June 2008
Monthly Archive
Monday, 2nd June 2008
The forecast was quite poor for today and we decided to have a rest day, do a bit of work, and some archery. Early afternoon, the sun came out, and there were nice cumulus everywhere, light south easterly. I thought about going flying, and dithered for a while, but Judith wasn’t feeling too well, and I was tired having flown the previous four days; and tomorrow is a good forecast for the Mynd – west for the first time since 1st May. So we stuck with plan A, and went to archery. Later on, the cloud did come in, and the sun disappeared.
However, it was flyable (according to 3jam messages) for most of the day at the Malverns, and, also Mark Leavesley (who Judith met this evening to talk about the Long Mynd Club flying arrangements for the XXX Festival) saw someone flying at Corndon for much of the day; I think that for a few hours at least, if you were in the right place, it was probably a good flying day, with some XC potential.
Tomorrow, west. Forecasts differ as to wind strength; might be OK for PGs, might be a bit strong for them.
Sunday, 1st June 2008
The forecast was for 8/8 cloud cover and showers. It was very light winds most of the day and very warm, and it never did rain. We decided to do jobs and called into Beyond Extreme to get Geoff a new radio. We met Michaela at the shop and she was off to Corndon and promised to keep us up to date with conditions there.
At 5pm the wind had increased enough for Michaela to think that Corndon might work its evening magic and she phoned us to say it would be flyable. As we arrived we picked up Wayne who had done a top to bottom. On getting to the top, we could see Chris C. climbing up in good lift. We got ready fast as Wayne and Gordon also climbed up nicely.
Michaela launched from the trig point, but had a problem with her harness and had to land shortly after! Geoff got off first out of the two of us and reported very buoyant but slightly bumpy conditions. When I got in the air it was surprisingly thermic. Each cloud was working well and I got to 600′ ATO several times. It suddenly switched off and we all landed, but it picked up again half an hour later and was probably soarable again.
I need to practise my forward launches before France next week, so took advantage of Michaela coming back up the hill and she talked us through good techniques to use and helped us improve our fairly poor skills in that area. Geoff did well. Let’s just say I need more of Michaela’s coaching!