Judith's blog

Geoff writes: very nice and sunny, but also very windy. We did a few jobs in the morning, including checking out our water supply (we strongly recommend that no-one ever gets a water meter – the cost of a leak will far, far outweigh any other savings you might make by having a meter).

We then went to archery to do some bow tuning for Judith – she has been pulling too much weight, and we wanted to reduce that if possible. It turns out it isn’t possible, so she’ll have to buy some new limbs (for the bow that is…). Archery is very complicated once you get beyond the basics. We spent a few hours there failing to tune it, then doing some shooting, Judith on a borrowed club bow.

We had put all the gliders in on the off-chance it might by flyable, and whilst it probably was OK for hang gliders (and Nigel on his speed wing) on the way out, when we returned via the Long Mynd, it was a bit northerly, and windier, so we didn’t bother.

Then back home, and one improvement to the blog, putting in the RSS feeds for the posts and comments, something we should have done ages ago, but, basically, I didn’t think to. So you can now subscribe to the blog, as well as the podcasts.

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It rained rather a lot today. That made it easier: no decisions to make, no gardening/archery/flying/walking/bumming round the beach to do. In the end we worked, cleaned the house and read the newspaper cover to cover. In the evening we had nice dinner with Michaela.

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Personally, I thought today would be a write-off as it would be too windy on the Long Mynd. As we woke up we could already see shadows dancing on the curtains, so the trees were blowing. Others’ had it dropping off mid-afternoon, so I suppose it just depends on what forecast you trust. Unfortunately for us, it lulled for about 20 minutes at 10.25am, and three people started flying paragliders, and the sky just looked fantastic, so we were lured up the hill – where it was howling. The two remaining PGs duly landed going slightly backwards and after that it was generally just hang gliders and Glyn. He does like a bit of the rough stuff…

Loads of people had turned up and were waiting it out, but by 3pm, I had got hungry, so went home for some sandwiches, while Geoff rigged the hang glider. He had a pleasant, if a little bouncy, flight. By 4.30pm, the clouds were decaying upwind and the chances of going XC were getting less and less likely. It was still windy and I didn’t want to waste more of the day waiting for the wind to drop, so we packed up the glider and headed to Stretton to do archery.

Yesterday I asked Anne to have a look at my release and she gave me some exercises to do which really helped, but today Tom had a good look at my shooting. I have been a little listless with my archery lately and Geoff has been asking if I still enjoy it. I seem to want to spend more time in the club house drinking tea than shooting. This was because I was getting progressively worse, while others around me have been improving enormously. I thought I had let my arm muscles really go over the winter, since I have a lot of trouble getting to full draw; I have taken to nodding (pushing my face towards the string, rather than pulling it fully to my chin), and I often pull a muscle in my shoulder and have to give up because it hurts. It has dented my confidence and therefore affected my enjoyment. So when Tom looked at my shooting he saw various flaws. Shooting with my eyes closed, I was trying and trying to pull the string back, and it wasn’t working. So we measured the poundage I am pulling. My bow should be 34 pounds, and we slackened off the limbs a while ago to reduce the poundage because I was having trouble pulling that. It is now set at 37 pounds, so 11 pounds more than I pulled last year, and significantly more than Geoff pulls. No wonder I can’t get the damn thing to full draw!

So we have some major tweaking to do to try to get the poundage down and the bow tuned. If we can’t get it to 30 – 32 pounds I need to sell the limbs and get others, so Sunday is the big tweak day. It’s a huge relief. I’m not completely useless, like I have started to think, but the equipment I have is wrong for me at the moment.

As we drove back home over the Long Mynd, there were gliders scattered all over the landing. It dropped enough for people to fly from 6pm and from the smiles on people’s faces, it looked like everyone had a nice time. Well done Melise for a great flight. She was grinning ear to ear when we saw her.

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Geoff writes: the forecast was for nice sunny weather, but windy, not even dropping off in the evening – and so it turned out. We decided to have an active day, after doing a bit of work in the morning.

Judith was in Church Stretton at 10am, and driving back home there was one PG flying, a visiting pilot, Richard, trying to get in a flight before they returned home (having been here three days and not flown at all). Whilst he was flying, the wind picked up, so he very sensibly turned and ran, landing at Marshbrook.

We loaded up the van with paragliders (just in case the forecast was wrong), the hang glider, and the archery stuff. We started off at the Acton Scott Working Farm Museum, somewhere we’ve been planning to go for ages, not least because Tom, from the Long Mynd Archers, works there as a farrier on Thursdays. It’s a nice place, well worth a visit, with plenty to see, and it was interesting to see Tom working as a blacksmith. We spent a few hours there, whilst the wind slowly continued to increase, but the sky was a really good XC sky. Since we thought it would stay windy into the evening, and I wasn’t fussed about an XC on the hang glider, we decided to go to archery – it’s usually a bit quieter in the day, and we can get more shooting in. Unfortunately, there were some people today who were incredibly slow retrieving their arrows (more chatting than walking!), and we can’t shoot whilst people are walking up the field for their arrows. So eventually, we got a bit frustrated, and the wind seemed to be dropping a bit anyway, so we packed up and went to fly.

As we arrived at launch at the Long Mynd it seemed relatively light, and we did consider gettitng the PGs out, but it soon started picking up again, so we rigged the hang glider, and I flew for 40 minutes or so, very pleasant, then landed. The wind was still increasing, and it was quite strong as we left, with wave bars forming to the west. No other PGs – apart from a speed wing – had flown since the one this morning, though some HGs had been around most of the day, and it was certainly flyable all day for them.

So a fun day, and just possibly, depending on which forecast you want to believe, it might be flyable for PGs tomorrow at the Long Mynd.

See photos of today.

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We decided to check out the hill that the lovely farmer in Meifod offered the club two weeks ago, when I landed there after going XC from Clatter. He had described the hill as clear of trees and at the time I thought it was one of the ridges above the village. He had told me just to ask for him in the post office, but predictably, there’s quite a lot of people called Hughes in the village, with it being in Wales and all. I had to describe to the post master all the details I could remember about the farmer (age, marital status, cohabiting arrangements, his status in the NFU, etc.) and eventually we managed to identify the correct Hughes.

Once we got up the road to his farm, it turned out it was in a kind of hanging valley, with probable rotor, and it faced NW, which we already have plenty of sites for. Additionally, the bottom of the hill is clear of trees, but the top is littered with them. We didn’t actually get to meet Mr. Hughes again, but unfortunately his hill isn’t suitable, which is a real shame, since he was so nice and it’s rare that landowners queue up to offer their land for flying!

The rest of the day was spent with work and although we were going to go out to archery, the forecast rain put us off. It came late, but when it did at 5pm, boy, did it rain.

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Today is a work day for us, since there’s no sun. I don’t usually use this blog to comment on things, rather as a diary and a way of describing and analysing our flying and flying decisions. However, we’ve started the accident season again and I have been contacted by various people for information and reassurance.

For those worried when they hear about accidents, I think it is worth pointing out that in my opinion, there is no such thing as a random flying accident. These days, paragliders are designed not to randomly collapse. And they don’t. They might collapse in very thermic conditions or when in rotor, but that’s not a design or equipment issue, that’s the pilot choosing to fly in conditions where a collapse can potentially happen. In nearly 15 years of flying hang gliders and paragliders, I know of NO accidents where the pilot wasn’t at fault (and I’ve seen/know of hundreds). It’s always the result of a decision (however small or innocuous) that a pilot made which lead to the resulting accident. Very often, that decision is preceded by hundreds of smaller decisions which compounded the problem or lead to over-confidence, or a feeling of invincibility in the pilot.

If someone tells you ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, it just happened’, then they either don’t know the cause or don’t want to admit to any fallibility on their part. Not knowing is very understandable … mostly accidents near the ground happen very fast, and, especially if it is serious, memories are often affected. However, being unwilling to analyse the cause of an accident I think is really dangerous. In a sport where attitude is everything, ignoring such vital safety information for your own flying and believing that random accidents can happen, is doing a disservice to yourself and other pilots.

I know why all my accidents happened: the first was due to complacency in not learning to land properly. I also thought that I was invincible and that I would keep getting away with it. My attitude was terrible. I was an accident waiting to happen. So I know what I did wrong and worked on that. My second accident could easily been written off as unlucky, wrong place for the wrong 30 seconds. But I was flying in Castejon de Sos, in August, with big CBs around. It doesn’t take a lot of wit to work out that in those conditions there would be a chance that the wind would be switchy in the landing field. But I chose to fly, accepting the risks. (The risks, of course, vary according to your experiences and skills – what is a more than acceptable risk for a highly experienced pilot, should be unacceptable for an inexperienced pilot).

In my view, accidents are most easily avoided by doing the following:

• Check your equipment every time you fly. Equipment failure, things getting snagged and twisted, caught, pulled out, etc. is down to poor pre-flight checking. We’ve all been there and most of us have got away with it too many times.
• Don’t take off in silly conditions. A paraglider may be able to fly in ‘peachy’ 25mph, but you are reducing your safety margins enormously. Similarly, fly a site in the right wind direction – otherwise there may well be rotor.
• Think! If it’s thermic then that throws a whole different set of conditions into the day. Gullies will work differently, the terrain will kick off in different ways but it’s predictable, and can be coped with, if you know what you’re doing.
• And finally, monitor your own actions all the time. I have had a few 360s recently when I have been a bit close to the hill; have flown to quarries where I got a kicking and should have known in advance it was a risky decision; not checked my equipment properly. I’m in a phase in my flying where it’s all going well, but I am at risk of a bit of over-confidence and complacency. A state to be guarded against at all times!

But remember it’s the pilot who is dangerous, not the gliders (in the same way that it is the motorcyle rider who causes the crashes, not the bike). There are always risks in flying, always will be. The risks will never be eliminated. Every pilot makes misjudgments at some point – both I and Geoff certainly have, and still do. But staying safe, and minimising the risk is a question of attitude, and we can all do something about that!

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I have been saying to people all week that today would be the day, but of course the forecast had been getting progressively more dodgy as the day got closer. The original plan to go to Llangollen changed to the Peaks and by last night it was clear it would be too windy there. So this morning the forecasts were all over the place again, and largely contradicting each other.

My take was that it would be an early day, hopefully on the Long Mynd, before it became too windy and NW, and possibly over-developed. Wendy Windblows was giving WNW all morning, very light, so we set off up the hill at 10.45am. We got there and it was anywhere between NW and NE. This wasn’t a particular issue, just a matter of swapping location, but there were both cumulus and wave bars forming all around us.

After much debating and faffing, we decided that the wave was going to make going XC a little tricky, so we canned the day and went off to Bishops Castle to shop for some lunch. As we came out of the Co-op and opened the car doors, a dust devil ripped down the high street and filled our car with crap and then whizzed on down the hill. Obviously a very, very thermic day!

By the time we had finished lunch, the wave had completely disappeared and we seriously considered that we had made a mistake not going flying. I was still concerned about the forecast increasing wind, so we did a bit of gardening before finally deciding what to do with the day. As the afternoon progressed, the wind seemed to be picking up, so we wrote off the day and went to archery instead.

You could tell it was windy… shooting at 50 yards, we were having to compensate for the wind and to say we were hopeless would be an understatement. At one point we had to get the metal detector out because one of us missed the target and we couldn’t find the arrow anywhere. Luckily, it won’t shred the mower when the field gets groomed tomorrow.

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