I’ve come to Bunyan in the Snowy Mountains for a week of gliding fun.
Bunyan is the home of Canberra Gliding Club and is famous for the Wave. The Wave is a standing wave created in the atmosphere when a high wind blows over the Snowy Mountains. The wave is like ripples found in a river downstream of a big rock. If you find the right bit of the ripple in your glider – the bit that’s going up – you can soar aloft to the cruising height of a 747.
Here we hope to climb to about 24,000 feet. That’s enough to get an internationally-recognised gliding achievement – a height Diamond. There are some dangers to high flight. We need to breathe oxygen and be prepared to descend quickly if the oxygen system fails. It gets cold up there as well, minus 30C.
I’m sharing a Camden Club glider – DG303 – with one other Camden member, Julian. I towed the glider in its trailer down to Bunyan (5 hours) on Friday and rigged it on Saturday. I had a lovely two-hour flight on Saturday in thermal lift and another 45 minutes on Sunday climbing to 7,000 feet.
The wave made an appearance today, but only a baby wave. Julian soared to 11,000 feet and one guy went up to 13,000 feet, but the wave didn’t last long.
It’s my turn in the glider tomorrow, but the forecast isn’t good – showers and possibly snow! Still, forecasts are not always right, so I have to be ready to take off in case there are good flying conditions.
Lots of people are at the gliding club for the week and the atmosphere is good. A big campfire has been built near the clubhouse to keep us warm while we drink beer under the stars. The fire has also cooked damper in camp ovens and provided the coals to line the pit to cook meat for a hangi.
