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 Dunedin). I wasn’t there myself, but apparently this great flying day whetted the appetites of all pilots… if this was Wanaka flying then a great week was surely to eventuate.

DAY 2 Monday. Breast Hill launch

The drive to launch above Lake Hawea was spectacular, and seeing the deep south laid out in front of us like a ridiculously beautiful photoshopped postcard made the whole trip worthwhile. I was committed to activating my new flying strategy, this being essentially: Launch late. My theory is it’s more fun sitting around on launch for an extra hour than it is to sit fuming in a bombout paddock for an hour, waiting for a ride. This theory is easier said than done though: if I see a single pilot get up and away I am physically unable to not launch. So these days I need to back up my intentions with a supplementary strategy: BEN: DO NOT RIG YOUR GLIDER. STEP AWAY FROM THE GLIDER! So I leave it packed up, at least 30m from launch so I’m not tempted. So anyway, Reece Fisher played his customary role of launching first of everyone (apart from an inspiring gentlemen of advancing years who was thrown off the hill by his instructor on a skyfloater.) and struggled to maintain any height. As always though, after a bit of sniffing around he began gracefully and profitably spiralling his state-of-the-art Moyes Xtralite in a sizeable thermal until he was a tiny but triumphant speck in the heavens. You could almost read the minds of every observer changing from “Nup, she’s dead mate” to “Holy crap, it’s practically the Owens Valley out there! Launch immediately!” Cris Lawry put his money where his mouth was, took off and spent half an hour looking for Reece’s thermal. His flight never really got going, and an hour or 2 later he was on the deck about 10km from launch. But gradually everyone bit the bullet… for every pilot that got up there was one that didn’t. I took off about 5^th to last once I was sure there would be vehicles nearly at the bombout paddock. I had carefully observed the first 30 pilots and devised a cunning plan to maximise my chances. The plan was… fly around and hope I got lucky. As it happened, I just started rising the second I took off and never stopped until I got about 1000 feet above launch. It was a novel feeling for me to be near the top of the stack watching everyone else struggle.

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 3^rd 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 Lake Hawea to “Dune Goon” over a steep grassy bank. Soaring was compulsory as there was no landing, what with the tide being in. But there were reports of one pilot gaining his “Water Wings”. Well done that man….I spent the day fruitlessly driving 300km looking for a windsurfing spot at various Southern Lakes. It was interesting how such a windy, unhangglideable day could be almost calm at ground level. Lake Ruataniwha was dead clam, while overhead was row upon row of lenticular clouds. As it happened, it was 15-20 knots on the shore of lake Hawea where the goon gang was flying… perfect windsurfing conditions 10 minutes drive from camp. I think I deserved the Most Impressive Carbon Footprint award for the day…

Day 4 Wednesday Grandview Launch

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 Lake Hawea, down towards Tarras, then back north over the Lindis Pass to Omarama. “Yes!”, I thought… these poor fools have unwittingly played right into my hands. I know most of that terrain like the back of my hand, I’ve flown it more times than you could count (as long as you only have three fingers). So yes, I was quietly confident of taking first place that day. I was even more confident when I came up with a stunning pre-emptive strike plan. I noticed a rather large mountain above launch, so proceeded to carry my glider to the top. The other so-called competitors were shaking their head with derision… But I was staunch: “huh, who’ll be laughing when I’m above you for 30 seconds longer than normal? …so, IN YOUR FACE!, rest of the field…” Surprisingly, Gavin Tweedie actually liked my plan and carried his glider halfway up. He is not very bright that one, not realising I was actually just desperately trying to find a way to delay rigging so I would avoid taking off early. He further promoted his chances at achieving a Darwin award by launching in a tail wind and slicing his entire face off with a nose wire after tripping up at terminal running velocity. (It was stirring stuff indeed to see him back on launch the next day looking more like an Egyptian mummy than an Ice cool aerial warrior.)

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 Grandview peak but was a tad disappointed to find his glide ratio had suddenly become 1:1. Steve Bankier described seeing radical wingovers all the way down. We retrieved him looking slightly worse for wear in a tiny 20m paddock up a God forsaken valley. The fact that he completely missed a 4 acre grass airstrip that he was aiming for (and flew over) gives us some idea of the roughness of the air as he set up his landing approach. Landing approach is probably too strong a term… let’s just say he arrived.

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 10^th 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)