Judith's blog

Forecasters, arses and elbows… I thought it would be raining and blown out today, so I was a bit shocked to see sunshine from early this morning. By lunchtime the wind seemed to be dropping and the sky was looking better and better. To the south the front was coming in, but downwind the sky looked great. Two paragliders started flying and we rushed up the hill. There were loads of HG pilots at the Long Mynd, but only a handful of paragliders. It was gusty at the cars, but better at the front, so after watching Nigel Rue, Pete Wooley and Malcolm Davies, I launched with Richard Westgate. He’d said it was a 100km day and I was keeping my fingers crossed! We launched straight into a strong thermal and circled up together to cloudbase, which was just over 5000′ AMSL, and we headed downwind.

We topped up under the next cloud and were then half way up the next one. If I had been on my own, I probably would have flown under the edge of the cloud (being a cloud suck wimp), but Richard showed the way and led us straight under the centre of the cloud. We never got sucked in and had a great dog-leg cross wing glide to connect with a cloud street. Richard’s thermalling is an act of beauty… so smooth and co-ordinated!

Richard found the thermal to get us up to the street and once up at base we cruised past Brown Clee. Martin was behind us, and I spotted him low behind the Long Mynd. The predicted front was to the south of us and had shut the sky behind us down, so I thought Martin had his work cut out. The next time I looked the grey frontal cloud had gone, to be replaced by a huge blue gap. Ahead of us the sky was also changing. The Malverns were stuck under murky grey skies, and you would be heading for a cloud street which when you got closer seemed to have disappeared. When we had glided as far as we could, Richard found the next thermal again, but I was too far behind him and couldn’t connect with the thermal. It was there, but I couldn’t find it. I was at Cleobury Mortimer at the time, so a respectable distance, but I was determined to get up and go further. I was below launch height and was swearing, shouting at myself and the thermal, promising myself goodies, etc. if only I could get up. I even tried saying “Come on!” in Barney’s accent. I searched and searched, finding broken lift until I admitted defeat and started gliding to a landing field. As I relaxed I hit the thermal… and I had a long climb back to base. By then I was near Great Witley, where I landed yesterday. Ahead of me there was just horrible mackerel sky and the same big gap as yesterday. So what to do? I headed for a ridge with a quarry on it and a lonely cumulus above it. When I got there, there was indeed a thermal, but it gave me such a kicking that I was panicking. The glider was ahead of me, I was being hoicked up and squashed down, so I ran for it! [I found out later that that was nothing in comparison to what Geoff got, but mine was bad enough!].

I glided as far away from the quarry as I could and ended up landing in an unsuitable field with little trees and training slope sizes bumps. To my utter amazement, within 10 minutes of me landing, the perfect cloud streets had developed. I talked to Martin later and he also noticed the rapid pace that the sky was changing. Strange day!

So I landed in what is rapidly becoming my second home, Great Witley. It’s the third time I have landed there now. The farmer who owns the field where I landed came over with a big smile and insisted that he wouldn’t let me carry my pack to his house, instead he got his tractor and chauffeured me. He took me to his house, introduced me to his wife and two new kittens (adorable!), served me tea and cake and then drove me to the local pub. There I bumped into the guy whose field I landed in yesterday, who said if I land there tomorrow, I should pop by for coffee. People are so nice!

Geoff writes: I was a bit dubious about the wind strength today, expecting to fly the hang glider instead, so I wasn’t ready when Judith and Richard launched. But it seemed fine for them – for the 60 seconds or so they were on the hill – so I got ready. Martin had arrived, and managed to get off before me, since a gust had tangled up my glider and I needed to unclip to sort it out. So Martin launched maybe 20 minutes or so after Judith, and me 15 minutes or so after Martin. I got away pretty quickly. The climb out was strong and quite rough, but I thought it would get better once I left the hill. I went on a glide to the next cloud, leaving the lift early because it was rough, and was transitioning quite happily, when out of the blue – with no warning at all – I got into massive lift. None of this “hitting some lift and working hard to core it” – it went straight from slow sink, on the glide, to showing lift of 8 metres per second on my vario – with nothing in between. And the glider was pitching around a lot, and felt unsafe. There was no obvious reason for the sudden lift, no cumulus above me, but the sky looked a bit wave-like (though it probably wasn’t wave, just some frontal stuff, maybe convergence). I decided I really, really didn’t like this, and went to land – which took me a long time, since I had to lose over 3000 feet, and it was really hard to find the sink. And when I did, the lift came very soon after. It just didn’t feel like a normal day. Some roughness I can handle, a lot more than I could a year ago. But this felt strange. Eventually I did get down, very relieved.

I later compared the tracklogs. Judith’s said:

Max/min climb rate: 2.88 / -2.85 m/s over 60 seconds

Martin’s was:

Max/min climb rate: 3.57 / -2.65 m/s over 60 seconds

He said it was pretty rough at times.

And mine was:

Max/min climb rate: 6.42 / -7.31 m/s over 60 seconds

Quite a difference, both in lift and sink. And no spiral dives or other rapid descent techniques.

I did try to get back to the Long Mynd for another go, on the assumption it would have calmed down later on, but landing between the Lawley and Wenlock Edge always guarantees a slow hitch, especially on a Sunday. So I got back too late to fly again. A shame, because I think it did smooth out later.

See photos of today.

See Richard Westgate’s stunning photos of our flight together.

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An epic day at the Long Mynd. It all started with a lot of confusion about the wind forecast, but Mick was right as usual… none of this NW malarkey, he said it would be west most of the day. I got a call from Marra at 9am and looked out of the window to describe the conditions as “blue with two fluffy cumulus over the hill”. Ten minutes later I stepped out of the door and saw a huge wave bar over the Long Mynd. By 10am the wave had mostly dissipated, but there was no wind and the clouds were spreading. The wind was forecast to pick up, so as soon as there was a bit of breeze we were off.

There was a bit of jostling on the ridge, and many people landed to wait for better conditions. I thought it was an early day, so when three of us got the chance to go over the back, I took it. Unfortunately, I was low and landed at Marshbrook, which is literally just over the back of the Long Mynd. I was wondering how I was going to get back and kicking myself for wasting the day, when a car pulled up beside me. Ian, a PG instructor from New Zealand was looking for the take-off and had overshot Church Stretton, so offered me a lift back up the hill. How lucky!

As we were driving up the Burway, the sky looked black and it was spitting as we got to the front of the hill. Time for a cup of tea, and then the sky started breaking up again and I got ready for a second flight. I have rarely seen so many people on the Long Mynd, even at a competition. Once the wind picked up again, a mass of people launched, but the lift was so good and so extensive, people were really spread out and it didn’t seem crowded at all.

I got up in a slow climb and then went back upwind to a monster of a black cloud that was carrying a number of people up. I stayed on the edge of it and then went on glide to the next cloud. Geoff and Martin Bucknall were with me, and I hoped that the beige glider was Luke’s. We hopped from cloud to cloud, sometimes catching up with and waving madly at others I recognised (like Simon Gant and Ian Price). I thought we were down at the Clee Hills, but we got another thermal, but when it petered out, there was a big gap to cross. It’s at these times when I should hold back, but it seems daft to hang about in sink, so I went on one of my aimless glides, which on the ground I keep promising myself I won’t go on any more. Sigh. There was a cloud, but it was decaying and didn’t work. What I didn’t realise was that most people in the gaggle thought that I knew something (fools!) and followed me to the deck. Oops. So we landed at Great Witley, where there’s a nice pub I’ve landed at before. 46km.

Geoff and I decided to hitch, but our first lift left us in a terrible spot on a corner. We managed to flag down a bus and the driver said that if he wasn’t in his Smart car, when he finished work he would have driven us to Craven Arms, where he lives. After the bus dropped us off, DJH picked us up in Tenbury and dropped us off on the A49 near Ludlow and then we stood there getting blasted by the cars, but no one would stop. A little Smart car went past flashing his lights and waving and we realised it was the bus driver on his way home. 20 minutes later we heard a horn behind us and Steve, the bus driver, had gone home, picked up his other car and come back for us. We were unbelievably touched by this kind gesture. He drove us all the way to Church Stretton and there a young lad stopped and offered us a lift back up the Long Mynd to our car. He wasn’t actually heading there himself, but thought it would be a nice thing to do. Incredible, the kindness people showed us today.

A lot of people went XC today, probably the most we have seen outside a competition. And the great news from today is that Mick went XC and did a good distance with a couple of thermals and Luke did his first ever cross country. I’m really thrilled for both.

Additional thoughts: looking at the league results, and those other flights we know of, but not posted yet, there were four flights over 150km – then just one in the 70s, and one in the 60s, and then a huge number in the 40s and 50s. Obviously, this may change as more flights are posted, but it does seem as there was a hole at around 40-50km or so, which put most people down.

See photos of today.

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A cold, rainy, miserable day. Not nice enough to go out even to do archery. We did some work, editing and uploading the Big Bash photos and doing other club stuff.

We also got an email from a Canadian academic who interviewed us about our work nearly two years ago. The information from this will be incorporated in a book, being published shortly, we think – there have been some delays with it because of the publisher, not the content. However, Lynn Anderson, the researcher, has had a smaller article published, looking at the carbon footprint of physical and online conferences. She took took one of our SDP conferences as the example of an international virtual conference and used this to work out the carbon footprint differences between different types of conferences. One interesting – and astonishing – finding was that:

“had the SDP conference taken place in London, England, instead of online, the per capita emissions would have been greater than the per capita emissions of Brazil for all of 2005. In fact, the per capita emissions for this one conference, taking place over three days, would have been greater than the per capita emissions of at least 86 different countries for the entire year of 2005.”

She also found that if we had the conferences in London, people would be paying more than US$2600, rather than the $69 that we were charging in 2005.

So we’re really honoured to get international academic acknowledgment for the work we do.

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Geoff writes: today turned out not to be a write off. We woke up late, after a late night last night, to see a message from Mick and Martin that the forecast was better and they were going to Clatter. We got up immediately, and met them in Newtown.

The fields at Clatter were covered in the white stuff that farmers put on them, ground up limestone and minerals I think, so we now have very dusty gliders. My radio was flat; Judith’s PTT wasn’t working. But we all launched, and as Judith started climbing out after a few beats – flying brilliantly, leaving us all behind, back on the ridge – my vario started giving the low battery sign. I landed, changed the batteries (during which time Richard Worley arrived) and re-launched. Richard was the next to leave (I don’t know how far he got). It was getting increasingly rough and windy on the hill, but I managed to climb in something and got away. Unfortunately, whilst my initial climb out was good, I managed to lose the thermal, and eventually landed just 7km over the back. Whilst I was climbing out Mick had got blown back and landed by the cars. Martin continued flying, but struggled not to get blown back, and decided to go and land too – at which point he got a good climb, and ended up doing 50km – great flight.

In the meantime, Judith had landed for 23km – and her GPS wasn’t working, so no tracklog.

I tried to get back as fast as possible to the front to fly again, but the wind had picked up a lot, so in the end we just retrieved Martin’s car.

Judith writes: We were in such a rush to get to Newtown that I barely had the chance to look at a forecast. What I did manage to see was that there were potential thunderstorms later in the afternoon, so I mentally prepared for an early day. As we were getting ready the last patches of sunshine disappeared. I figured that the thermals would be significantly weaker in strength due to the wide-spread shading. However, a nice byproduct of the shade was that the clouds were nice and fluffy with no sign of towering going on. Because it was an early day, I got into the air asap. Martin and Mick were first off and maintained on the ridge. I followed them about 3 minutes later, did about 2 beats and then spotted Mick in a thermal in the bowl to the west. It was weak and he left it, but I got into the core and started turning. Martin tried to come in beneath me, but the core had drifted over the trees and I think he was too low to safely turn fully.

It was weak but working and I was aware of the need to make the most of the day before it over-developed, so I stuck with it. Once over 3000 feet the thermal improved and I was getting 1.2m/s. I had put on more layers, but I was freezing. My fingers were like ice. Once I got to 4000′ I could see from some quarry dust that the wind was increasing on the ground, but because my GPS wouldn’t acquire, I had no idea of my drift or the wind direction at altitude.

Funny how you take certain things for granted. Until you have to fly without them, you don’t realise how much you rely on your equipment to give you useful information. Before yesterday I couldn’t have honestly said that I look at this, that and the other on my GPS, because I don’t really do it consciously, but yesterday I suddenly realised exactly what information I get from my GPS and how much more difficult it was flying XC without that info. I couldn’t, for example, work out my ground speed, the wind direction at different altitudes or what the track of the thermal was. I couldn’t see the true wind direction from the clouds either… it was all shade on the ground.

So the first thermal took me to beyond the windmills and past Adfa. I was pleased to get past it, just because I didn’t want to have to wait under the holly bush again when it rained later. I left the thermal at 4400′, still way below cloudbase, because it was snowing slightly. I wasn’t concerned about the clouds around me, there was no rain anywhere in the distance, and there was nothing big around, but I have this notion that it’s just not that clever to sit under a precipitating cloud (call me a wimp if you must). There wasn’t strong lift, in fact the lift was getting weaker, so I picked the next good cloud and went to it. I climbed up to 4000′ again and then tried to get the feeling in my fingers back as I glided to the next fantastic looking cloud. Read more »

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Geoff writes: big showers during the day, so we didn’t bother going flying, though apparently it was flyable at the Malverns, according to Steve Dean. But not much of a day – just a few small XCs from the Pennines. So, again, we did a few jobs, bought a new car, and waited in for Judith’s parents to arrive en-route from Spain to Ireland.

We’ve replaced the Kangoo 4×4 van with the car version, partly because that will use less fuel, but also because we’re tired of getting penalised because we have a van – the insurance costs far more; typically we pay three times as much for a ferry crossing; etc. There are other reasons too, like it will be nice to have seats in the back, and a new car, but it is just stupid that exactly the same vehicle, because it has no windows in in rear, costs us significantly more in insurance, ferry crossings, etc. Just another scam….

Judith’s parents arrived early afternoon; later Judith and her mother went for a walk along the Mynd, then we all met up in the Crown for a few drinks, then back home for food (and more drinks, the forecast was bad for Thursday). I took some time explaining to Liz why the end of the world was coming soon. Hope I didn’t depress her too much.

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Geoff writes: we had hoped to go flying today, but the forecast wasn’t that brilliant this morning, showers throughout the day, so we canned it. We had second thoughts about lunchtime when we got a call from Mick at Llangollen saying it was sunny there, just waiting for some clouds to clear, so we set off. But there were big clouds on the way, so we called again. Mick still hadn’t flown at that point – he was waiting for the big black snow cloud to pass over. We decided that even if we did fly, we would be dodging showers, and not want to go XC given the sky we were under, so went home, loaded up the archery stuff, and set off for the archery field. On the way, the sky seemed to be improving, so we phoned Mick again …. this time he was waiting for a rain cloud to pass over.

So at this point we really gave up the idea of flying and went to archery – interrupted by rain, but Judith had a master class from another Geoff on how to make a string for a bow. We didn’t shoot much, but we did learn a lot.

Driving back, the weather was worse, lots of rain clouds in the distance – though probably later on, in the evening, it might have been flyable when the clouds cleared – actually, it was probably flyable on and off all day, just not a sky you would want to get high in, or go XC.

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Geoff writes: not really flyable, so we did some DIY house jobs, and in the morning had our first phone meeting for the online conference we are running in November. In the evening, Judith went to music night at the Bridges with Wayne. I didn’t bother going, we went last week and it wasn’t that brilliant – usually during term time for the students, it’s a bit less lively. So Judith got back around 1.00a.m., saying it was probably the best ever music night she had ever been to! Oh well…..

Judith writes: Yep, cracking night. There was the usual brilliant regulars of Thom Morcroft, Beth Prior and the excellent guy who sings ‘The King is Dead’; but we were also treated to Miles and Erica from The Wonder Stuff, Dave Sharpe (formerly of The Alarm) and a jazz combo from Holland who brought a full size double bass, which only just fitted under the low ceiling.

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