Flying: The art of throwing yourself at the ground and
missing - Douglas Adams
Bright in Victoria is one of my top two favourite flying
locations in Australia, the other being Manilla NSW. Bright is nestled in the
gum and pine treed foothills of the Victorian ski fields. The Bright open
Paragliding competition is hosted here every year and this year saw a total of
90 Paraglider pilots from Australia and overseas competing for the Open championship, the Australian championship and for selection for the Australian
squad and team to compete in the World championships in 2017.
A typical day in an 8 day paragliding comp starts with a
morning briefing, where the pilots are all consequently given their marching
orders for a task briefing on Launch usually by mid morning. The task committee,
which is basically 3 pilots who really have their shit together, set a task which
has to be flown, often between terrain features, mountain to mountain for
example and ending at the Goal which could be a designated Landing Zone (LZ) or
footy oval. The comp director writes the task up on the task board much akin to
a high school teacher writing up an assignment for the enthusiastic students, any
commentary from the pilots at this critical stage is responded to by a very
disproving glance from the comp director. A serial offender might get 100 lines
if they are not careful. The task board
details the route by a series of turn points, which are GPS waypoints that
everyone has pre-loaded in their devices. The pilots busy themselves punching the
task into their beeping flight computers not unlike the sound of R2D2 on acid. The
launch opens at the time detailed on the task board and pilots line up to take
off. The pilot walks out onto launch, spreads and fluffs their glider (the only
piece of terminology we share with the porn industry), inflates the wing overhead
and gracefully departs Terra Firma. Once in the air the gliders fan out
searching for lift and then mass into gaggles circling in the thermals,
jockeying for a good start position.
Paragliding is basically like 3 dimensional sailing. In sailing,
our planar limited friends have a start line that the boat has to be behind
when the start gun goes. In paragliding it’s a circle that everyone has to be
inside at the GPS start time, but as we are flying in 3 dimensional space, its
actually a volume contained within a cylinder of infinite height. All the turn points
are also cylinders. An ideal start is high in the cylinder, just inside the
circumference on the side closest to the next turn point at the start time. The
Paragliders leave the start cylinder and race around the course entering each
of the turn point cylinders consecutively and ending in the Goal cylinder. At the
end of the day, GPS tracks are uploaded onto an online scoring system which
verifies that the course has been completed, controlled airspace has not been
entered or breached and allocates a score based on the quality of the day and
the speed around the course.
In a paragliding race we spend most of our time doing two
things, no, not shitting ourselves and crying, which does happen from time to
time, but Climbing and Gliding often in a ratio of about 50:50. We fly to a
location on the way to the turn point cylinder where the likelihood of finding
a thermal is high e.g. a ridge heating up in the sun, climb as fast as possible
in the strongest lift we can find and then go on glide to the next point. The
race is over when the pilot either gets to the goal in glory or lands short,
frequently called decking it or bombing out. The latter is frequently followed
by swearing, depression and heavy drinking.
Although the weather in Australia is magnificent some days
are just not flyable. The good thing about non-flyable days in a paragliding
comp is that you get to do the next best thing to flying. Talking about flying.
Glider design, Weather, Tasks, Scoring, Techniques, Rules, tales of epic
flights ending in glory and hair raising stories of near misses and lucky
escapes. Unfortunately, there is sometimes the odd story where pilots have
ended up with a serious injury or worse. Paragliding accidents are generally
the result of either very bad luck or foolishness. It is not something we dwell
on. We accepted the risk. All the decisions we make on a flight, including
whether to fly or not are made on a risk versus reward basis. Flying is like a
really good drug and like all good drugs, you just want more. We know one day we may end up paying the
consequences…….but not today. I recently heard a story of a Paraglider pilot
conversing with a pilot who flew both Hanggliders and Paragliders; “Which do
you think is safer, Paragliders or Hang gliders?”. The multi-aircraft trained pilot
looked in disbelief at the question and responded “Neither of them are safe!”.
On the second non-flying day there was Frenzy of glider line
measuring and trimming activity, the likes of which have never been seen
before. It spread like an infectious airborne virus, motivating pilots to
quantify the displacement of the lines on their gliders with the use of precision
Laser measuring instruments and record data in suitably formatted spreadsheets.
Like sharks getting the scent of blood in the water, trim anomalies were
detected and then resolved by invoking the black art of knot tying to shorten
line lengths. Pilots were burning the midnight oil, clocking up hours similar
to that of labourers in a factory sweat shop. Everyone will either be getting
to goal quicker or there will be gliders falling out of the sky on the next
Task.
My comeback to Australian top level competition flying left
plenty of room for further improvement. I was very inconsistent only making the
Goal on two out of five tasks. The scoring system punishes inconsistency and
insufficient forward progress. I constructed an exhaustive list of mistakes not
to be repeated, if you have a few hours spare I’ll take you through it! On the
flip side, we had some cracking flying which was a lot of fun, caught up with mates
some I have not seen since my last comp four or five years ago, reminded myself
what is possible on a day when I have done crap the top guys and gals have
smoked it in, learned heaps, racked up another pile of airtime in the order of
a small domestic commuter airline and re kindled my desire to improve and
compete at the top level.
In all, five tasks were flown over eight days by 90 pilots.
I finished in the top 20 on both days that myself and my good Buddie Mr. Mojo, made it
to goal and finished 35th overall. Like any competitive sport, the
hunger to improve is what drives us, plus the fact there are just some of my
mate’s I feel obliged to beat all the time.
Task 1 – 53.63km race to goal via two Turn Points
Task 2 – 65.15km race to goal via six Turn points
Task 3 – 59.38km race to goal via five Turn Points (Simon in
Goal)
Task 4 – 75.41km race to goal via five turn points
Task 5 – 90.78km race to goal, FAI triangle (Simon in Goal)
Results
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