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The Forbes Proposal for the 2009 Worlds (check this out).

Vicki Cain and Jonny Durand Jr. are in Europe ready to argue their case for Forbes as the site of the 2011 Worlds at the the CIVL Plenary meeting at Hall, Austria. Vicki has made a concerted effort to get the Worlds for Forbes and bringing Jonny along is part of that effort.

The brochure above is quite elaborate and does a good job of presenting the Forbes story.

Steve McCarthy keeps sending out emails announcing that he'll be towing at Forbes (this last weekend and two weekends from now). There continues to be a lot of interest from pilots wanting to tow up and fly big cross country flights from Forbes.

Bill Moyes started leaving a Dragonfly or two out there two years ago and last year pilots finally figured this out and made arrangements for getting towed up. Now there is more demand than ever, while there was little demand for towing from Rylstone where Bill normally keeps his tugs.

The forecasted winds came through, and the day was cancelled at the morning briefing. We did some glider tuning, and packed up to head back to Sydney. The forecast for the next few days are not good for flying.

So 2 tasks out of 9 the way it looks now, not very good for an Australian comp. My flight from Sydney is Thursday afternoon, and I’ll be in Oslo Friday afternoon local time.

Yesterday looked like a very good day, no winds and good thermals. We went to Mt. Buffalo and set up among the rocks there. The takeoff is a ramp off a cliff with nothing under it for a 1000 meters. Spectacular! I was number 3 to take off, as we have reversed the top 1/3 for the takeoff order. I did not think about the steep cliff launch until i looked back after I had launched and saw the vertical dropoff.

Finally some flying! The winds were really strong during the night, but calmed down and was quite light in  the morning. We drove up to Mustic at Bright, and set up in the dustbowl there. (Some lucky bastards got to set up on the carpet :-))

Day 2 and 3 have been cancelled. We drove up to Emu both days, and set up, only to have the task cancelled due to non taskable conditions on day 2m and too much wind today. Fairly cold at takeoff today, had to wear pants for the first time since I came here. It heated up nicely during the day, and we could spend the afternoon at the river with some cold drinks.

The weather people are optimistic about the next few days, we can only hope.

On the last day of the Forbes Flatlands after the task was stopped, I came over
the sailplane field where I spotted Lenny on the ground with 4,000' AGL. It took
forever to get down and I wanted to get down before the rain or gust front came.



The actual field was a mixture of some cropped land and landing area for
sailplanes, and I caught a glimpse of a fence at the edge of the cropped lands,
so I decided to land in the huge field next to the sailplane port going into the
wind which was showing on the windsock next to the fence between this field and

The last day looked nice from the morning, but the forecast for thunderstorms soon proved to be correct. We were all set up under a great sky, and had a 146km task to the SE. I took the first start gate among most of the other pilots, and flew fairly fast down the course line under building clouds. I pushed hard, and got a little bit low halfway, but soon got up again. By then a Cu-Nimbus behind us had started dropping a lot of rain, and some lightning. There was another cell to the NW, but we could always run away from these.

Organisers defend hang-gliding safety - Organisers of the Forbes Flatlands Hang-gliding Championships say the sport is getting safer, despite two deaths at the event in the past three years. [ABC News - Forbes]