Jonny Durand flew a new Australian record yesterday. He took off
from Beechmont yesterday morning at about 8 am and landed in Roma to the North
West at 6.15 pm. A total of 443 kms.
The previous record is held by Drew Cooper for 427 kms.
I just tried to call Jonny to get more details but his mum said he ran out this
morning to try to borrow a paraglider to break the paragliding record!
It was the morning of October 31st. Jon and Jonny Durand woke up
to find ideal weather conditions for a great flying day. I ( mother and wife)
offered to drive as we recently acquired a new retrieval vehicle and it needed a
test run.
Young Jonny left the house early excited with the day's possibilities. When Jon
and I arrived at launch, just after 8:00 am the hill was already buzzing with
pilots. Jonny called Roma as his goal and then ran off the hill just before 8:30
am. Jon didn't get off the hill till 9:30 am, and I hopped in the truck soon
after.
I caught up to Jon Snr just before Toowoomba where he landed, 140 k's from take
off. He then joined me in the chase. We caught up to Jonny at about 400 k's out.
Jonny's flight had taken him from the rainforests of Lamington National Park,
over the expanse of the Great Dividing Range and now onto the flatlands of the
Darling Downs.T he day was slowing down and he was low. We were not sure if he
would break the record or not. Then he was joined by two eagles. I knew this was
the sign and we continued to drive to the 427k mark, which was the old
Australian Distance record. (This record was set by Drew Cooper about 10 years
ago, when he towed up out in Wilcania, NSW.)
Meanwhile about 20 k's up the road young Kurt, Shelley and Jane were having an
average day on their cattle property. Nothing much exciting had happened. Their
Mum and Dad just asked them to take the quad bike down to the dam to turn the
pump on before dinner.
Jonny had now flown past the old record and was looking for a good paddock to
land in near the road. The sun was about to set and he was tired, he had been
flying for nearly 10 hours. "I've found a good paddock just up the road at about
440k mark" came Jonny's voice over the radio. We drove up the road a ways. "No,
just another few k's on the right, there is a road going into a large property",
said Jonny.
So we pulled the truck in and watched Jonny do a victory loop and then come into
land next to us. "Wow, did you see that" Kurt, Shelley and Jane saw Jonny coming
into land on their property. They took off on their quad to see if he was ok.
Mum, Dad, the family dog, hugs, congratulations, food and water awaited Jonny
when he landed.
He had flown for 443 k's landing just 30 k's short of Roma. Not long after he
touched down the three kids pulled up on their quad bike. Their day just became
a lot more interesting when they found out that Jonny had just set a new record
and landed his glider on their property.
Then their Dad, another John arrived in his truck and later their Mum, Trish
rode her bike over to find out what was happening. We all talked and watched the
sun set together. Now it was time for the long drive home. We watched the nearly
full moon rise and it was orange. It looked like a huge pumpkin lighting up
Halloween night. We arrived home 12:40am Monday morning, 15 hours after my drive
started.
(editor's note: Johyn Snr owns the Beechmont launch. Snr and Jnr
have tried to beat this record for a number of years. Drew Cooper lives down the
street, but hasn't flown regularly in quite a few years. It's 275 miles.)
I have a reasonable memory of most of the decisions the BOD has
made. But for the life of me, I fail to understand or recall why all the
confidentiality over our SOP policy manual.
Steve Roti writes:
As a former regional director I'm with Bill on this. As soon as
you tell me to make the policy manual available on the Web site I'll be happy to
do so. The only argument I can think of against making it all available today is
that a few of the SOP's in the Policy Manual are outdated and we want to avoid
putting outdated information on the Web site.
I'm in agreement with Steve and Bill. So far as making the policy
manual public. We should go through it to make sure we don't have something in
there that's misleading or outright wrong, but I really don't think we have
anything to hide.
It is with great sadness we’d like to inform you that Yossi and
Yaron Levin, 1st and 2nd generation hang gliding pilots in our little hang
gliding community (father and son), lost their wife and mother Lea Levin in the
vicious terrorist attack which took place yesterday in Israel, Tel-Aviv.
In these sad moments we’d like to extend our deepest sympathy to the family who
has suffered such a tragic loss.
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