11th Australian Junior Gliding Championships (and the Junior Pre-Worlds!) – Narromine

So this was it. Finally. Nearly three years after the announcement that Australia would be hosting the 2015 Junior Worlds, I was in Narromine again. This time with the hope of cementing my place on the Australian Team. It was a case of flying cleanly, and achieving good, consistent placings for the whole week.

Matt and Caroline were both there crewing for the two weeks, and we had a very European style camping setup with everything we thought we might want having been chucked on the back of the ute for both this and the Lake Keepit trip. The only thing I had to worry about was the flying. So thank you both!

For the first time ever JoeyGlide was run as a two class competition. With the number of competitors we had this worked really well and led to a fairer competition, with challenging tasks for both classes. This was clear by the fact that the organisation felt comfortable with sending the 15m class on the longest task in JoeyGlide history – a 500km triangle – only to surpass it the next day with a 600!

I finished the competition in second place, 350 points behind Matthew, but 600 ahead of Frederik in third. I think that this result is a good sign for next year, when I’ll be flying for Australia in Standard Class, alongside Matthew and Dylan.

2014 Qualifying Sailplane Grand Prix – Lake Keepit

It was a pretty obvious decision to fly this competition. The Grand Prix is run as a single class, with the best pilots around attending – so with the final selection event for the Narromine Junior Worlds just around the corner it was the perfect warmup. The only problem was the competition isn’t handicapped, so I’d had to find the best glider I could. With that being the GCV LS7, I was on the back foot a little.

This disadvantage increased further after Day 2. On landing I found some water in the bottom of the seatpan, and had heard a strange creek-like noise during the flight. We were a little suspicious at this stage that it could be one of the water bags in the wing leaking. The next morning when trying to fill the glider this was confirmed, with water chugging merrily out of the dump value and wing root. I almost made a pretty big mistake here, wanting to take the day off to try and fix it. Everyone there helped to convince me to fly, and I’m really glad they did. We couldn’t fix it there, and I flew the rest of the competition without water.

I think that in a way this worked out alright. I would try and stick with the main gaggle for as long as I could, and then work on my own flying for the rest of the flight. I was still racing as best I could, because while I was, there was still a chance of earning another point or two. There was a lot of satisfaction in beating my own expectations of how long I could stay with the gaggle, and of course flying around over the spectacular Kaputar Ranges is enjoyable enough in itself.