Judith's blog

Our tasks for day two all involved collapses. I wasn’t so worried about this part of the course because it isn’t so violent and it seems the most relevant to me. First exercise was inducing a frontal, by pulling down both A risers. As usual, my first attempt was a little hesitant, so I got to do it a second time – lucky me! Tony showed us all up by not pulling the risers, but pulling the centre A lines only. The glider shrimped (a big horseshoe, where the tips touch in front of you). I’m not sure if it looked more impressive or scary.

The second exercise was to induce a big collapse and fly with it, steering straight and then doing 360 degree turns into the open side and then into the collapsed side. It’s just like flying normally, and I could have happily done just this exercise for the rest of the course, but Fabien had other ideas. Next came dynamic collapses. We had to start a big oscillation and on the forward pitch, you grabbed one of the A risers and yanked it, causing the collapse, then correcting the rotation, and getting out the collapse. Next was collapse with full speed bar (not for me though! I couldn’t find my speedbar despite an extended rummage in my harness).

Then we did autorotation. This involves pitching, inducing the collapse on the swing forward and holding it to get into a rotation which you need to then sort out. I discovered on this exercise how strong my subconscious self-preservation instinct really is. Reluctant as ever to really go for it, I wasn’t pitching enough (“More, more, more, Judith, more brake!”) to really get the swing on the collapse, and I would then unintentionally keep a little inside break on, which dampens the rotation straight away. So I did the right thing for the real situation, but the purpose of the exercise was, of course, to do things full pelt in a safe environment to learn stuff. The other thing I was finding difficult was the co-ordination thing. I’ve always thought of myself as having quite good general co-ordination, but making your hands do different things and then remembering to pull my knees up at the same time, proved to be quite a challenge for me. Pulling your knees up is really important if you fly a pod harness, for reasons we were to discover later.

Meanwhile, Geoff was getting the bigger picture a lot better than me and was trying to do the maneuvers more radically, despite the fact that it’s more difficult to bend a 1/2 glider out of shape than a higher performance glider. On his last flight he was doing one more autorotation when his radio failed. He was supposed to only do one rotation and then recover, instead he did four, waiting for the instruction to pull out. Fabien meanwhile was shouting for him to pull out, then to pull his reserve. On the fourth rotation Geoff realised that he was very low, pulled out elegantly, but just in time. One more turn and he would have plopped straight into the water. On top, our launch marshal, Gil, was saying that he though someone was in trouble. When asked how he knew, he pointed out that you could hear the outboard in the background of the radio transmissions. Fabien was calling to Geoff to abandon his landing and go for the water, but not having heard him, and given how much Geoff hates cold water, he went for a downwind landing beyond the river instead. He only just managed to scrape onto dry land. A cut eyebrow was the only damage, and he got a ride in the boat as it was easier to collect him by water than walk out and be collected by car.

We headed back for the de-brief and had an individual planning session for what we would do on our final day. By this time, we could see what Fabien was trying to achieve. All the maneuvers end with a big surge, so if you can control the pitch, control the rotation and maintain your course, then you have the basics for a recovery from most problems. Building up our skills to reinforce these lessons allowed us to progress to the next level with each exercise.

Unfortunately, Tony had to go back to work, so couldn’t do a third day and we had to say good bye to him.

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We met up with the guys at Irwyn Jehu’s house on Friday night and reported to Flyeo at 8am this morning for our equipment check and safety briefing. There are eight of us doing the SIV/pilotage course: Tony Blacker, Richard Butterworth, Pat Dower, Cris Miles, Nigel Prior, Roger Purnelle, Geoff and me.

I’ve been very nervous in the run up to the course, and Geoff and I have discussed our fears and what we hope to achieve this weekend. I am terrified of doing a full stall and getting it wrong, and Geoff will do pretty much anything not to have to throw his chute and land in water. Having talked to lots of people about their SIV experience, I’m not really sure what to expect, but I haven’t set my pod up properly, believing that I’ll have to take it off for the course, and I have asked to do certain manouvers which I’ll need for the advanced pilot exam. Within the group we are all experienced XC and/or comp pilots, but Geoff and I are the least experienced in radical conditions on a paraglider. Suddenly, starting hang gliding again seems like a quite good idea.

Our instructor is Fabien Blanco, test, acro and competition pilot. He wants us to do the course with exactly the set up we usually fly with (minus instruments). Three of us have cocoon harnesses, which he says will add to the entertainment factor. It hadn’t occurred to me that flying with a pod makes a big difference when doing maneuvers. He talked us all through the safety briefing and spoke to us individually about what we want to achieve. Our first tasks were to practise our pitching, so pulling the brakes until the glider is behind you, then releasing it and letting it pitch forward, then braking hard again to get an oscillation. When I first started paragliding, Len Hull drummed into me that hands up meant life and hands down meant death. I never knew how ingrained that lesson had become. Fabien had his work cut out trying to get me to resist the urge constantly to dampen out the pitch and fly normally again. His mantra became “More, more, more, Judith, more brake!”. Next came spiralling and exiting the spiral fast, with a big pitch movement on exit. It took me a lot of attempts (“More, more, more, Judith, more brake!”), but eventually I did lock in and felt myself being pushed into the back of the harness. I know now that the couple of times I thought I had done a spiral in the past, it was a steep 360 at best. On the video it looks pretty tame in comparison to the others, but I did manage to do it in the end. I also now know why I used to stick to steep 360s… I hate the high G stuff. I find it disorientating and it makes me feel sick.

Roger was the action man of the day. On his first flight, Fabien told him to to turn by pulling on his right brake. He yanked it down with conviction and did a helicopter!

After three flights we headed back to HQ to watch the videos of our three flights and to have a thorough de-brief. We didn’t finish until 8pm and after twelve hours, lots of adrenaline and sunshine, I was exhausted and very, very hungry. The pizza went down a treat and we all headed to bed ready for day two.

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We woke up to sunshine and clouds burning off. After a leisurely breakfast we headed to Talloires and Jerome from Flyeo confirmed that the forecast was very, very good. Cumulus were popping off and it was looking like an epic day. Only problem was that we were the only ones there! Each day there have been people already flying at Plan Fait when we arrived (even yesterday when it was nearly clagged in), but today, not a soul, either on launch, in the cafe, waiting for a lift. We hung out waiting to grab a lift with someone, but by 12.15pm we were getting fidgety. A cheery ‘Hello’ behind us revealed Tony Blacker, and we decided to go up with him, although as we were getting the cars sorted we got a lift up with Flyeo instead. People lobbed off and got straight up. I assumed it would be a bit rough, with the sky being as it was, but it looked pretty smooth from launch. Tony launched and climbed up the mountain. Geoff and I took a lot longer, in weak thermals, until I flew around the north side of the ridge and hit strong lift. I climbed up the rocks, but didn’t let myself go all the way to base, as it was very sucky and people were going in an out, one set nearly hitting each other when one big-eared out just about on top of the other. There seemed to be paragliders everywhere you looked around the lake. I flew out into the valley to the north east and then back out to the lake, then hit mega sink and decided to take it down to the landing, to chill out before the big SIV excitement starts tomorrow. Excellent day, stunning views and a real pleasure to be in the air.

See photos of today.

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Completely overcast skies this morning, so we had a leisurely start and then headed to Plan Fait. Despite nearly being clagged in, people were flying and maintaining. We drove up and the sky started to brighten and we set up. Geoff launched and climbed up. I got ready, built a wall, pulled the glider up to check and it all seemed fine. As soon as I was off the hill, I pulled my left brake and felt a lot of resistance. On looking up, I had a big knot at the top of the breakline, which seemed to get worse as I tugged it. The back tip was pulled in, and I had to fly one hand up above my head and the other down by my shoulder to maintain straight flight. Not good, so I decided to fly straight down. I tried a left hand turn, but I whipped round, so decided not to do that again and planned my approach accordingly. When I landed the sky started to really break up and they were thermalling up and having a blast. I resisted the temptation to go into a mega sulk and packed up quick in the hope of getting a lift straight back up. Unfortunately, everyone was already up, so no chance of a lift. I met Sean from Chamonix, who was also hoping for a lift and together we hitched, but no one would stop. In the end (an hour and a half after I landed) we got a lift but by this time it was a lot windier on top. I decided to wait while Geoff drove the van down. Lots of people flew, but it seemed gusty and off to me and I just wanted a nice flight. In the end, the wind started coming from the north and sometimes over the back and the locals decided to drive down, so I joined them. I was gutted to have missed the best of the day, but have only myself to blame. Better preflight checking tomorrow!

Geoff writes: I had a great flight. I flew for an hour and a half and it was cloudy but still thermic. When the sun started to come out it got even better. It was easy to get high, but you couldn’t let yourself get too high because the cloud was still relatively low. I landed to have a break and to have something to eat, planning to go up again later, assuming that the sun would come out properly. But it just clouded over again.

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We woke up to cloudy skies, but by breakfast time it was breaking up and the sun started shining. We headed towards Talloires, but got distracted by gliders on a ridge to the west of the lake. I recognised the gliders from a couple in Phillipe’s group, so we headed up to find their landing field. The wind was picking up, but Phillipe generously took us along to Marlens and gave us a lift up.

It seemed breezy in the landing field, but we headed up. The wind wasn’t too strong and people from a Swiss school were doing ok. We launched, but with wind and thermals it was a little rough. I could see the Swiss guys heading down and they were coming down vertically and a fire at the entrance to the valley was starting to be horizontal. I decided that there we strong wind above and below me and so I headed down. It took me a while to descend, but once I turned into wind I was going backwards. Only 1.9mph, but backwards nonetheless. I reversed into the landing field and then pulled my Ds as hard as I could, for an untidy landing, but at least I didn’t get dragged. Geoff’s approach was hampered by the wind changing. He had plenty of height to come in on a cross wind approach, but the wind turned and he sunk out vertically, missing a powerline by inches and then getting unceremoniously dumped on his bottom. We had a beer with Phillipe, Christine, Jacqui and Paul and then decided to can the day, although they were going to Plan Fait in the afternoon.

Instead we went to the Gorges du Fier. The gorge has been cut out by the canals which run through Annecy from the lake. It is steep side and they have built a walkway halfway up the side of it. It was stunning and amazing to actually be inside the gorge, looking up and down. Next stop was Annecy town, with its narrow streets and beautiful houses. We sat by the lake and had a picnic in the sunshine and soaked up the views of the mountains. I could live here…

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We woke up to sunshine and found the Flyeo school, who we are doing the SIV course with next weekend. They were closed. We had a coffee in Talloires and I accosted a group of pilots to ask them for information on where to go flying. One of the group was Phillipe from Espace 3D who offered us a ride up the mountain, and gave us a comprehensive briefing of the landing area.

On arrival at the launch, it was very light and stable. Some low airtimers went off for top to bottoms, but we waited for some credible signs that it was actually working. The first buzzard had me rushing for my gear, but two guys went down in the sink after the thermal. I waited another five minutes and then launched and got up. The wind was very south and the thermal drifted me along the ridge. It didn’t last and I headed back to the same source and flew around in broken stuff while Geoff and twelve Polish pilots watched to see if it was worth launching too. Ten minutes later I was in the landing field and watched Geoff launch, maintain and then climb up. By this time the Poles did think it was worth launching too, and everyone lobbed off. Geoff had a nice hour boating about looking at the scenery, which is just stunning.

I had a coffee at the bar and then Phillipe came back down to collect his clients and offered me another lift. What a nice man!

By the time I got back up, conditions had improved enormously. It was very thermic and people were getting high enough to climb up the ridge behind. I got to 1000′ ATo, but lost a lot closing my harness. I then thermalled around, but had been warned by Phillipe that with a south wind at altitude and a north wind at surface things could get churned up a bit. The drift in the thermals was still south, but I started to notice that there were waves and whitecaps on the lake from the north. People were starting to head down to the landing field and I decided that knowing nothing about the place and the valley winds it would be preferable to be down rather than to find out the hard way what strong winds on the lake mean. I flew down deliberately, but in the event, it was fine and it would not have been a problem to continue flying. However, a local agreed that it was better to be safe and usually whitecaps mean trouble.

Everyone was really friendly in the landing field and on launch and the scenery is just breathtaking. This evening a warm front has come in and we’re hoping it will go through tonight, rather than lingering into tomorrow.

See photos of today.

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We set off early this morning, packed up to the rafters as usual. It’s always sad to leave the house and the village.

We got across the border, where it was howling and stopped at a service station north of Perpignan and as we started the engine up again, we heard an ominous crunching sound. Hmmm. Breaking down in France is the worst possible scenario. They tow you off the motorway (if you want to or not) and we don’t speak the language. We drove to a safer spot for Geoff to examine under the car, but couldn’t recreate the noise. In the end we carried on.

Our first destinaton was Nimes, to see the Roman ruins. We got there without a hitch. The arena in Nimes is one of the best preserved in the world and well worth looking around. After that we looked around the narrow streets and soaked up the athmosphere. It’s a lovely place. On carrying on the journey, the winds in the Rhone valley were even worse than along the coast and passing lorries was tricky. Geoff grew Spock ears listening to the engine and transmission, but we got to Annecy ok.

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