Is OM Wave for U?

[jimrooney]

Is Omarama Wave for U?
sorry, couldn't help myself ;)

"Bald" mountain... no trees, no buildings, no powerlines. Toplandable, sidelandable, whatever. Covered completely in speargrass. The only thing to keep track of is the sheep fences and a few small bushes. 1500ft MSL at the primary landing. The mountain is completely surrounded by big green fields. There are a few distinct treelines separating some of the fields.

Primary takeoff is on one of the fingers about 2400ft MSL. But really, you can just find a spot that faces into the wind and have at it. You bench up behind the finger to the main range and up past 5k.

At around 6k, I started hitting the wave. Sailplanes were running the ridge below since it heads back to Omarama airport and is... well... consistent as snot. At 65, I started to get cold and getting down started to prove difficult in my borrowed Shark (similar to Xtralite). At 7 I started to be able to lose altitude. A mate was up at 85 in a Stealth and reported "bar stuffed and going up 250/min". We were all horribly unprepared... shorts, tshirts us all. Oh yeah, and no O2.

After we all made it down, we had a good laugh about not bringing our jackets.
Good stuff
Jim

[Danny Brotto]

Wow, you're flying Omarama? That's large; a mecca for sailplanes with world-class wave. Have fun and post some pix!

Danny Brotto

[jimrooney]

Sorry, forgot the camera. I'll prob head back out there though. It's only 2hrs away. I got some pics from last year. We head out there for a fun XC fly-in every year.
Yeah, they've got a few sailplanes ;)
The wave is scary-fun.

[Danny Brotto]

Omarama was the site of the ’07 International Soaring Grand Pix; a new form of sailplane racing held last month This is a competition of international champions(25 of them) in an all out race with a synchronized start; first pilot to finish wins the day. Courses are in the range of 150 km. The really cool part is that each of the competitors is outfitted with a number of high tech, miniature, high-quality, video cams for point-of-view action coverage. They are also outfitted with GPS transmitters. There’s also a fancy gyro-stabilized-camera-outfitted helicopter providing eye-in-the-sky coverage. All this data and video ties into a fancy presentation interface for tracking allowing real-time pay-for-view coverage of the action via web casting all over the world. It’s a pretty slick system. You can see more about it at:

http://www.gpgliding.com/

Check out the “GP Gliding Explained” video.

Danny Brotto

[Flying Lobster]

Sailplanes are actively banging off records here too--check this out from new year's day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pf9lbmBuU4

marc