Oz Report

Tue, Dec 4 2012, 8:32:40 am PST

Former hang glider pilot Allan Barnes

(Narromine, NSW, Australia)

Adam Wooley|Allan Barnes|Pepe Gresa|triangle|XC

http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/segelflugszene/cmsnews.html?month=112012#860

Last Sunday, four 1,000 point flights out of Narromine in New South Wales, Australia, topped the worldwide OLC scores. Allan Barnes had the biggest flight. He has been trying for 1,000km FAI triangles for many years and now succeeded. This flight is currently listed No.3 in the worldwide OLC champion scores.

“Here at Narromine we have every year a competition called the Narromine Cup, without formal tasks but concentrating on long distance flying and personal best flights. Sunday was a practice day for this competition.“ Allan’s beforehand declared task only just worked out.

“The forecast told me where to go, but the conditions did not start as early as expected and I had a long 2 hours below 1000m. The clouds started late, so it was very difficult to find climbs. After 2 hours into the flight I almost landed - dropped all my water and was less than 200m above ground when I found a weak thermal and managed to recover.”

Remember Allan's friend Adam Wooley who found himself stopping over on an Australian golf course?

Allan first headed southwards finding climbs over 10kt (5m/s) but then encountered some bad fracturing of thermals and broken clouds. The area around his first turnpoint was “very remote, with some good landing fields but maybe 20km to walk to the nearest building. I got down to just over 1000m and it felt very low as the cloudbase was now over 3000m.”

Running up the scrub line to his second turnpoint felt much better. Allan’s XC speed achieved just reached 100km/h but he still had about 400km to fly, not being confident.

On the 3^rd leg there was a lot of overcast and spreadout which made him fly down again over some very bad countryside. After a slow climb out, he figured that continuing on track was impossible: ”A huge area without clouds and clearly no convection.” The only option was to fly north, 45 degrees off track and away from Narromine, to the last cloud within reach.

“I got there with enough height to find the climb, and finally reached the cloud base. From there the best way to go seemed to be on my original task line, but I still believed that the only possibility was an outlanding.” He then had a surprisingly good run to the final turnpoint where the difficulties started again.

Using weak thermals, Allan finally made his way back home: “A very difficult day for 1000km, it was only just possible with the LS8.

A big mix of emotions - frustration early on, exhilaration in the best part of the day, and great disappointment when I decided to abandon - followed by a growing sense that it might all still be possible if things worked out. I won't forget this day, that's for sure!”

The Spanish pilot Pepe Gresa took a different route. His triangle is ~80km shorter than Allan’s. But Pepe averaged at 25km/h more than the local pilot. The Spaniard enjoyed the “incredible” Sunday Down Under. Have a great rest of the week at Narromine!

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