2007 XC-Open - Manilla - DAY 1 - CLOUDSUCK and Lightning

Manilla West Take off Looking upwind to the West the sky was lovely.  But we went downwind to the North and East, choosing to fly towards overdevelopment like you can't imagine.  That after a briefing of no stress flying being the point of these xc comps.   Here is what happened: Mt Borah is (to me) like Wigwam in terrain, but without the harsh air.  The thermals are smooth and soft, big and wide. To the SW we can see the flatlands reminiscent of De Aar, everywhere else is like Rustenburg, with the mountain itself being a bigger version of Koringberg with take offs just about 360 degrees.  The take offs are huge with soft glider-friendly artificial turf from hockey or other sports courts being re-used here.  Brilliant surface. The flying today:   I let about 30 hotshots take to the air.  Looked light and friendly - soft conditions in front of the West take off and some unfortunates sank out with many more working low saves successfully.  Conditions for staying up were improving by the minute and I decided I was up for the challenge.  Did not know there was a 4x4 track for retrieve on this West side (Godfrey runs a service for this) and thought I would be in for a long round-about-retrieve so my incentive to stay up was high. Found a nice thermal llow and of course the mountain side launched in waves of gliders.  Here they come...   East Take off. Early morning development starting Thermalling/ridge soaring with these hot flying machines was an education as always.  I had a glider come speeding up from behind me and pass within about two meters of my feet.  I gulped.  Another hotshot never looked right when he turned into me on his outside and we both shouted in alarm as we avoided a collision.  There were speeding gliders left, right, above and below and my neck was doing overtime as I tried to stay out of the way of the traffic and/or flow with it.  Mostly it was ok except for those two close encounters and I settled down when I hooked a thermal low where no-one else was flying which gave me an advantage of climbing before the lemmings rushed in under me.   As we climbed above take off the thermals billowed out and everyone could core in their own world without a care.  3ms average so it took awhile to get to cloudbase as we drifted over Mt Borah heading NNE.  Coming up to the big overdeveloping clouds I started getting nervous.  Pilots above me were disappearing and reappearing and I was very soon starting to mist out myself.  Took a heading on my GPS and dreaded the thought of sharing the grey room with this many pilots.  Suddenly was not enjoying myself anymore with the only respite from the big clouds being into the gentle SW wind or a hole to the East.  To the north, downwind, it was ugly and black and raining.  I had had enough.  Pulled bigears and speedbarred my way east, leaving the hotshots to run north along the ridge and do battle with the cloudsuck in their gaggles.  I felt trapped as I was still going up, although slowly and there was not much blue around.  I wanted to land.  Could not understand why no-one else was on big ears although they probably were on speedbar.  The difference between a good weather xc pilot and a comp xc pilot clearly.   I was so rattled it took awhile before I would shake out the ears and then only when I was low enough to feel reasonably safe from the monstrous clouds chimneying into the sky.  The rest of my flight was fairly uneventful as I flew low, but then I ran out of blue and was faced with having to go under hectic black stuff to the north again and I just couldn't.  Saw plenty of gliders overhead and high heading into the worst of it. Some did great distances, well in excess of 100km. I flew only about 14km in an hour and landed at the same spot as Britain's lady 'eagle slayer' Nicky Moss and many others who did not like the look of what was ahead.  Bernie Kelly says he landed after his radio was taken out by the lightening - oh, did I forget to mention that?  And the thunder!  Many who continued to fly ended up landing backwards in gust drafts.   Godfrey Wenness, owner of the site, confirmed the following: Two pilots threw their reserves in the clouds with one going to hospital after his reserve wrapped around his failed glider. Another, German lady pilot Ewa, is also in hospital after some serious cloudsuck to about 10 000m.  One Chinese pilot on an orange Boomer 4 is at present unaccounted for. Time for Flygirl to land   This is the rumour to be confirmed regarding Eva's encounter: freezing conditions at -40C, frostbite, hail bruising etc etc. She apparently got sucked up to 6900m before she lost consciousness.  Her vario records a maximum of 9 999m. No-one knows how she landed - she was not one of the reserve deployments.  One thing is certain from her team mates, she is in a bad way. Guess we will find out more tomorrow.  Others reported doing serious spirals and hardly going down, as well as one doing a full stall and going up and those who flew in excess of 100km, landed in very strong winds of up to 60km.   All I can say is that this was all avoidable and unnecessary.  You have no idea what these people were prepared to do and did.  It is insane.  And some have paid the price, whilst others tell of 'heroic I-got-away-with-it-this-time' stories.   I shudder when I hear the common theme  - they saw others fly that high and in that direction, into and between the thunder storms, so they did as well. I do not joke.  This they did, some having to do emergency manouvres to land when the two storms they were flying between closed over them and the suck started pulling at them. I wanted to gaggle fly in order to learn from the more experienced pilots, but giving over my decisions on safety to these more experienced strangers just won't happen.  There are some experiences I do not need in my CV.   Tomorrow I get to fly. Flygirl Manilla 2007

Last Updated ( Friday, 01 February 2008 )

 

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