July 2010
Monthly Archive
Saturday, 17th July 2010
Geoff 17 Jul 2010 | : Archery, Flying
Geoff writes: Interesting day today, although probably for all the wrong reasons.
I was seriously considering going XC on the hang glider, because it was expected to be too windy for the PG, but there was a lot of cloud much of the day, and it was very windy on the Mynd, and clearly very rough from what some of the HG pilots who had flown, were saying. So we went to archery for a few hours, planning to come back for a late afternoon or evening flight.
Driving back over the Mynd, we saw an ambulance with flashing lights, and just past that a group of people packing up a hang glider well back from the usual landing. Not a good sign. We stopped to find out what had happened. The hang glider pilot had had an accidental chute deployment and had crashed. No damage to the glider, and minor injuries to him. He was checked by a doctor, and decided he didn’t want the ambulance, and was basically ok. But a very, very lucky escape.
We carried on to the parking, and sat and chatted with some others for a while – it still seemed windy. As we were chatting, a hang glider went over low on top landing approach, misjudged it, and landed on the parked cars, smashing a windscreen. Incredibly, again, there was no damage to the glider or pilot – and again, a very lucky escape. What was kind of sad though, was that the owner of the car with the smashed windscreen was the person who had the accidental deployment. Definitely not his day!
Whilst we’d been chatting, we heard the story of the policeman who drove onto the sailplane field last year (to introduce himself, he was new to the area) and managed to get in the way of a glider being towed off, and hit it with his car and wrote it (the glider) off. Then, bizarrely, blamed the gliding club for this, when he’d been driving across an airfield without notifying them first. Or, clearly, looking around him. Incredible. This is still not resolved apparently.
I did fly the HG in the end, not for long, as it switched off quite soon, but I did manage to fly and land without throwing my chute, hitting a car, or taking out a sailplane. A good result….
Friday, 16th July 2010
Geoff writes: it does seem that after an exceptionally good few months, the UK has returned to its usual, crap, summer weather. Five continuous non-flyable days (unless you count today as flyable – some people flew the Mynd between “howling winds and torrential rain”). And more bad weather to come.
We went to Cirencester to see my family.
The webcasts are proving hugely popular, with a big spike in hits to the site.
Thursday, 15th July 2010
Judith 15 Jul 2010 | : Webcasts, Work
A miserable, autumnal day with gales and heavy rain. Too depressing to set foot out of the house, so I finished off the remaining work on the next webcast, which is available now. David and I spent many hours doing the preparation and recording, so I hope lots of people find it useful and informative!
Then on to start work on the next Supporting Deaf People online conference. The dates are set for next February and I have come up with the first theme, hopefully working closely with the World Association of Sign Language Interpreters . It always takes me a while to get going, but once I do, I get really excited about the next conference. Not sure I can top the swearing and profanity workshop of last year, but I’m sure I can dig up something controversial to replace it.
Wednesday, 14th July 2010
Judith 14 Jul 2010 | : Webcasts, Work
The weekend was a busy one for producing resources, so after editing Mark’s brilliant RASP webcast yesterday, it’s now available in the webcast section of the blog. Then on to editing the next one, called Weather – a detailed look at one day, with David Thomson. It’s ready for approval, so should be available in the next day or so.
We also finally had some serious interest in the van and a guy from Coventry turned up tonight and bought it within a few minutes. His brother-in-law is a mad kite-buggyer and he raved about it so much, I’m seriously tempted to give it a go.
Tuesday, 13th July 2010
The summer seems to have changed into its usual rainy July pattern, and the grey drizzle had us put the lights on all day in the house. Great working weather…
I quickly finished some of my club committee jobs before the meeting tonight, so I wouldn’t have to have them carried forward. Then I edited the RASP webcast I recorded with Mark Riches on Monday and it will be ready for release shortly. Meeting went well in the evening, as everything seems to be going well with the LMSC at the moment. Afterward we went for a pint with John and Angela, who are being comp stragglers and extending their hols in not-so-sunny Shropshire.
Monday, 12th July 2010
Geoff writes: the forecast was quite poor, and the reality was worse than the forecast, cloudy and drizzly all day. The BP Cup did hope to get a task this afternoon, but gave up at 12, when it was clear the weather wasn’t going to improve. So out of the four days, they managed just one task – a shame, given how good the weather has been in the UK until relatively recently. The top three, decided on just the one task, were:
1: Tony Spirling
2: Richard Butterworth
3: Malcolm Davies.
Judith spent the day doing a couple of web casts – like the podcasts, but with visuals. These will be released shortly, after editing, and are, appropriately enough, both weather related.
And I did some work.
Looks bad the rest of the week too, so plenty of time to catch up on our outstanding jobs.
Sunday, 11th July 2010
Geoff writes: the forecast was for a good sky, with strong winds early on, dropping off from mid afternoon. And that was almost what happened. The sky was good, but winds were gusty on the Long Mynd. The clouds seemed to form and decay quite quickly. One or two people launched before the BPC task was called, and Kai went XC. Later, we found he had chosen to land at 60km because it was very rough, almost certainly wave affected.
The task was called, 45.5km to Stourport on Severn. Whilst the wind was slowly dropping, the sky seemed to be getting worse, with lots of high cloud, and less and less sun, but people did start launching in the lulls, and getting away. It turned out to be better than the sky appeared, with nine people in goal in the end (Tony Spirling the winner, Richard Butterworth second; and Dave Thomas also made goal), and some longer distances done by the free flyers. Judith and I launched quite late, not really liking the strong winds, and I was one of the last to leave, doing most of my (short, 23 kilometre) flight alone. It was definitely a day for gaggle flying, and for patience, and whilst I had the patience, I didn’t have the gaggle. Probably I should have launched sooner. Judith did get high, but didn’t bother going because the sky downwind looked so poor, and ended up doing some tandems with Mick, whilst I was retrieved by Helen and Jean-Luc.
Strange day really, and actually a lot better than you would have guessed from the sky later on.
Oh, and I managed to leave my GPS on all night, so the tracklog wrapped and I lost my flight tracklog. Lucky it wasn’t a long flight then….