Judith's blog

Judith writes: We had been checking the forecast for a few days and decided it would be much better in the Peaks. A chat with Andy confirmed this, so we got up early and drove up to Derbyshire. We were obviously on to something, as Kai and Dave T. aslo headed north to Bunster and David T. headed down to Parlick from Scotland. The sky was pretty poor most of the way and Helen didn’t think it look very promising, but as we got closer to Eyam, it cleared and cumulus started to organise itself into nice streets. We wondered about the wind strength, but Paul, a local pilot, launched first and seemed to be having no problems with penetration.

I launched second and vowed to go over the back as soon as I could, since the weather was due to deteriorate and because Eyam isn’t a ridge to hang around on. It has something of a reputation amongst paraglider pilots. I had never flown it on a PG before, but have a lot of experience of it on a hang glider, and never had any issues at all with it then. I flew along to the pub and bimbled about a bit before spotting a bird thermalling out front. I connected with the climb and was off. Geoff, Helen, John S. and Denis W. rushed off to follow me, but didn’t get into the same climb, so I went on my own. I lost the thermal as soon as I was in a position of not being able to get back, but hunted around successfully and got it again. The climb was strengthened by some lift kicking off the lee side of the moors behind Bradwell.

The climbs didn’t seem to want to go to base, so I went on glide to Stanage but realised I wasn’t going to be able to make it onto the ridge, so flew to the little rocky escarpment in front of the parking. It worked well and my next climb took me past Stanage and over the moors. I had looked at the airmap planning to head NNE or NE, so had studied the Upton corridor and RHADS airspace, but stupidly, I hadn’t looked closely at the airspace further to the west. My plan had been to fly over Sheffield, or even to try to keep east of it and that would put me in the perfect line for getting past RHADS. Once over the back, the thermals were drifting me N or NNW and I was getting further and further away from Sheffield. With each glide I tried to get back east, but each thermal would drift me back off course. Once Stocksbridge appeared on the GPS, I knew I was in a bad place. I remembered something about Stocksbridge being a problem, but couldn’t remember what the issue was and I couldn’t get to my airmap to check. I spent most of the flight circling, so couldn’t get to the GPS to check it easily either, so in desperation I radioed John to ask him, but he was in a tricky place and couldn’t respond.

I made a final dash east, but it took me to a decaying cloud (that seems to be happening to me a lot these days!) and I went down. I wasn’t actually where I thought I was. I had zoomed out on the GPS, and thought I was near the 3500′ limit, whereas I had actually managed to push more east and landed at High Green, NW of Sheffield and only a few miles from where I went to college. However, having looked at the airmap, had I let myself drift with the thermals and gone downwind, this would have headed me straight for Leeds-Bradford airspace. It really helps to know an area!

Once on the ground, the front caught up with me pretty quickly and I learned later that John landed somewhere very near me and Helen made it to close to Barnsley, 5km further downwind. Geoff came for me and we picked Helen up on the way to the pub. Nice to see her and Simon and we spent the evening with Andy and Denise. So nice to catch up properly with old friends.

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A windy, sunny day, so we worked and did gardening, until it seemed to start to drop off and a hang glider started flying. We got ready fast and headed up the Long Mynd. I had some test flying to do – both for a new harness and my old glider, which I’m giving away. When we arrived it was light and perfectly flyable, although there was some dark cloud upwind and much debating whether it was rain or not.

I got the Zoom out, checked it over, groundhandled it and then took off. It was silky smooth and I spent a lot of the time flying hands off, just steering with my body. It’s a nice glider. After a short while the lift got weaker, so I flew over the wind sock and noticed it was dropping, so I top landed while I had the chance. The wind dropped some more and the others didn’t get off because it was so light. Then we felt some spots of rain and we legged it back to the car. Geoff and I decided to call it a day, having at least flown one thing. However, when we got back home, the rain must have stopped up the hill (not at our house, it was still spitting there), because Nick Bubb had taken off and was doing some gentle soaring.

Music night with Michaela later…

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Judith writes: Finally a flyable day! The lead-up to today was interesting, since the forecast changed nearly hourly and they had a huge degree of uncertainty as to what would actually happen. What seemed clear yesterday was that it would be better further south, as the front would be coming down from the north. I also surmised that the flyable window would be short and that there was a chance that it would become blown out by lunchtime. Given all this, we decided to head for Frocester, to give ourselves more time in the day, and RASP was giving it better thermal strength there too. A quick last minute check with Wayne Seeley had our decision confirmed, but luckily he told us about the Battle of Britain airshow at Kemble, just downwind from Frocester. I don’t like mixing it with airspace and have enough trouble concentrating on the flying without the added workload of negotiating an aerial battle reenactment. Anyway, I don’t think they had paragliders taking part in the Battle of Britain, so for authenticity sake, I thought it was only fair we didn’t go.

We considered the Malverns, but opted for the good old Long Mynd (and a lie in!) instead. We got there relatively early (10.30am) and set up fast. People were leaving as we were getting ready, so time to get a move on. I launched and vowed to get away as soon as I could, as I could already see the front getting closer. The plan worked well and I left pretty much straight away, on my own. I connected with a climb over Ragleth and then carried on over Wenlock Edge. I could see a group of others struggling over Brown Clee and made a mental note to have that as a difficult area for the day and to make sure I was at base/heading for a good cloud when I got there.

Getting from Wenlock Edge to Brown Clee was a hard slog and I probably should have abandoned my slow climb for a faster one, as it would have bought me more time ahead of the front. However, I didn’t push and then got low behind Brown Clee, which was partly caused by some erratic bimbling while I got my inner gloves out and on – my hands were freezing. I was nearly down, when I spotted two tractors turning a field. I figured that it had to work. Frost in the morning, strong sun and green fields all around the ones they were working in… no brainer, surely?

I got the tell-tale roughness over the field, so bits were being released, I just needed to sit it out until the whole thermal released. I hung on, telling myself ‘never say die’ and all that, and then it popped and I got the strongest climb of the flight all the way up to base at 4000′. I then had to make a decision… follow the cloud street towards Birmingham airspace, or try to edge more south and make a long distance more feasible. Since my shortest flight was 41km, I decided to go for it and headed out to a cloud away from the street, which turned out to be decaying. I flew over the place I landed near Kidderminster last week and extended my flight a little, to land on the edge of Wolverley.

It was a scoring flight at 46km, but in hindsight, I should have stuck with the street, given that the front was catching up with me. At this stage in the game, you need to take some risks and try to fly tactically, so what that it didn’t work out!

Geoff didn’t have a good day. He had a tangle in his lines and spent ages sorting it out, only to get bracken in his lines about six times, so he was off late and then got caught in the strong winds. He didn’t get away and eventually elected to land in the bottom with a number of other pilots. What a difference half an hour makes! With the front close, he chose to come and get me, and we picked up Krzysztof and Karol on the way, as they had landed not far from me. It was raining when we got back to the Long Mynd at 3.30pm. So the day was short indeed.

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Geoff writes: Judith was at a family event today (and tomorrow) in Essex. I did consider going, but we have a big meeting Tuesday morning, and I need at least one full day of working before that, so didn’t go.

For the flying, it was good for hang gliders, bad for paragliders. I still would like to do a long PG flight for the league, so hoped it would be ok today, even though the forecast was fairly strong. Specifically, I hoped that, with a NW forecast, Long Mountain – which takes strong winds – would be ok. In the event, first thing it was west, so I went up to the Mynd, but it was too strong, and a bit off to the north. I, and a few others, then went to Long Mountain, where the wind strength was fine, but too far west. In fact, it never went NW at any point throughout the day. So we duly went back to the Mynd, where it was on, but still too strong, though dropping. It seemed like it would probably drop enough by around 4.00, for at least the chance of an XC. RASP in the morning had given it weak thermals, but the sky seemed a lot better than that, and some hang gliders had gone XC, so it was worth sticking with the PG.

Rather than drop off more, though, it picked up. It could have been wave influenced, with the wave going in and out of phase. Lulls, where it was easily launchable, then suddenly picking up again. In the end, around 5.30 or so, I did launch, and it was fine – until suddenly I started going up rapidly, and became stationary. I eventually, and very slowly, managed to push out and lose height, went back to land, and promptly got blown back, landing going backwards. And that was enough excitement for me for the day. And a lot of wave bars had appeared by then, in the distance.

For the hang gliders, in spite of earlier reports that they were in convergence above Cheltenham, it wasn’t quite that good. The furthest was 90 km or so (as far as I know), with others down at around 55km. But I would have been happy with either of those!

Judith writes: I drove down to Colchester to meet my parents, sis and family, at my cousin’s (gorgeous) house. From there we went to Upminster to celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 40th wedding anniversary. I haven’t seen some of my family for a few years and it was nice to catch up. Nice food and plenty of bubbly later we headed back to Colchester.

See photos of today.

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On paper today was a good day, with the BBC and others giving a nice sunny day. The only source of doom was RASP, who were giving weak thermal strength and overdevelopment from early on. Geoff had a phone meeting at 9.30am and then some follow up work to do, so we didn’t get out as early as we hoped. Kai was leaving to go XC as we arrived at the Long Mynd and the wind was picking up, so rather than chatting we got into the air fast.

I got a good climb from the south end, but didn’t take it back low enough, lost it and had to come to the front, losing most of my hard earned altitude. Geoff, Mick and Martin came to join me at the south end, but didn’t get into the same climb and this time I did go low over the back. I figured that if the wind was going to pick up more it would just get harder and time was getting on.

I lost the climb over the A49 and had to fly south west to connect with another cloud. I thermalled with it over Wenlock Edge, but then lost it again and went on an ambitious glide to a big cloud near Brown Clee. On the way there I lost loads of height and was berating myself for chasing a cloud that was too far. However, I was convinced it would work if I could just get under it. I was getting to the point where I thought I would have to land when I got the climb and screamed up to base at 3700′. I pulled out of the climb and went on glide, but got sucked into the cloud and had to big ear to keep the ground visible below me.

The next cloud was over the other side of Brown Clee and I started spotting showers to the north and increasingly big clouds to the south. At this point I resolved to set myself a ceiling of a height I wouldn’t go above, since I couldn’t be sure how big the clouds were getting above me. As I progressed, the wedge of sunlight I was flying along was getting smaller and smaller and the showers were starting to develop in front as well as to the north. Once I got to near Kidderminster, there was no sun on the ground and my path was blocked by big clouds and I could count seven showers around me. Time to land!

I picked a nice big field on the edge of town, but then realised it had posh horses in it, so I diverted to a cropped field and did a spot landing on the path along the outside edge of it. A nice elderly dog walker came to ask where they’d dropped me from and then gave me directions to the train station (too far) and pub (I’d be able to get a taxi from there). 10 minutes later he came back and said he’s drive me instead. What a kind man. To make a long and boring retrieve story short (too late!), I bumped into Kai at Kidderminster bus station and Geoff came to pick us up. Kai had got to Bromsgrove and also been blocked by the cunims, except he got rained on before he managed to land.

Highlight of the day was circling with six buzzards under a big cloud. You don’t often see them high up, but the seven of us were happily climbing together, with one circling close to me to have a closer look. Just amazing.

Geoff writes: rubbish flight, brilliant hitching. Actually, the flight wasn’t that rubbish in the circumstances, but short, only 20km. It took me a while to get away from the Mynd, mostly because I don’t like being drifted back too low, partly because of the glider airfield we share the ridge with, so I wanted a strong climb, and kept pushing forward, and, eventually, I got my climb. This took me to base with another glider, and we wandered off down wind. I was happily on my third climb, past Wenlock Edge, when I saw a shower, and quite a large cu-nim, in the distance off to the north. A few more 360s, and there were four showers and two cu-nims. And it was pretty dark ahead. So my plan changed, and I stopped taking the climb up to base, and decided to head towards the edge of clouds, rather than the centre – just because I couldn’t be at all sure what was above the small part of the very large clouds I was under. This was the right decision for safety reasons, but the wrong one for distance, and soon I was down on the ground, near Brown Clee. I landed in a field with sheep in, not noticing the farmer who was also there until too late – but he was fine, very friendly.

The area around Brown Clee is the middle of nowhere. I got to a road, the sort of road which has one car every 24 hours – and about ten minutes after I got there, it duly arrived, and he stopped, and gave me a ride to Diddlebury. A really nice person, genuinely interested in what I’d done. He dropped me off at the school, where he was picking up his daughter, and I walked a short distance to the main road. After hitching there for all of five minutes, I got picked up by another extremely nice person, a lady on her way home to Craven Arms. Very quickly, she offered to take me back to our car on the Mynd – quite a detour for her. On the drive it turned out that she and Judith knew lots of people in common, both having worked at University of Wolverhampton.

I nearly always enjoy the hitching back after an XC, not least because the people who pick you up are usually very nice (otherwise they woudn’t have stopped) and often pretty interesting to talk to.

Getting back to the car so quickly, I went to retrieve Judith and Kai from Kidderminster.

See photos of today.

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I decided to fly on the last day and the main objective was to enjoy it. The forecast was for windier conditions and an evening flight looked unlikely, so I went up in the first bus and got ready. As we were setting up, wave bars started forming in the distance and I decided that I would fly until they got closer and then I would go down. I didn’t fancy flying in mountains with lots of lenticulars around.

The task was designed to keep us away from the wind and we had to go into wind to a start cylinder 3.5km away, then 20km north and zigzag a bit then back to the HQ. I took off 20 minutes after the window opened and spent the next 40 minutes getting high and trying to push forward. I headed out over the ridge in front but failed to clear it and had to head back to the launch ridge. It was turbulent in the lee, so I resolved to get a lot more height before my second attempt. I got a strong thermal and got to 2300m and cleared the ridge easily, although not without a little kicking. I lost a lot of height getting to the start, but managed to drop back onto the ridge, climb up and get back to the launch ridge to start making my way to the first turn point. I ridge soared to the end of the ridge, while Calvo called the conditions level 2 (caution). Adrian Thomas and Wagga had been calling 2 or 3 for a while, so I decided then that the task would soon be cancelled and I didn’t fancy being in the bottom of a windy valley or having to wait for a retrieve bus, so I about turned and headed back to St Andre. The task was cancelled 10 minutes after I landed.

The ironic thing was that I didn’t actually find it that rough or scary. I was flying around thinking that if this was how the other days had been, I shouldn’t have been so wimpy and just got on with the flying. However, when others landed they said it was the worst day of the lot, really turbulent and nasty (others reported nasty conditions further along the course line, so I think I didn’t fly far enough to get into the really rough stuff). It just goes to show how important not just your attitude is to a day, but also your feeling. You can be really up for a task and accept roughness, or be worried about the conditions and feel the turbulence as really threatening. Since I wasn’t bothered about the task, I flew as far as I wanted and as far as I enjoyed it and when faced with a bunch of valleys I didn’t think it was sensible to be in, I made the choice to fly away, so had a nice flight.

The flight (and stunning views) did make up for some of my negative views of the place and it’s clearly a great place to fly, but I’m not sure I’ll be back in a hurry for an all out racing comp – at least not without going there to do some free flying first. There are rumours of the Nats going back there next year and I think that would be a shame. For one thing I don’t think it’s good to go to the same venue in consecutive years and for another, given that nearly 10% of the competitors had incidents, it might be good to have a more relaxed venue to attract a wider field of competitiors – the Nats are not just for the big boys after all.

Prize giving was fun and great to see Kirsty second overall in serial class, and local boy Neil Roberts second in the champs. And of course well done to Craig and Wagga as well.

The dancing went on into the small hours. And I had the great honour to be told to f*** off by Bob Drury who was the DJ. Apparently he doesn’t do requests!

See photos of today’s flying and prize giving.

Geoff writes: the final score – ten reserve deployments, one power line landing,  and at least two tree landings. And another incident I don’t know of – the competition organisers said there were 14 incidents in total. There were about 146 pilots, so about 10% of the pilots had serious incidents. That seems quite a high risk to me. Maybe it’s a reflection of the venue, maybe it’s the type of gliders people fly. Flying is always going to have an element of danger, there will always be accidents, and people don’t have to fly, they choose to do so, it’s their decision. But for me personally, a 10% chance of an accident like this is way, way too high!

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Geoff writes: I decided to go to the Peak District – partly because I thought the flying would be better there, and partly because it was the Derbyshire Soaring Club’s summer party on Saturday evening. It was a good call. The wind was SSE – no chance of a significant XC flight in that direction from the Peaks, because of airspace, but then it wasn’t really an XC day. It was, though, a lot of fun, doing the ridge from Rushup down to Lose Hill. It’s not quite as mindless  as just doing the Mynd ridge run, you have to work a little bit more, not least to get around Mam Tor. And there were plenty of thermals, in spite of the cloudy sky.

The evening party was excellent, and I caught up with a lot of people I hadn’t seen for some years. Makes a change for me to have to do the talking. I usually leave that up to Judith.

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