Geoff at the briefing.We went flying at the Long Mynd. The BPC got a task today. We went to the briefing early to help out with any Mynd info. As we left the house at 8.45am there were already people soaring on the ridge. We got up there after a leisurely second breakfast. The sky looked good, although there was some high cloud over the cumulus.

This was the BPC Cup, so there were a lot of pilots out. Goal was set to Droitwich, about 58k. Though not in the comp, Geoff and I decided to do the task. I went off some time after the launch window opened as there were definite thermic cycles. It took ages to get up, sometimes because people were just not thermalling in lift, other times because there wasn’t enough room or people would fly straight at you. When I did get up it was a huge thermal at the north end of the ridge that hoovered about 25 of us up at the same time. Geoff was in the same thermal and we saw people dashing off before us, but we both decided to be patient and got to cloud base before setting off on a glide.

There was little drift in the thermals, so we took another climb between the Mynd and Wenlock Edge. We glided off to the next thermal, where we met up with Phil B. We carried on to Brown Clee, where I fluffed the thermal. Geoff cored it and got high, but I scrabbled around and got very low. I wasn’t going to get into the Wedge of Failure (thanks Jocky!) so wasn’t going to just follow the guys in front, however high/far away they were. I thought I was going to land but got really determined, so I thought about where the thermal would be and flew low into the gully. It worked and I found a weak thermal, which I took low over the back, where it turned into a very agreeable 3m/s up.

I got to cloud base and was then playing catch-up with Geoff and Phil’s gaggle. I could see about 14 of them circling in the distance and chose a great glide-line to arrive in the thermal second highest. It was pretty disorganised and I did two 360s before I realised we were in zeros/sink. Two more turns and I realised I wasn’t climbing away from the guys below me, more that they were just sinking at a greater rate than me. We seemed to get gaggle-sheep-syndrome, where you just turn because the guys around you are turning, despite your vario telling you you are circling in sink.

I made the decision that this was just daft, and that we would all circle to the ground, so I went off to a cloud to see if I could at least get the chance of finding something else. There was no sunshine on the ground and I got nothing. I flew straight to the ground, but at least I gave it a go. All but two of the others landed a couple of km from me. I landed at 32km, some 26km short of goal.

The retrieve was fun, as usual. I walked about half a mile when the third car picked me up. Steve Nash was in the back of it and they took us to Cleobury Mortimer. They were convinced we were nutters, but nearly killed us overtaking on blind bends. We met Wayne Seeley in CM and were then joined by Ian and Marra. Our little group and pile of gliders mounted when Geoff came along too. Marra twice managed to get Steve to jog up to the petrol station with his glider by pretending to be a retrieve vehicle.

Geoff and I decided there was no chance to blagging a place on the retrieve bus, so we got the bus to Ludlow, along with Steve and Marra. It’s Mel’s birthday, so Marra bought her a big bunch of flowers. When we got on the bus we asked a couple of ladies what the fastest way to get to Church Stretton would be from Ludlow. When they found out we had flown to CM, their first question was “How did you fly with the bunch of flowers?”.

The other lady had had a kindness by the bus driver and wanted to pass it forward, so she decided to drive us all in her people carrier to Wentnor. We picked up Phil B. on the way. What a nice woman!

Geoff’s comments

Today was a gaggle flying day for me, something I rarely do. I took off a little later than Judith, having waited a bit for the sky to improve, then promptly got away with her, and lots of others. Drift was pretty slow, but there were plenty of clouds, and plenty of markers all over the sky, so it was easy to see where people were going up. I was confident that we would go a long way today – then, of course, I (and 15 or 20 others) made the same mistake. I’d just got back to base and was heading back on track to goal (which was Droitwich, 58k I think) when I saw a large gaggle circling lower than me, but ahead and a bit off to the north, so I flew over to join them. The mistake was that they were circling in very, very bitty lift, and gradually sinking. There were very small cores there, and with fewer people it would have been possible to get up I think; but it was very difficult indeed to turn tight enough to core it, because as soon as you turned half a dozen other flew to join you and many of them were thermalling a bit erratically. The net result was that nearly all the gaggle, including me and Judith, eventually landed. I landed in the same field as Sam and some others. In retrospect it would have been better to ignore this gaggle and just carry on to find my own lift; on the other hand, there was lift there, just too many pilots getting in each other’s way.

But it was still a fun flight, 34k or thereabouts. This would have put us both in the top 15 of the 80 or so pilots in the comp, had we been entered, so a good result for us (only four pilots made goal).

And a great retrieve, eventually being driven back to our house from Ludlow by the wonderful lady we met on a bus.

See photos of today.

See Steve Sorsa’s video of today.

No comments yet - please add one »