Rainbow Radness, the City of Sand!

Now I've been meaning to cut down on the amount I write per adventure but yesterday was something special. I've wanted to fly Rainbow ever since getting my wings, and after all the promised trips and talk about going, both Keith and myself decided to take the plunge and go ourselves.

I had previously spoken to Local Rainbow Hang Glide instructor James about a journey up. The night prior after speaking with Keith we decided to go for it. Keith arrived at my house at 10:30 that night so we could get an early start to the day and get ahead of the Irwin memorial traffic. Im also lucky that my new next door neighbour happens to be a weather forecaster for the Beaureu of meteorology, (sweet ey!) so a few reasuring words from Gordon and Shrek and Dunk..., I mean Keith and Ant were on another wirl wind adventure.

Once we reached the sleepy little town we contacted James who gave us instructions on how to get to the Carlos Sand Blow carpark. As soon as we arrived excitement took over and we decided to walk the 600meter track to where we would eventually set up. We were greeted by the most amazing sand dune we had both ever seen. It was massive! You really didn't realize how big it was until you saw people walk out to its center. At this point our excitement had deepened and we both started back to get our kit.

Arriving back we met up with James, A real nice, friendly easy going bloke who was more than happy to help out. We got to the task of signing up as new Rainbow members. Thanks again to Keith for paying my way. The past few days I've been resting my back, feeling like it was going to go at any moment. I decided to forego walking my glider in, incase I should throw it out before my fun actually began. Keith on the other hand was keen to carry his glider by himself. Now there is no way I could let a mate almost twice my age do that so I grabbed an end and shared the load. James on the other hand had the right idea and pushed his glider on a make shift cart he had made. Once we got there I borrowed the trolley and went back for my little Sting.

I was half way back when Keith ran up to help guide me through. Awesome little two wheeled cart! Keith now plans on making us one each. You rock man!! After getting back to the dune with all our gear it was time for a site brief as well as learning what we could expect from a 15-20 NNEastely. Once over we were left to set up while James jumped in his ride and walked down the dune. We were both left wondering now what do we do? and where is he going? and Is he coming back? In the end we were grateful with the way things panned out thus making us think for ourselves.

As soon as we were ready I helped Keith turn his glider around, which by the way is next to impossible with a 20 knot sea breeze behind your back. You literally bust a gut! Once around I shadowed him down to where James had headed. At least we could follow his footsteps. Half way down we saw him fly around the corner, fly up the far top end of the dune and float in to land. Hey that looked easy enough! Once Keith was down I ran back to my bird, jumped in, did a radio check and with keiths help turned around, I then took the reins and slowly walked through the rotary conditions before reaching laminar air.

Once I was with James he said he would show me his favorite launch site. He pointed to a lady walking just infront and said just run towards her. Hmmm... I thought to myself, think ill wait for her to move first. Once happy I took maybe 2 steps and I was rocketing up to the heavens at a phenomenal pace. Its been around 6 weeks since my last flight and I had the biggest grin on my face. I boated infront for a little while and once Keith was out began our ecstatic radio chat. One of the first comments out of my mouth was "hey man we can sit our intermediate exam now!" 'Hell yeah! I forgot about that!!" was his reply. Unfortunately we changed our frequency to James's 14 channel open. After about the first 5 minutes I got so sick of the extra radio banter that I ended up pulling the plug. We all just flew and flew.

The evening prior I had shown Keith a video of me doing some interesting tight turns close to the ridge at Beechmont. He had later commented that he suddenly felt his style of flying was pretty boring. He must have really taken it to heart because he stated to carve up the air like I've never seen him do in the past. He was doing almost every thing but looping! It was great to see, you could tell he was having a great time. Later James was heard to say "man that guys going to wear a hole in the sky!!"

After plugging my radio back together I asked James if we could go around the crescent of the dune. He said" you can try, I can pick you up if you land on the beach, but there is a retrieval fee"! " what's that?" I asked "A carton of beer" was his answer with a slight laugh. I boated around before I decided to leave the others and see what lay 50 meters round the dune. Feeling good I decided to try another 50m , then 100, then 200 then 500. Before long I had traveled about 2 kms round the crescent. I then had this sudden feeling that I might find it extremely hard to get back considering it was so north and I'd be hitting a 20 knot head wind.

I turned around to start what I thought would be bit of a battle. It wasn't so hard in the end. Maybe taking me twice as long to get to launch as it did to get to the middle of the crescent. Looking at all the different coloured sands was amazing! It was easy to see how the area got its name. Once back it wasn't long before I decided to try my luck landing. I pretty much did it in one go. I came in with speed and at the last second decided to elevate down from about 3 meters.

I went over and sat next to James and watched dare devil Keith tear up the sky. Later watching as he came in for a touch and go landing. We were certain he was going to over shoot and head out again but he some how set it down with style. We both laughed, whistled and clapped as he slowly started walking backwards flying the glider over his head. A few minutes later we were sitting and having an break. We talked a bit and James said we should practice some approaches while we were here. The comment was also made by James how difficult it was to get down low to even start an approach. I agreed in particular. Im not sure what it is but I tend to frequently fly higher than most. Now i know its not skill, because flying on a day like today doesn't take any. Like the rest I pretty much just let the wind take me. I put it down to my weight to wing load ratio. All day I was at least 200-300 feet above the others.

Being high is usually what I want flying inland but when your trying to land on a sand dune at a coastal site it can really suck. I would have to fly way out to sea before I even stated to loose height. Id then head back to the dune to start an approach. What was difficult was that as soon as I hit the dune id be shot up again by about 150 feet.

Anyway we sat a while before heading back out. But not before changing our radio frequency back to our Cunungra home club channel. We also gave James a lesson in tone squelch. May as well, He has himself an icom40s! No wonder he hates flying with his radio on. Anyway I was first off again. This time doing the laziest launch ever. Jay would have fainted. I ended up gliding sides ways down the dune whilst gaining height, it was awesome!! 10 seconds later and I was at about 1300 feet.

All day I was desperately looking for sea life in the ocean with out any luck. This flight I concentrated even harder. I finally saw a small dark object about 200 meter out. After staring intently I realized it was a HUGE! Sea turtle. My day just went up a notch (not that it needed to) and I started screaming to Keith to hurry up and get off the dune and check it out. Once Keith was in the air it seemed to take forever to point it out. I wasn't about to give up trying though, knowing it to would be a hightlight for him as well. I finally got him to see it. He was very impressed.

For the rest of that flight I practiced approach runs. At first with James on the ground. He gave me some advice by telling me to go further back up the dune before turning. He then jumped in and took off himself. I ended up doing about 10 dummy runs. Sometimes getting low sometime not. A lot of the times I had my feet dragging in the sand (BTW we decided to fly shoe less for the rest of the day) What a feeling that is! flying while dragging your toes through the sand, totally magic!

In the meanwhile I had a few people stop and watch me do this. By the 5th dummy run I had even more! And by the end I had quite a number. I knew they were all thinking I must be having trouble landing and they just wanted to see what was going to happen to me. It was soooo funny. Id just fly down after eventually loosing my height, get into hang drag my feet through the sand and fly off again.

Keith in the meantime was again carving up the air. This time even closer to the ridge. I eventually came in for a touch down, nice and close to where my harness bag and belongings were lying on the beach. I jumped out and took a few more pics of Keith in the air, talked to a pretty girl, then sat and watched as he too came in for a nice landing. Before our last flight James had said that we should land at the beach and he would get his wife to pick us up and take us back to our cars. But before flying Keith and I decided amongst ourselves that we would pack up where we set up.

Once we were both on the ground we chilled a bit, hi fived a lot! and eventually decided to pack up. We hadn't seen James for some time and thought he must have beach landed. What an effort it was taking our wings back up the top! We basically walked backwards with them flying above our heads the whole way.

One thing I have failed to bring to your attention is this little thing called sand. I cant begin to tell you what impact that stuff has on you and your gear. I expected it to get in my harness and though my wing but wasn't prepared for its full extent. It was so hard to undo my buckles because of the sand and undoing my carabeena was almost impossible. This stuff gets in everywhere! Radios, camera, sunnies, and everytime you go for a fly you literally have to dig your base bar out. I think today was probably even worse due to the wind blowing it around so.
Anyway towards the end you really can't give a shit and just pack it away with the rest of your stuff.

We Started a frantic pack up at 5:15 and walked my glider back first in almost dark surrounds. By the time we got back for Keiths wing it was dark but the sand along the path was illuminated enough for us to make our way back. We saddled up and went into town. We decided to have dinner at the Rainbow hotel. Afterwards we bought a six pack each for James as a thankyou for looking after us as well as he did. We found his street ok but found it extremely difficult to locate his house due to lack of house numbering and letterboxes. We got so frustrated I remember saying "what's with this place don't they get the mail?" We ended up ringing James and getting him to walk out in the dark street to wave us down. He then said that they don't have a mail run which made us laugh hysterically. Anyway we both thanked, hugged, handshook the guy before giving him his beers and heading off.

We were both still on our highs half way through our return journey. The other half we were just tired and listened to loud music. By the time we got back to my house it was 11 o'clock, we were knackered. Keith flaked almost straight away with myself a couple hours later.

An absolutely awesome day! All up 2 hours.

Frack I'm sore!!!