Blog
