Ben McAlpine Hang Gliding
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Welcome
Year 1 Hang Gliding
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
2011 New Zealand Hang Gliding Nationals Wanaka
Hang Gliding Nationals Wanaka 2011
By Ben McAlpine
Matt Barlow volunteered to organise this event because nobody else would. This meant it was “strictly no frills”. All you got was a superbly organised competition, using spectacular launch sites in a stunning flying location with daily cash prizes and a free BBQ. I’m not sure how this differed from past events I have attended apart from the fact the entry fee was only $50 as opposed to amounts that definitely need hiding from my chief financial officer (You paid HOW MUCH to have 2 bombouts and a #$%@ sausage in bread!!!??!!) .
I couldn’t attend the whole event but the chance to fly in such a beautiful place was too good to pass up. Not only that, the fact there would be literally hundreds (OK…35) of other gliders all screaming around the same piece of sky would be something pretty novel for me. Here in Marlborough the closest we get to flying in a gaggle is when we fly over the local rubbish dump and scare up a couple of mangy seagulls.
Day 0 Saturday
A practise day that was meant to be turned into a competition day but a couple of pilots didn’t get the email explaining this, so it remained a practise day. A bit of a shame because it saw many pilots complete over 40km of a challenging task in great conditions. Local PG legend Grant Middendorf was good to have in the air showing local hotspots of lift but he embarrassed a few HG losers here and there. Dave Austin was first into goal, Bill Degen trundled in after 4 hours in the air. It all counted for nothing though.
DAY 1 Sunday. Long Gully launch
A beautiful sunny day, most competitors got up and away from launch, and the first turnpoint was on the other side of the lake. The task committee probably thought this would make a challenging crossing. Matt Barlow was probably hoping a few would perish in the water to make his BBQ budget get close to balancing. In the end, pilots reported getting lift over the lake. Yes, that’s right. The elusive lake thermals were there in abundance. For those more sensible pilots, the option of flying over the Hawea village flatlands at the end of the lake proved just as fruitful, with huge gentle thermals available at regular intervals to top up the fuel tank with gravitational potential energy (that’s height for those of you from
DAY 2 Monday. Breast Hill launch
The drive to launch above
It turned out I could never burst through the 6500 feet barrier, although I tried over about four different peaks in ten different thermals for an hour and a half. Each time I got to that height I was tumbled around in turbulence and sort of lost the strong lift. Talking to the good pilots later, many of them got to 8500feet that day, but only occasionally. A lot of pilots also hit the 6500ft wall like me. I figured in hindsight I was hitting an inversion layer that was slowing/halting most of the thermals. I vowed that in the future I would hang in there and try and burst through in a strong thermal no matter how long it took.
The day was not nearly as flyable as it was beautiful. Nobody made goal. Matt Barlow and Ian Clark did best, and I was thrilled to hear 3rd place was snaffled by that delightfully jovial journeyman from the Wairarapa, Grant Tatham. Bill Degen was an ever-present malevolent menace. Not that many guys got over the 10km Hawea flats to Mt Maude. Those who did had to try and cruise the mountain range toward the Makarora turnpoint, but the lift was a bit scarce, and the low ceiling (for most of the thermals) meant some crossings were intimidating to say the least. Matt Barlow attempted one more on faith than science, and ended up landing fly-on-the-wall at a place miles from any road on the eastern shores of Wanaka. He cheerfully ”visited” us at our camp late that night “just wanting to hang out with the boys and hear how your flights went”. My antennae were twitching, sensing danger… I immediately began faking advanced drunkenness (not a hard act to pull off flawlessly at the time) in an innate self-preservation reflex. As Matt’s predicament became clearer, the fireside emptied instantly of all but the most newbie pilots. Shortly afterwards one of these poor defenceless weaklings was lead away (smiling gormlessly) for a 6 hour retrieval mission by torchlight.
DAY 3 Tuesday
Wind and rain made their customary appearance at any serious flying comp. However, Cris and Tish Lawry dragged a bunch of pilots to the shoreline of
Day 4 Wednesday
This was the epic day, the one that sorted the wheat from the chaff, the men from the boys, and from Tish. An 86km task was set from
The launch sequence settled into a well formed pattern. If a pilot got up, wave upon wave would follow until one started scratching, then a ten minute hiatus would occur until someone else could no longer resist the call to aviate. It reminded me of watching penguins trying to avoid jumping first into leopard seal infested water until they see one survive, then there is a mad rush of launching until a flurry of blood, teeth and whitewater signals that launching right now is sub-optimal.
My plan to launch late gave me time to see the most reliable spots for lift, and one spot stood out like dog’s balls. Strangely enough, my idiotic higher launch site actually paid off, as I alone could glide directly to that spot (let’s call it “Dog’s balls knob”) above a sharp ridge 500m away, whereas everyone else needed some form of lift to get there. Quite a few pilots thus met their doom. I just flew there and Bang, away we go! For the second day in a row I had the strange experience of seeing other gliders below me, scurrying to get under my thermal.
The first turnpoint was sort of out-and-return to Breast Hill along a series of craggy Barren peaks. This was really cool because you saw all the early guys come back past you, and it felt really “populated” and busy. Much better than flying along with only one or 2 gliders in range. Not to mention the great thermal marking for everyone. I used the get-high-stay-high method and found it fairly non-problematic. I just stayed above the peaks and every second one produced big strong thermals. Others chose the I-can’t-be-bothered-taking-this-thermal-all-the-way-to-the-top-I’ll-just-head-to-the-next-one-from-here method. It was so relaxing seeing them far below scratching away in some God-forsaken little gullies. I must admit though, some of those who used the second method made ground a lot faster than me. I got a bit impatient just before getting back to takeoff and ended up below a ridge in strange territory. When I found a thermal to save me I vowed to stay high from then on. I took the thermal to 7000 ft (like every other thermal that day) and was pleased it was a strong one. I realised then that 1 or 2 other pilots had clearly been getting way higher than my 7000ft, and I remembered my inversion vows. So I hung in there when it got rough at 7000 and to my delight I surged into another smooth zone that took me to over 9000ft. I was all alone, the other gliders were pathetic dots below. I even saw a tiny helicopter scooting along miles below me. I was so high I did a direct glide to Long Gully, the next turnpoint about 15km away. There was a gorgeous dark-based puffy cloud over the hill, the best cloud of the day by a mile. It was my ticket to victory. It looked so awesome I ignored a couple of perfectly good thermals on my way. I got to the cloud and prepared myself for some serious g-forces, and inserted my earplugs to protect me from the extreme beeping my vario was about to make. 10 minutes later I was feeling foolish, packing my glider up by the road. The cloud had been awesome, just not when I got there. It had “decayed” as they say. Its own huge shadow meant it was going to be a long time before it “recayed” too I think. I explored that whole huge cloud with nary a beep.
7 Pilots made goal, awesome for such a long (for NZ) task. Niall Mueller smoked the field to get in 30 minutes ahead of second place (Ian Clark), in about 2 hours 20. It took me about 2 and a half to cover my 30km or so. So Niall covered ground at about 40km an hour compared to my 15km/h. Aaah… now I see what separates the men from the boys….
Day 5 Thursday Blown out.
Halfway up to Grandview Launch the “Safety Committee” met and decided the forecast and current upper windspeeds were too much and called off the day. Cris Lawry and Steve Bankier hastily convened a “Danger Committee” and launched into super smooth lift. The flight was going nicely until Cris inadvertently discovered the evil twin of wave lift: wave sink, which sucked him quickly into that most diabolical foe: wave rotor. He bolted towards the flats from above
Day 6 Friday Blown/Rained out.
Day 7 Saturday Long Gully launch
The Task Committee were desperate to get a valid task to validate the whole comp. they decided on a short course of just over 20km, which was described by one pilot as “a bit gay”. Matt Barlow was one of many who could still take the comp with a strong performance and he described his day for me: “I saw Steve Bankier and Rod Stuart climb out so I launched to try and get a jump on the field. Ian Clark hung back and watched as I struggled for ages. When I finally latched onto a decent thermal Ian launched and dropped straight into it… good tactics by him. More annoyingly though, he climbed straight through me. To really top it off he started drifting back with it and when I tried to follow I dropped out the back of the thermal and found myself flying back upwind to start again scratching at launch. All was not lost though, I could use a later start gate and leave higher than Ian did hopefully. In the end I got hammered by some rough air, and spent so much height avoiding it I ended up too low to hook a decent thermal and bombed out. The day was really weak, and it was a great effort by Ian to win that task and he showed he deserved to win the comp.”
All in all it was a great comp. Another good task would have been nice… but hey. Big ups to the intermediate pilots who joined in with their own class. Max Gebhardt was one of these who punched above his weight by coming 10th ahead of some vary experienced pilots. Local pilot and ex-paragliding champ Angus Tapper was a constant threat to Ian too, in spite of being on a kingposted U2 glider. Thanks to all the dedicated drivers and to the long suffering WAGs. (That’s not you by the way Jude Tarr, you are something far more lowly: a WAPG …but it was very nice to have you there regardless of the way you polluted the pristine skyscape with that silly plastic bag you dangled under).
If you’re thinking of attending next year I highly recommend it, even if you are of moderate skills. Even the camping by the river with likeminded nutters for a week makes for a memorable holiday. But if the weather means you score a few epic aerial battles, it’ll be the greatest week of your life, I promise.
Final Top Ten Results after 4 tasks:
1 Ian Clark M 895 712 898 383 2888
2 Angus Tapper M 733 768 631 344 2476
3 Matt Barlow M 928 715 618 141 2402
4 Grant Tatham M 827 684 633 141 2285
5 Bill Degen M 627 603 595 358 2183
6 Geoff Christophers M 235 666 852 212 1965
7 Niall Mueller M 640 1000 278 1918 (Missed first task)
8 Gavin Tweedie M 519 647 336 141 1643
9 Dave Austin M 400 369 513 223 1505
10 Max Gebhardt M 524 360 245 141 1270 (Intermediate)
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Don't mix the bloods
Charlies Hangels
The first thing I noticed about
In the
Technical note: As you all know, young females are incapable of comprehendible vocal communication and these ones demanded to be interviewed by text instead… As I am obviously too old to be able to text fast enough to hold their attention, a compromise was reached and the interviews were completed in Facebook chatrooms.
Marlina as a 13 year old about to launch
Marlina age 15
(Marlina is the little sister of Jonas our 17 year old prodigy who took second at last year’s HG nats and has been tearing up the men’s field in Australia under the tutelage of world number 2 Johnny Durand.)
BM: Thanks for the interview, I’ve never met you in person, but you can see from my profile photo I’m pretty cool…
ML: W8eva
“Kelly"
Kelly age 20
BM: I met you at Omarama but I must confess I don’t know your last name
Charlotte pretending to check her glider
Charlotte age 21
BM: I met you and Kelly at Omarama, and may I say you two are the most glamorous thing to happen in Hang Gliding since John O’Neill got a new pair of polyester slacks.
BM: You’re much friendlier than those other 2, and you write proper sentences.
(With this, we both closed our laptops and continued the interview by normal talking.)
Ok, I admit that maybe I made up one or two tiny details up to now, but from here on you can believe me, this all totally true stuff about
Charlotte was a gormless teenager (actually that’s a lie, she was a passionate ballet dancer until she suffered an injury) who saw her two brothers tearing up the local Dunedin hill every weekend with hang gliders on their roof racks. She went along and watched every so often and couldn’t for the life of her understand what the attraction was of “throwing grass around for half an hour and driving home again.” A few years drifted by with her giving little thought to the sport, but found herself stuck in a Dunedin rut (is there ever any other outcome?) and wondering what could give her back the spark she felt was missing. After some elaborate acts of deception to hide the fact from their mother,
At this point the interview takes an ugly turn as I interrogate
Has she ever got to cloudbase thermalling? “Yes, but it’s not like I’ve ever got to 10,000ft.” With this I choked on my beer and changed the subject before she found out I haven’t even made it to 9000ft. Has she ever gone cross country? “Yes, but not very successfully.” (thank God, I can still beat someone ….) How does she handle bombing out? “After seeing other pilots whining around the campfire, I made a decision early on not to cry about spilt milk. When I’m down in the bombout paddock I just think: Wow, I just flew off that huge hill and it was really lovely. Guys that land and have a temper tantrum, well, if you’re putting that much pressure on yourself you’re probably not going to enjoy your flying.”
I asked her how do guys handle it, romantically speaking, when they find out she’s a hang glider pilot? Did they feel intimidated and a tad emasculated when they find out she’s doing stuff ten times as brave as what they’ve ever done? “I’ve definitely had some strange reactions… and yes, believe it or not some guys have said exactly that…. townies mainly.”
I asked about the other DFC girls, Kelly and Marlina. (Please note that they were all much younger back then, hence my use of the dodgy term “girls”.) She started gushing, but not in a girly way...she has great memories of the whole gang spending days on the training hills together. (Footage of these heady days can be seen online. Go to YouTube and search: “omarama girls” to find it) I then attempted to delicately ask if it was harder to learn as a female than if she were male. After an appropriate amount of indignant protesting she settled down and gave me an interesting answer: “I had to sort of know myself quite well. There were points when I was learning where you might want to freak out, and subconsciously you kind of know in your head that because you’re a girl it’s almost OK for you to freak out… but I didn’t want to perpetuate any sexist stereotypes. Also, I didn’t want to be just ‘good for a girl’, I wanted to be good, full stop.… I think that girls make good pilots actually.” When pressed on why she thought this, she mentioned the well known (albeit mythical) female prowess in multi-tasking, the possibility that a certain precision is required of your input when you can’t rely on brute strength to fix any errors, and also the fact that female pilots aren’t so macho (funny, that…) means they may be less prone to making silly decisions based on ego rather than facts. I told her to stop dribbling such sissy nonsense.
I suggested to Charlotte that she could easily get in the NZ hang gliding team (with there being only about 5 female pilots active in hang gliding in NZ) if she got good at XC flying. This could give her the chance to compete at the Worlds. She again gushed, this time about the competition scene she witnessed in Aussie this year. “It was so cool being in that scene, with 80 hang gliders rigging up on the hill and everyone pushing themselves to fly further and faster, and everyone was just completely focussed on the flying, above all else. And yeah, I would love to represent NZ one day but that’s a long way off. For now I just want to get good”.
What is she flying these days? “Well, I don’t really want you to print this but I’ve moved on to a Litespeed S.” I again choked on my beer, this time with jealousy. I was also furious I had missed my chance to ask the “hilarious” question about whether she had done any topless hang gliding. Anyway, I duly promised not to print her comments and she opened up about it: “It’s fantastic, it’s really easy to fly, I love it.” Landings? “Well, so far I’ve only landed it into wind, so it’s been really easy. But when the time comes for a nil wind landing, I’ve made a pledge to just go for the big flare. If I f*** it up, so be it, but I don’t want to be a pansy about it.” Why didn’t she want it known she was flying a topless glider? She got a bit squirmy about that, and said she had experienced one or two people suggesting that “girls should stay on a skyfloater”, so she wanted to stay under the radar to avoid hearing such stuff…. Well, that was a bit of a bombshell to end the interview. More tea anyone?
She finished with a heartfelt plea to me to mention the fact that her achievements so far are more of a tribute to her instructors who have gone the extra mile, and wanted to thank them and her fellow trainees for great times so far. Trust a girl to get all soppy like that….