This article by Craig Dilks was first published on the Bendigo Gliding Club website.
On the 8th of February 2010 I had the longest day in the air that I've had in a very long time. I was competing at The Horsham week competition in David Tickners Hornet GMK. For the first time I was in standard class which means in a 15 meter glider with water ballast.[
At morning briefing they set the task for the day, a monster 550 km. Having not ever done a 500 before I was quietly pumped up for the chance to do the flight, deciding to put in 50 litres of water ballast should give me a bit more of a chance of completing the flight.
As I gridded up I noticed a slight dribble of water leaking from the wings, but nothing to be concerned about. With the Pawnee pulling me up in the the developing sky things could not be better or so I thought. Just after release I found zero lift, I was on a down hill slide trying to keep airborne. Out of luck I had to make a dash back to the runway and get another launch.
Doing a greaser of a landing I kept the water ballast on board. While towing the glider back on the sealed runway a power plane lined up to land, so I elected to get out of the way for him. Turns out that was a bad choice for me with the Hornet's wheel dropping into a hole that deep there was no way of getting it out by myself. The only way of getting the glider out was to dump all of the water ballast and with help from others we picked the glider up and I was back in action.
As I got pulled aloft for the second time I was still worked up from the drama of the last hour. My thoughts were cloudy and not totally focused on the job at hand. Heading out on task my thermalling wasn't the best and when you are a good hour plus behind everyone you need to have a clear mind.
The South Australia border was where I was going for the 1st turn point. On arrival at Francis I took a great climb that really got me going, I was back in the game.
It took me an hour and a half for the first 110km and on a day like this it was fairly slow. The next turn point was Ultima, over 250km away. Wow! that's more distance than the 1st day of the comp. About half way along the leg I pulled into a climb with Keith Willis in his PW-5 ZAW, he was doing his own task. With things going slower than I would like I half thought "maybe I should've stayed in bed". It was 4pm and I still had about 150 km to the turn point . It took me until 6pm to make it to Ultima.
On arrival at Ultima I had a sneaking thought the day was starting to die and it was still along way back to Horsham. The last turn point was Donald over 100km from Ultima. The thermals weakening and about 2hrs before the sun was due to go down, I was in trouble. I kept on saying to myself just 1 more climb and I should make it home. And in saying that I got that thermal to 9'000ft. Excellent I can now make it to Donald.
10 kilometres from Donald I found myself saying those words again "just one more climb and I'll make it home" and with that another 9'000ft climb. In rounding Donald at 8'400ft and the time at 7:15pm I still thought making it back to Horsham was fairly slim. But... One should never give up.
The last 81km into the sun gave me not a lot of forward vision and going on the GPS arrow the numbers kept on counting down. At 2 knots down I flew at 60 knots and if it went to 1 knot down I slowed to 55 knots and at zero I did 50 knots. By doing this I extended my glide even more. Any remaining thermals were very weak and not worth stopping for. Finally The numbers we all like to see on the GPS , I was going to make final glide.
On arriving back at Horsham I managed to snap a few photos of the sun just about to set before lining up on the runway from which I departed 7hrs ago. I took me 6hrs 30mins to do the task at a average speed of 88kph. I hoped that the next days flying was going to be shorter.