Bahau was for me the first site where I could fly in thermals after I achieved my license in 2011. It was for a long time the best site I knew in the vicinity of Singapore. And for 5 years I had a lot of great experiences there and made good friends that will probably stay for a lifetime. I always knew this site had potential for more. For more than just flying above the ridge and soaring it back and forth. The only thing that kept us for many years from leaving the ridge, was the fact, that landing possibilities are rare in this forested and palm plantation covered area. I was not flying the site for a year or so, since my travels brought me to other places and I also was told that with the palm trees growing quickly, the previously already rare bomb-out options, were all gone.
On the weekend of 12 and 13th of March Bahau finally had the chance to prove what it's offering:
For equatorial regions quite rare, the cloud base was at almost 2000m. With pretty strong climbs which are also not often to be found in this area thanks to the humid air, it soon went up and the land showed us the path. Dried out or half flooded paddy fields along with foot ball fields, which I learned to love so much in my last years in Asia, where marking the way along the road and I followed it to a nice out and return of 20km. One of my dear friends, JJ, even made it to a 23km straight line. It might sound little, but for us this was the first big step towards amazing future cross country flights and the furthest somebody probably ever got from this take-off. We started to make big plans: a triangle in the roads showed us the option of a 40-50km FAI triangle. Until these plans are realized, this last weekend will stay in our minds as the best weekend in Bahau.
A short site description that I made for Paragliders Association (Singapore) some time can be found here: http://paragliders.sg/index.php/whereto/wwwfly/bahau
Flights on Leonardo on this site are here: http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/tracks/world/alltimes/brand:all,cat:0,class:all,xctype:all,club:all,pilot:all,takeoff:32334
Flights on XContest are here: http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights-search/?filter[point]=102.37253%202.82812&list[sort]=pts&list[dir]=down
It was a truly awesome Weekend! I just saw on paraglidingmap.com that there seem to be 2 more take offs on the second ridge...what about accessibility of these?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately these two take-offs seem to be gone since more than 5 years. There are some power lines in the way I was told and thanks to new housing developments in the town, the landing options seem to be even more rare than on the hill we flew from this weekend. But maybe it would be worth, to have a look there again.
DeleteNice writing!Thank you for your comments to improve this Bahau site.Of course we will let you know when we will break the XC record in Bahau....
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