How many Auckland PG pilots will fly 100km this season?
A number of years ago I listened to hang glider pilot Carl Driesen describe how by ‘joining the dots’ it may be possible to fly 100km in Auckland. Several years later a lot of us listened in awe of how he completed his flight from Muriwai to Mercer, just short of 100km. My thought at the time was there was no way an Auckland paraglider could do anything similar without committing time to a trip to Hawkes Bay or further afield. ‘Middy’ (Grant Middendorf) several years later showed that, for an advanced pilot anyway, it was possible by flying from Dills to Marsden Point, a distance from memory of something like 90km.
Yesterday (Saturday 8/8/09) Alex & Zen showed that with the advent of winch launching for Auckland paragliders this target is within reach of any PG2 pilot with some cross country experience.
On a decidedly average barely out of winter day Alex & Zen were winched up under a cloud street at Te Aroha and flew its length to land close to Te Hoe and Pukemore.
So if this sort of result can already be achieved at this time of year it should be pretty easy to arrive over the Pukemore launch site with plenty of height to ‘join the dots’ and continue right out to Raglan! And if it doesn’t work the first time then no long walk ups or wasted time – simply land back at the launch point and try again.
This season promises to bring a lot of new cross country opportunities!
Tony S.
Comments
Site info
Te Aroha site information: http://www.cloudbase.org.nz/node/481
Video showing operation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U47egCNkRcg
and one more from the day Alex flew 31 km: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtDN_yO6JIo
Nice one guys
After leaving my phone at home for a couple of hours I found I had several missed calls from Alex.
This must be important I thought - it was, a nice cross country in the middle of winter! I tried kicking myself for not taking up the invitation to go with him but I'm not as flexible as I once was and only ended up with a pulled leg muscle...
Well done guys this should motivate us all to get off our backsides.
I have also found a few N-S fields between 800 - 2000m long on my Topo maps that may be suitable for towing a little further north (no not in the swamp!), I will check them out next time I'm down thart way.
One last comment - in Leonardo the distance flown is different to the XC score.
Long fields
Would be very interested in those long fields, but I suspect you'll find they are all subdivided in max 400 meter paddocks... It's very hard to find long (>600 mtr) fields. If anybody knows something, please let me know!
And yes, I know distance flown is different to XC score, but for the site record it's probably better to keep XC distance in case somebody flies a nice closed triangle!
PS. The tow is always free for the one breaking the site record on the tow field. Game on!
Xen's xc
A bit late I know, but here is my attempt on the day. If you got Google EARTH loaded with airmaps you can have fun following my track as I sneak in under the 2500' airspace. Unfortunately I had to leave the cloud street to do it. Bummer.
http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/251153
Cheers, Xen.
Every Little Bit Counts?
Hi Xen
I was looking at your track log and was wondering what that funny bit was at the start?
It appears to be you walking around on the ground. It got me thinking, surely the "tow" portion of a flight cannot be counted as part of the cross country flight, albeit a very small portion of the total. As the pilot/glider is still in contact with the ground via a very long cord. (As far as I can work out your "tow" started at 12:42 and you released at 12:44 at 468m, distance travelled about 300-400 metres.)
Maybe on release from the "tow" the pilot should mark the spot on their GPS using the "Mark" function or similar, and on down loading from GPS or uploading into Leonardo use that "Mark" as the start time and location for the flight.
As it is such a small part of the flight it probably isn't worth the effort. But then again if you want to be exact.
What do you reckon? What do fixed wing gliders do when on tow?
Nice flight anyway.
Tony
Every Little Bit Counts?
Haha, ok, now that's funny man!
You should contact Nevil Hulett and tell him his flight is not valid because he counted the tow as well...
PS. Xen's release released by itself (due to his frontcontainer) when he was still being towed. He released at about 100 meters AGL and thermalled up from there. Then he flew around above the field for some time, flying upwind to make as much distance as possible before going downwind under the cloudstreet.
The "walking around" at the start of the flight is more likely the GPS coordinates being unreliable because it doesn't have a fix on many sats yet...
LOL! Yeah, I never thought of
LOL! Yeah, I never thought of the tow making any difference but you never know.
As Mike says I flew upwind of the release point to try and maximise the distance flown as the distance that is measured is the total linear distance beween the two furthest points. If you look at my track you will see that the tow release point is actualy well within the track and therefore does not count towards any distance flown.
The premature tow release was interesting. I don't remember the tow bridle interfering with my instrument container but it is worth looking at it more carefully next time. At the time of the release I was going through some thermal activity and the glider was pitched back probably more than normal. Nonetheless, the surge from the release was quite gentle and I didn't need to correct it much.
Many thanks for a great day.
Yeah, I thought it was funny
Yeah, I thought it was funny too.
Since we are using Leonardo for "scoring" you will note that it uses the XC score and not OD. The XC is based on maximum distance over 5 turnpoints, so doing a lot of zig-zagging is an advantage over the OD which is just the maximum straight-line distance. eg Nick Taber 27/07/09 OD 6.9km XC 43.0km.
Of course the flight is valid, what I was pointing out is that the actual "free flight" part starts after the tow and therefore maybe it should be measured from the release point. Just depends on what we are trying to measure/score, hopefully free flight.
(Then again if we could "aerial tow" we could get the tow plane to take us in the direction we wanted to go, say for a kilometre or 20.
)
IMHO
Tony
PS: I think your "tow" part of flight would equate to one of my better XC flights