May 2011
Monthly Archive
Saturday, 14th May 2011
Judith 16 May 2011 | : Party, party, party...
It was windy from the word go, so the North-South Cup guys went to the Mynd to have a speed gliding contest. Head-to-head, two pilots had to go 500m along the ridge and back. I think the South won again. We were going to go up the Mynd so Geoff could fly the hang glider, but the wind picked up and there was the odd bit of rain, so we just did party preparation. Thankfully Paul, Yaz, Mick, Hayley and Ellie turned up early and we set up the DJ booth and lighting rig. We were going to put up the LMSC marquee to protect the lights, but once there was a really heavy shower, we decided to rig up a tarpaulin that would stretch out from the garage towards the house. Once the PizzaVia van arrived we had to get the trailer up on the raised area and cut down half a tree. It was all fun, interspersed with (too weak!) tea.
Our last job was to cut up the remaining wood for the braziers and Malc Davies thankfully brought his chainsaw to do it. When he called to ask if he should bring anything for the party, he expected me to say sausage rolls, not a chainsaw!
People started arriving shortly before 8pm and the pizza queue swelled immediately. It was expected that people would arrive in dribs and drabs after flying, but with the weather being bad, people were sitting in the camp site waiting to come. Had we known, we would have called people to come early and give us a hand and start eating sooner too.
Once people started arriving, it was a great turnout with over 100 people there. Paul and Sam did a great job with the music and the braziers were well worth the effort, keeping the non-dancers warm. We had a North-South dance-off that I was supposed to be judging, but only three southerners (Viv, Phil and Frankie Coltman) took up the challenge and although I was going to eliminate anyone from below the Watford gap as a matter of principle, Phil told me not to dare! Frankie got a special award at the prize giving the next day for her efforts. Good on her, she’s only about 8!
After that it was all a blur of chatting, dancing (thanks particularly to Marra and Barney, and everybody else who endured being dragged onto the dance floor by me) and boozing. Even Geoff was up bopping (but only once).
Because a task briefing had been called for 8 am the next day, people drifted off at a sensible time, although some who’d watched the forecast (waste of time for Sunday), stayed and partied on into the small hours. By dawn there were only a few heavyweights left and before we knew it, the sun was shining and the pizza van guys needed help getting the trailer back down the ramps. After a preliminary tidy-up, I finally got to bed at 11 am.
It was a really great night. Thanks so much to everyone who came and helped make it such a blast. I was so busy enjoying myself I didn’t take a single photo. If anyone who was there has some, could I have a copy?
Friday, 13th May 2011
Geoff 13 May 2011 | : Competitions
Geoff writes: first, we’ve been updating the Twitter feed most of the day with information about the North South Cup. However, Twitter itself – not our feed specifically – has some problems, and is only working intermittently, so if the tweets don’t appear on the right, refresh the page later and they will reappear.
We can’t give a full report on the first day of the comp because we weren’t there. Because of the poor forecast here, they went to Milk Hill, a round trip of around 250 miles, where the forecast was better. This, of course, meant some pilots local to that site drove all the way here last night, only to drive all the way back this morning. But, you do what you have to do to get a good flight (well, most people do, but not us! We were too lazy to do the drive, even though it was pretty clear it would be a write-off here, and probably a reasonable XC day there).
And in fact, from reports, it was definitely the right decision, with many going XC. As far as we know, the furthest was Richard Bungay at 116km, but others in the 70s and 80s. Some results, all to be confirmed, are Dave Thomas at 70 km, Martin Knight 40, Helen Gant 87, Alex Colbeck and Kirsty Cameron around the 50s. Of course, far more than those went XC, but we haven’t seen the list yet. We’ll find out later tonight when we are going to the comp party.
Tomorrow, we think they are staying local, and Long Mountain or the Mynd seem the most likely. But that won’t be decided until tomorrow. But at least they seem to have had a great first day for the comp.
Thursday, 12th May 2011
Geoff writes: wet and windy in the morning, but the sun came out in the afternoon and we went off to do some archery. Too windy to paraglide, it dropped off a little and became hang glidable. I did go up in the evening, but it was very cold in the strong wind, and I just couldn’t be bothered. Three hang gliders did fly though, and seemed to have a nice time.
Tomorrow the North South Cup starts. It’s based at the Mynd, but for Friday the forecast is better further south and east, so they are doing the 127 mile drive to Milk Hill, in the hope of getting a decent XC day. The option here is Clatter – a good XC site, but the poor weather, the cloud, will arrive here much sooner than at Milk Hill, so they’ve probably made the right decision. RASP is giving it very thermic there, but then our experience of RASP forecasting of thermal strength for this area at least, this year, has been very bad, with it usually wildly over estimating the thermal activity.
Wednesday, 11th May 2011
Geoff writes: a windy, but sunny day. Amazingly, Graeme flew his PG early on, well done to him! Dave T also flew later, and got reasonably high under a threatening sky – and the wind picked up massively in our garden just after he landed. The sun came out a bit later, but the wind also picked up more. Most of the day was devoted to more gardening (such is our life when it’s not flyable!), but we were hoping to fly and/or do archery later. So around 6 or so, we started to load up the car with everything – archery equipment, PG and HG stuff. Getting to the top of the Long Mynd, it was still very strong, too strong for PGs, so I rigged the hang glider. By the time I rigged it was dropping a little, but still strong, so I launched. At which point it dropped even more, I scratched around a bit, and managed to scrape back in on top.
In the meantime Mark H. had decided to get his PG ready, so I decided to fly the paraglider. I’ve been waiting for ages to test fly Judith’s harness, an Impress. She has got a new one, a very posh something or other. Looks a lot like the old one, but much more expensive, or would be if she hadn’t got a discount as her prize for the highest placed DHV1/2/EN B glider in the UK XC League. So we quickly set it up, went to the front, and I launched, kind of. Though the wind wasn’t that strong, I got hoofed off my feet, and straight up. It quickly became apparent that there was some wave around. I flew for a short while, the wind got stronger, the lift got stronger, and it was pretty rough. Could have been the harness, more likely it was the conditions. I tried and failed to top land, and eventually gave up, and decided to bottom land. All the while, it was very lifty and the wind was strong. I eventually tried one of the most extreme SIV maneuvers I do – big ears. So you could be sure I really didn’t like the conditions. Eventually, I did get to the bottom, but it took a while.
I’ll try the harness again, though – this was not ideal conditions at all!
Tuesday, 10th May 2011
Geoff writes: a dry but windy day, so we did some work. To be honest, a few days working is fine, we have loads to do. Judith spent much of the day preparing for the weekend – which included doing a lot of gardening. I spent all day converting some of the ebooks we publish into Kindle format. I actually started this last week, and it’s taken far longer than I expected, but hopefully it’ll be worth it, and combining it with redoing our online shop, it might generate some income for us.
Monday, 9th May 2011
Judith 10 May 2011 | : Miscellaneous activities
Another howling day. It didn’t really matter with it pouring from 10.30am. Work, work, work and then we went to Bishop’s Castle in the evening to have a karate lesson at the local sports centre. I picked up a leaflet for it a few weeks ago and I’ve always wanted to give it a go. I did judo as a child, but this was competely different and I really enjoyed it. We’re off for our second lesson on Thursday.
Sunday, 8th May 2011
Judith 09 May 2011 | : Boring stuff
We had a late night late night and needed the extra few hours sleep, but had John coming round at 10am, so we reluctantly got up and saw to some DIY. We’re a bit listless at the moment. I’m not exactly inspired to do any work (although I have some) and the weather is putting a bit of a downer on the week, so I decided to cheer myself up with a bonfire. I managed to get nearly all the garden rubbish burned when the heavens opened and I had to try to keep the already dry stuff out of the rain. Getting the remainder burned turned into a bit of a game…
Weather is now looking poor for the rest of the week. We may get to fly paragliders on Wednesday, but it looks more likely that Geoff will fly the hang glider. If it doesn’t rain…