24 Oktober 2011

Canungra Day 3: Tambo - no, Flying Fox!


Today we were asked to be on Beechmont launch at 8, but it was changed to briefing at the pub at 8.30 with short notice, as the wind direction has swung north. We went up to Tamborine launch, but it was not coming in. So we went to Flying Fox instead.
I decided not to fly, as the bomb out there is a quite dodgy slope landing, and I want to take it easy over here. I survived a tick attack on launch - hey and those creepy blood sucking things are way larger than in Europe, they are called paralysis ticks because the venom can paralise the muscles... I freaked out when I felt something crawling up my neck and jumped and asked my team mate Tony if it was a tick - and so it was! He took it off, it had just started to bite so it was easy to get out, but I had goosebumps for about an hour... what do you do when they bite you and you are in the air? It is really a plague here at the moment. I guess Queenslanders are used to that problem, but for a naive European it is a horror to see a tick of 5 mm in diameter before it even started feeding on blood...
It was dogleg task with the goal at Boonah T along Rathdowney. Quite a few pilots had to land in the bombout, even top pilots like Scott Barrett and Adam Parer had to come up again for a relaunch.
Curt Warren was first in goal, followed by Nick Purcell (he is having his best comp up here ever as far as I remember, doing really well) and Glen McFarlane, but Rohan Holtkamp might have won the day, having had the fastest time to goal.
The days are really starting superearly here and we have long retrieves, because the seabreeze doesnt allow an out and return back to Canungra, so Im happy that I had a rest today and could catch up with photos and reports on the comp. It might stay north tomorrow, so if it is Flying Fox launch again, I will take another day off and just enjoy the wonderful climate and nature up here in Canungra, centre of the universe, according to Davo. "It´s pumpiiiiiing", as he puts it ;)
There is a great bunch of Kiwi pilots over here as well, and it is nice to see Hagen Brueggemann flying with his son Jonas, Matt Barlow is the top Kiwi pilot at the moment, just Conrad is missing. I´ve always admired John Smith´s flying skills - he looks healthier than ever! But he had to borrow a glider for the comp - he tried to ship his glider over to Oz, but very unfortunately it ended up on the ship that is stuck on a reef in front of the north island of NZ, creating an oil spill and catastrophe for the nature of that area... and apparently the container with his glider already went overboard. Lucky he hasn´t lost his humour and enjoys the flying anyway!
Results here!

Keine Kommentare: