July 2009
Monthly Archive
Friday, 10th July 2009
Getting to base, Judith had already gone on a glide, and I eventually followed her. She got very low behind Caradoc, and got a snotty little climb from a few hundred AGL. I went in high above her, and watched as she climbed straight past me! We both got to base again, her a bit sooner than me, and she went off on a glide, rather than wait for me. A fatal mistake for her, she got nothing, and eventually landed for about 19k.
I was more patient, and got another couple of climbs – it was hard to keep out of cloud. The wind had picked up, and Judith had said it was strong when she landed, so I was travelling downwind pretty fast. Airspace was becoming a problem, as were my GPS batteries – in spite of registering full at the start of the flight, they were now nearly empty, and I didn’t want to negotiate airspace without the GPS.
In the end, I decided to land, and just went for a long glide from base to the ground – flying through lift on the way. This was, obviously, a bad mistake, since once I looked at the airspace more closely, I could possibly have successfully negotiated it, and been on track for a much longer flight than the 41k I did.
But I was pleased with the flight, for once I thought I flew quite well. Base, for me, was about 4800′ – less further south. Mark Leavesley (Happy Birthday, BTW) did 71k, with a base of 4100. Martin Knight and some others got to Kidderminster, not sure how far. And some people did a lot less.
My claim to fame today is that leaving at the same time, in the same air, as the leader of the XC league, I managed to fly signficantly further than him (oh well, 4k!). Doesn’t often happen that I outfly Andy (in fact, probably never has before, or will again), but it is nice when it does!
Tracklogs on the XC pages, see tab at top of the page.
Oh, and just to put our flights into perspective, the Midland Gliding Club, the sailplane pilots at the Mynd, have a comp on this week. Yesterday – on what was to us a very indifferent day, with the max height about 900′ ATO – one of their pilots flew from from the Mynd to the Isle of Wight, and got back as far as Shobden. That’s a very long flight!
Thursday, 9th July 2009
Geoff writes: a better day than we expected. Windy, but less north than forecast, so was fine for the Long Mynd. Quite a few hang gliders out, including Bry and Andy from the Peaks. We had a some nice flights on the hang gliders. Good to see Stewart, a new HG pilot having a good flight – excellent launch and landing, and a half hour flight in between. Well done Stewart!
Just one PG turned up, and flew, even though it was a bit strong when he launched and the sky was still full of wave.
Wednesday, 8th July 2009
Geoff 08 Jul 2009 | : Archery, Boring stuff
Geoff writes: wet and windy. Did some work, did some LMSC stuff, and did some archery. What more can you say?
Tuesday, 7th July 2009
Geoff 07 Jul 2009 | : Boring stuff
Geoff writes: we spent the day working on various bits and pieces. Amongst other things, we’ve made a number of changes to the blog, as follows:
a) The external page where ‘our XC flights’ were located has been moved into the blog, and linked from the tabs at the top.
b) We’ve created a new page, ‘articles’, which stores some of the various flying-related articles we’ve written. Again, see the tabs at the top.
c) We’ve created a twitter feed into the sidebar menu to the right. This will be used exclusively for information from flying sites, usually during competitions, e.g. updates on the site the comp is going to, what the task is, etc. Obviously, whilst we’re actually flying, there won’t be any updates. (We were playing with twitter as an alternative to the 3Jam we used to use for text notifications, but our thanks to Jamie Sheldon, http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/, for the idea to incorporate it here).
d) As part of all the above, we’ve reorganised the sidebar, and made it a bit simpler.
We still have to do some work on getting RSS feeds just for the podcasts, so that people know when new ones are published (we’ve plenty more in the pipeline to add to the 12 already there) – thanks to Tim Pentreath for his ideas and advice on this, we hope to sort it out shortly. Paid work got in the way a bit!
Monday, 6th July 2009
Judith 06 Jul 2009 | : Boring stuff
What a contrast to last week. I’ve become used to waking up, throwing on some shorts and putting on the flip-flops. It was pouring when we woke and I had to dig out a jumper from the bottom of the drawer. Welcome back to Blighty!
Spent hours trying to catch up with everything that’s accummulated in the past 10 days, but the pile doesn’t seem to be getting any smaller. Off to music night tonight…
News from the Spanish Championships: Our friend Sergi Ballester has won the second task!
Sunday, 5th July 2009
Judith 06 Jul 2009 | : Competitions
I wasn’t that hung over but very, very tired. Packed up and went to say good bye to people and then Kai, Kelly and I made our way to the airport. Everyone from the Mynd, Derbyshire and the Pennines was on board, but nearly everyone nodded off the minute we had taken off. On arrival, the baggage handlers decided to work to rule, so Cris climbed through the hatch and passed gliders through manually. We eventually got our luggage once they resolved the dispute. Got home very late and I was shattered.
On reflection it was a great experience. I spent time with lots of really nice people and got a chance to meet up with lots of friends and make a few new ones too.
I liked Piedrahita and the flying around there. I didn’t see the results until I came home, so was pleased to see that I came 102nd overall against a lot of competition gliders and extremely experienced pilots from all over the world. In my class I came 26th and was 6th woman. I didn’t feel I disgraced myself and actually did ok for my first comp.
I learnt a huge amount. It was invaluable being able to talk through the tasks with Dave Thomson in advance and then to de-brief them afterwards too. I’m glad I put in the prep for the competition. I’ve spent the last nine months trying to prepare for going to Piedrahita and it certainly made me feel less intimidated and more confident, both in my attitude to the flying conditions and to the competition in general.
Will I do it again? Definitely. Just not in St Andre or thereabouts. If there’s a Spanish round next year, I’ll definitely be there!
One negative note… I lost all my photos from the first few days, and I am really gutted about it!
Saturday, 4th July 2009
Geoff 04 Jul 2009 | : Competitions, Flying, Party, party, party..., Trying, but failing, to fly
Geoff writes: Last day of the Piedrahita comp and Judith got to goal, so she is ecstatic (and, by now, probably more than a little drunk). She’ll no doubt be writing a full report Sunday or Monday, depending on her hangover tomorrow. They all fly back tomorrow night. I have no idea of the final results, but I’m pretty sure the Mynd guys she flew out with – Kai Coleman, Mark Leavesley and Neil Roberts – were all high up in the results.
And in the UK, a wasted trip to the Gyrn, which was flyable right up until the point we arrived, at which time the wind picked up and it started raining. Not quite wasted – a pint in the pub replaced the flying. Well done Ali on, I think, getting higher than anyone else on a training flight! (Apparently people did fly later on, after we’d left).
Judith writes: I got to goal!
Forecast was for more westerly winds but no over-development. I decided to take the second bus up. This means you have less time to get ready, but I needed some time on my own to chill out. I’ve chatted and socialised so much this week I felt I needed some downtime before the final flight.
I got up and ready fast. They called the same task as the previous day – a 56km race to Avila. I was pleased they let us do a short task, because psychologically it’s good to fly a task that seems achievable and it was within terrain that I had at least seen.
I launched mid field but conditions were scratchy and there were a lot of free flyers around, who made the thermalling interesting. One guy on an Omega 7 decided to soar the thermal in the middle of our gaggle, scattering us sporadically. I don’t usually shout at people in the air, but I used choice words in every language I speak.
I found it hard going and wasn’t thermalling very well at all. In each task we have been required to thermal left until the start gate and I struggle with this turn direction – my glider likes to go right. Lots of people were in racing mode today and as soon as the race started people dashed off to the pass, some very low. I decided to fly conservatively and not cross until I was high. I got low and struggled along with Ian Miskin and Julian Robinson. Whilst scrabbling around, I started to think how I would feel at the end of comp party if people asked me how I had done and I had to say that I bombed at the pass, and how disappointing that would be. On the other hand, if I could say I got to goal I would be unbelievably happy. This gave me the boost to really try harder.
We all got climbs in different places and I took the ‘Scottish route’, to the right over the high stuff. I was at about 2400m at that point and only got some rough stuff when I hit the inversion. I hung around high until I could see someone starting to circle on the other side of the pass, crossed and flew straight to them. We got up again in weak stuff and headed for the bend in the road, where we were joined by a guy on a Niviuk glider. The three of us worked weak lift and I was convinced that we should push on to the little dark bits of rising ground behind the village where I landed on the first day. I left them and it worked for me… I got a good solid climb and they joined me.
I promised myself that I wouldn’t go on daft glides low, and the wind strength was increasing, so I was quite happy to drift along the valley in weakish lift. It was just like flying a UK XC, except the view was more beige than green. Once I got to within sight of Avila, I was at 2700m and tried to decide when to start my glide into goal. I don’t have a fancy glide angle calculator on my GPS and was too worried about hitting sink/headwind, so I started my glide in at 3km. By comparison, Adrian Thomas started his at 25km. I got to the end of speed section at 2500m and then into goal about the same height. This isn’t smart competition flying, but all I wanted was to get into goal – time taken was of no importance to me. It showed… I was last in out of 89!
I was so happy and overwhelmed when I crossed the line I burst into tears, then laughed my head off and then remembered that I hadn’t taken a single photo on the flight. I snapped happily and then went to burn off my altitude. It took ages – there was a lot of lift about. It was windy too, so it was rough coming down, but I landed fine, kissed the ground and demanded goal hugs from Mark Trigg and Malcolm Davies. On getting on the retrieve bus, Martin was there, as was Ruth and Pat, Folkert from Holland and lots of other friends.
I also got my PB in terms of distance, so I was smiling so much my face hurt.
There was a prize giving in the evening, but not a party as such. I bumped into Nani and Xiliu, but didn’t get a chance to have drinks with them because they headed off to bed in readiness for their first task in the Spanish champs which started on Sunday. I boogied the night away at the Panera bar and got to bed at 5.30am. Great day.
[All Judith’s task track logs now available on XC pages, see our XC flights].