Ben flying on the MyndForecast was for light SW/WSW winds and we chose the Long Mynd. The sky looked good from first thing in the morning. It was surprisingly uncrowded when we got there. After getting ready there was a nice breeze and we launched and got up in thermals which seemed to peeter out at 1300′ ATO. This was a little short of cloudbase, so I decided to head back to the front. Geoff had similar problems getting above 1200′ and we think there was an inversion at that level, which we couldn’t punch through.

We both landed and the wind dropped to zero and a big blue hole developed for a couple of hours. Everyone sat around and then re-launched when the clouds drifted in again. Steve Nash was the first off and got a slow climb to cloudbase, which was now much higher. We could see a glider appearing in the distance, fly past the north end of the Mynd and carry on. It was Steve Parsons on his way from Elan Valley to Gnosall – 102km.

The climbs were painfully slow and I circled for ages in 0.7m/s. I was over Pole Cottage and decided to fly into wind to meet the next cloud to step up to cloudbase, but misjudged how far it was and missed the climb. I landed at Pole Cottage and got a lift from Geoff back to take-off. By then it was 5pm and the wind was dropping again.

Geoff’s comments: The sky was actually really good most of the day with some very nice clouds, apart from the couple of hours when it was just blue. But I don’t think either of us flew very well today. After the first flight, I hesitated a bit too much (the fundamental problem), spent too much time on the ground, and though I did fly another two or three times, never got high at all, whilst others did. My thermalling wasn’t that good either today, for some reason. Though very few people – maybe only one person? – went XC from the Mynd, it was plainly a good XC day, and Judith and I should have made a lot more of it. This is the first time for ages when we could have gone XC, but failed to do so – and it’s certainly cost us a few places in the League!

See photos of today.

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