Judith's blog

Feeling better, I decided to go up the hill with everyone. The reports from yesterday’s task were scary. The task was up in the high mountains, past the Cheval Blanc and back. Another blue day, the height gains were impressive, but this also meant people were climbing through the inversion and shear layers. By the end of the task, the incident count was five reserve deployments, including Mark Hayman, who has a stable fracture of a vertebrae and has broken a wing off the same bone. He’s walking and not in a brace, but will not be able to fly the rest of the comp. There were two other incidents, with Kirsty and another pilot in trees. Conditions were described from ok to ‘fruity’. Having only witnessed one parachute deployment in 15 years of flying, I think this is a little excessive. I prefer to do my SIV courses separately from my XC flying and I really don’t like how wild this place is and how strongly the valley winds blow.

So today, we got up in the early bus and then the wind was strong over the back. We assumed it would come more on with the thermals, but even when the window opened, it was still often 90 degrees off and people were launching from the south take-off, whilst we were on the west. The launch conditions did come good and everyone got off safely.

The task today was out front in the valley, where you could just about see the turn points. I was much more relaxed about it and set off reasonably early and got straight into a thermal. The trick with the start was to place yourself downwind of the first turn point, which is the other side of the valley. So you do the hard work getting across the valley (via a top up ridge), and getting high, in the hour before the race starts. I got to 8500’ and got onto the top up ridge easily. Others were marking a thermal that would get us over to the ridge we needed to be on. It was all going fine, when the guy in front of me had a big blow-out and lost most of his wing. Since I was heading in the same direction, I assumed I would be hit by the same turbulence. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and turned away. On thinking about it, if I was free-flying, I would not have taken off in the middle of the day, not chosen to fly where we were and not chosen to fly in an area I feel so out of my depth. This competition is all about pushing myself so far out of my comfort zone that I am actually not enjoying the flying in the slightest. And in that case, why am I doing it? Decision made, I flew down to the landing field to have a day off. I’m in danger of scaring myself to the extent that it will have an adverse affect on my confidence, and given how great I felt after Ager, I don’t want to do that. I feel that the main thing I would learn here is to push myself beyond my point of fear and I already know I can do that. So I’m done with the comp. From now on it’s just fun evening flying and a holiday. I’m much happier now.

There was another parachute deployment during the task, and although people said it was mellower, I’m still pleased I just did my little hop.

No photos… too scared to take my hands off the brakes. I hope to take some in a nice evening flight.

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Geoff writes: having stayed overnight, I flew at the Malverns again. Kai decided to come down too. A bit windier, totally blue, and surprisingly rough, both on the ridge and over the back. Kai was the first to leave, in what looked like very weak stuff. After scrabbling around for a while, I got away, and managed Hereford – about 25km. Kai missed his goal, just, but still did over 90km! A brilliant flight on such a day. I always find blue days quite hard – so many possible sources and triggers – I never pick the right one!

Many thanks to Ian for the wonderful retrieve back to Kettle Sings. We owe you!

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Geoff writes: easterly forecast, so I decided to have a couple of days at the Malverns. I arrived a bit late, about 1.00, but no-one had flown by then anyway. There were cumulus around, just not at the Malverns. The wind was light,lift was weak. In the end, two or three people got away, and they probably had the best of the day, doing in the 30s. I got away later on, and only managed 15km. The lift was very weak, the cumulus were few and far between, and, in the end, I was just pleased to have got away.

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We went off to launch and it looked like a great day. I started to feel a bit woozy while setting up and once the window opened I realised I had a migraine coming on. I thought the safest for all concerned was if I just flew down. I landed fine, packed up and went back to the house. I did come out briefly to try to talk to Geoff, but I was feeling very dizzy and head-achy, so I skunked off to bed while the race leaders headed in. I was in bed the rest of the day/night.

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Geoff writes: after a run of poor flying by me, I did manage to do a decent flight today. Wayne and I went to Llangollen, along with a lot of other people. It was pretty busy, with lots of people in the air when we got there (we weren’t particularly late, just that people were eager). There was an inversion, and it was blue above, so no-one had gone XC at this point. After two abortive launches, I finally realised I had a knot in my lines, which Liz sorted out for me. Next launch was fine. I climbed out fairly quickly and got more or less up to the big gaggle. Everybody must have got bored at that point, since they all went on a glide (Grouse had already gone, and was climbing over the back, so maybe they were just following her), so I went too.

The first few km were a bit tricky, in the blue, but the gaggle I was with made it easier, for all of us. Quite a few people seemed to go down just behind Llangollen.

After that it got a lot easier, as the clouds started to form, and, for me, all the ones I went to worked. The first part of the flight, I tended to be playing catch up – which has one advantage that you can see where the lift is. Later on, when the gaggle I was in was getting smaller, I did do some leading out (maybe that’s why I went down in the end!).

Most of the climbs I was in were quite strong. Interestingly, it got rougher around 4.00pm, when I was expecting it to smooth off a little. Base was higher, I think around 4800′ was the highest I got. It was, though, an incredibly slow day, with the drift petering away to nothing – and when I landed at 5.00pm, at New Radnor, it was nil wind. Altogether, I flew for five hours – with only the first ten minutes or so on the ridge. 84km with turnpoints (my longest PG flight), so clearly a very slow day. very scenic though, with good visibility, and flying over, or close to, plenty of other sites – the Gyrn, Rodney’s, Long Mountain, Corndon, Sarn, and finally Bache.

In the end, I made a mistake, and instead of hanging around at cloudbase waiting for some clouds to form in the blue hole ahead, I took a risk, found nothing, and went down. Naturally, there were plenty of clouds ten minutes later. But I was tired, and getting impatient.

Not so tired, probably, as Grouse, who flew for seven hours and did, I think, 103km.

Wayne, who had a shorter XC than me, did the retrieve honours. Otherwise, on a bank holiday, I’d still be at the side of the road hitching.

Tracklog on XC Flights page (see top tabs) as usual. No photos. Unlike Judith, I can’t do two things at once, so flying and taking photos is impossible for me.

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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.  

See photos of today.

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Geoff writes: it didn’t rain (well, just a few spots). It was a nice day, a bit lighter winds than I expected. Went to Llangollen. It was flyable most of the afternoon, until it blew out, but no -one got away (there weren’t many people there, surprisingly enough). The only reasonable climb I got was immediately aftetr my first launch, and in retrospect I should have gone with that, but it was quite weak, and it seemed like there’d be plenty of other opportunities to get away. There weren’t. I landed, after big wave clouds started developing (they always make me a bit worried), then flew again a bit later, when they dissipated – to be replaced by some bigger cumulus. Overall, it was a reasonable soaring day for people, but  probably we could have made more of it in terms of XC. People did go in the Peaks, from Lords, but there were a lot more flying there too.

Long Mountain didn’t work at all, too light, I think. The Lawley, the last report I had, people couldn’t stay up, but that might have changed as the day went on. [It did, and Siro, at least, had a great flight]

On driving home, early evening, I saw three gliders at Lan Fawr, doing some evening soaring.

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