Judith's blog

It was far too windy from the outset to consider flying, so the organisation gave us the day off. We went to a Via Ferrata about 40 minutes away. Ten of us went and after a short walk in we climbed a number of sheer vertical faces. We did three traverses. The first was a himalayan bridge, the second an monkey bridge and the third a hundred meter zip slide. The pictures say it all, really.

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Judith writes: First task of the British Open in St Andre, France. People had thought the night before that today might be too windy, but we woke to light winds and blue skies. We all headed up the hill and a 62km turnpoint task was called. It seemed a bit cramped with 150 pilots on the hill. I have become used to a somewhat smaller number. As soon as the window opened, loads of people were off. The race start wasn’t for another hour and the start gate was only 3km away, so I launched about 20 minutes in and started to work on getting height. A huge group of gliders turned as one and started heading for the ridge ahead. This really confused me. I was sure the start was still 30 minutes off, but others started following them. I got my task notes out and checked I was right about the time. It was only a couple of minutes later that it clicked that they were getting further away, but in a much better position to glide to the first turn point.

So I tried to push out into the valley as well and followed a glider with a really good line. He fell out of the thermal, so I glided to the ridge ahead, but in big sink all the way. I slid past the lowest part of the ridge and straight into the venturi effect. I knew it was going to happen, but had little choice. I popped round the corner of the ridge and connected with good lift. With Kirsty’s advice in mind, I soared up the ridge, in lift all the time and overtook a number of people. At the end of the ridge was the promised thermal, and I started working it. However, with the strong wind I was being pushed back over the top of the ridge. Once I got enough height I pushed forward to the turnpoint, hoping to pick up something along the valley. I lost more height but found a thermal over some black rocks. I would take it, but being weak, it would drift me over into the gully. I played thermal and turn back several times and then evaluated my options. Taking a low thermal back might blow me over the ridge, and soaring along it would put me in the lee. I had watched others land and also saw strong upper winds by looking at the people above. In the end I decided that I wasn’t going to make it out of the place I was and went down to land. There were a group of us, including Martin Knight, Michal, Sander and Steve Newcomb. I have developed a new policy of cheerfulness in the landing field. No point in moping! I was happily being cheery until Martin told me that if I didn’t pack it in he’d burn my glider.

Safely downloaded, I got a bit of a fright when I was reminded about handing back my live tracker unit. I had half an hour to hand it in before my score was disqualified. I can’t get used to these newfangled rules.  

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We played a quick April Fool prank on a friend (who shall remain nameless) and then loaded up the van, said our final farewells to the neighbours and set off with heavy hearts. The sky was obviously fantastic until the border, but 100km into France it started to rain. As we got closer to Millau there was hail, so we didn’t even stop. By the time we got to the Auvergne region the sun was shining, so we picked a town at random and got off the motorway for a break. The town we had chosen was St Flour, which is perched on a rock. Ironically, the ‘rock’ is made of basalt, so we got a sense of home as we wandered around looking at the houses perched on the edge of a cliff made of columns.

After that it was a long slog to Abbeville, where we arrived at 2.30am to sleep in the front seats of the van in a motorway service station.

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We headed up to Masella for our last days skiing for the season. We knew it would be slushy from early on, so we got there for the first lift at 9am. After a warm-up run, it was straight up to the top of the resort. It was fine up there, but got sticky down by the lift in the middle. We skied until my knees couldn’t take it any more and then set off to meet Mike at Targasonne.

We love the site, but don’t go often as it is on the other side of the Cerdanya valley, near Font Romeu. Mike had told us he thought it would be a good day and it really was. Cumulus popping off everywhere. Thankfully the road was open and we could drive to the top. It was a little breezy and very thermic, so we waited it out for a while. By 2.30pm it seemed to be dropping so I launched first. I climbed straight to 7200′ AMSL (1200’ATO). The views are just stunning.

It got a bit cold at that altitude, so I stayed below 8000′, but Mike climbed up to cloudbase at 10,500′ and said it was perishing. He went for a triangle, but missed it by a narrow margin, while I flew around soaking up the scenery and Geoff found it a little bouncy and decided to head out into the valley and then down. To be fair, he was flying my Aspen, which is the wrong size for him.

The landing field is full of horses, which seem completely unfazed by the gliders coming in and largely ignored us. There was a little incident though, when I misjudged the height I was coming in at, mis-timed my flare and landed squarely on my butt in the middle of a huge pile of horse shit. My harness is still drying out next to the radiator…

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Geoff writes: today was forecast northerly – not tramuntana, just a north wind. Sometimes Santa Brigida will work then, but often not. We thought it might be too strong for Sant Pere de Rodes, and our ideas of going to Ager were scuppered by the north wind, and the fact that the next two days’ forecast is poor here. So we decided to take a trip across the border to Ceret, which has a north and a south launch, and where the forecast was light northerlies. John and Johnny decided to come too, their first time flying in France.

After looking at the landing field, we went up – which took a bit longer than usual because the centre of Ceret was closed for a carnival.

The only other flyer was a guy doing tandems – no other pilots there at all, which was a bit surprising on a Saturday.  He had launched just before we got there, and gone more or less straight down.

The wind was nicely on, but there were no cumulus. I decided to launch anyway, and see if it was working. After sinking a few hundred feet, I connected with something, and then it just got better and better. The others rapidly launched, and we all flew around for a while – the thermals got stronger, and the higher you got, the rougher it was. Or, possibly, that was just because I was flying the Artik 2, which is certainly more dynamic than the Hook. It was nice to fly, and thermals really easily, turning very nicely into the lift. Whilst it was a lot more dynamic, it wasn’t anything to worry about, and I had a great flight. Lift everywhere, very easy to stay up.

Once we had all landed (through choice) we decided to go up again, hoping it would have smoothed off a little. In fact, it was more or less dead – very light on launch. John and Johnny flew, both getting nothing on the ridge, but light lift in the valley, low down, which they both worked really well, until they finally went down. Judith and I decided to drive down – it would be a long retrieve for the sake of an extended top to bottom.

After beers and food in the landing field, off to Ceret to see the end of the carnival. Some great floats and costumes.

All in all, a very pleasant day!

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Driving back to the UK today we have been reflecting on the course. It was absolutely brilliant. I had assumed that I would just be taken through a series of maneuvers, like ticking off boxes, but that isn’t Fabien’s way. He made sure that we got the basics right first and the progressed each of us at the right level. He pushes you when you need it, but will allow you to back off if you want to. Having been through the course I feel more confident to deal with incidents generally and I have lots of ideas for skills to practise when I have height.

In hindsight, maybe I should have pushed myself more to do more maneuvers faster, but I discovered a lot about myself; both as a pilot and as a person. I really need to ease myself out of my comfort zone gently as far as SIV is concerned. In my heart I am still a hang glider pilot and I think it will take a lot more experience on a paraglider to convince me than all this collapsing is fine. Acro is definitely not for me.

I also learned huge amounts about the glider and my harness. We have a copy of the videos of all our maneuvers and I will be studying these in the coming weeks to learn more. I wish we could have also videoed all the talks and debriefs. Fabien gave us a huge amount of information and I wish we could have recorded more of it for posterity. Despite the fact that I was very nervous before the course, sometimes terrified during it, and very relieved when it was over, I am really, really pleased I did it. I couldn’t recommend it more.

Flyeo were a great company. Fabien is a fantastic instructor. Always smiling, he knows so much about gliders and he inspires huge confidence. We were amazed how he could instruct us on tiny details from 1000 feet below, being able to observe and correct us just by looking at little creases in the canopies, shadows, hand movements, etc. The whole set up was mega professional and ran like clockwork. Gil and Jeremy, our marshal and driver, were lovely and clearly the whole team work well together to make the operation seamless.

Finally, it was really nice to spend the weekend with such a nice bunch of people. I’d never met Cris or Richard before, but as a group we really gelled. All of us were there to learn and supported and encouraged each other. There was no machismo and everybody was quite open about any nerves or concerns. Having the others on hand to be able to ask questions or getting tips (like standing up before your b-line stall) was great. We all had a laugh as well as learning a lot. Roll on the reunion in Piedrahita. I think it’s Tony’s round….

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My programme for today included a twist, B-line stall, accelerated collapse, autorotation and finding the negative spin point. Geoff was doing similar stuff, but no twists. All the others had progressed onto stalls and spins. I changed my speedbar and then headed out to do my twist. Everyone else I’ve ever seen doing a twist made in look effortless, they just spun around and flew backwards. I mean, how hard can it be? I yanked and pushed, pulled and prodded and didn’t even get a quarter of the way round before flipping back into the correct flying position. I was grunting like a weightlifter giving birth but no way could I twist myself round. I still couldn’t find the speedbar, so on to the B-line. I liked it. Nice and gentle, not scary, just the kind of SIV I like.

I was disappointed with my performance the previous day, when I really discovered my inner wimp, so I decided that I didn’t come all this way just to piddle about, and I decided to just go for it. I pitched the glider properly, whacked the collapse in and did a big autorotation. What I forgot to do in the excitement was to bend my knees. The pod and your outstretched legs cause a big pivot effect, so you swing more violently, making twists more likely. Seeing the video later really reinforced this. I did a few exercises to find the spin point of my glider, by progressively burying the brake (“More, more, more, Judith, more brake!”), until the glider deforms and starts going backwards. You then let your hands up symmetrically and damp the dive. I did manage to fix the speed bar and did the accelerated collapses, but realised that my pod wasn’t properly connected so bending my knees was made much more difficult.

The other guys were getting to grips with the stalls and we made the mistake of standing on launch watching. Nigel’s stall and subsequent thrashing about looked scary; as did Pat’s. I learned over the weekend that Richard is a man who doesn’t do things by halves. In terms of SIV, he is all the things I am not. On the way up I was saying to him that it would be interesting to see how his stall worked out given how radically he had done all the other maneuvers. Possibly the wrong thing to say….

He did an autorotation, but got a cravat. To get it out he did a full stall twice, but it didn’t come out. Fabien said to get ready to use his reserve, but by the time he’d finished the sentence, Richard had thrown it, pulled in the main canopy and landed gently in the water. Textbook stuff. He was rescued instantly and turned up at the landing field in his underpants. The beers were on him this evening!

Pat’s second flight also made for interesting viewing. Despite concentrating on not letting off the stall asymmetrically it came out that way and the pivot motion of the pod put him in a double twist with the glider not recovered. He sorted it all out fine and landed with a small cravat.

Before my last flight we had fixed in my cocoon properly, but made it too short, so I couldn’t get my legs in properly. I spent so much time trying to undo the buckles to release the straps that I didn’t have time to practise more stuff. I was gutted.

Cris, meanwhile, had taken off after me and was practising finding the spin point. He then did another stall and a perfectly controlled tail slide, but had a cravat when coming out. By the time he had recovered it he was too low to reach the landing field. Fabien told him to head back over the lake and placed the boat underneath him. Cris executed a perfect landing and Fabien powered up the boat and they flew the glider all the way to the shore. Coolest thing I have ever seen.

As soon as we got back to the HQ, we all realised just how exhausted we were. The lads had to leave at 6pm to get their plane, so we said our goodbyes. We drive to Dieppe tonight to catch the ferry back to the UK tomorrow.

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