Friday, 15th August 2008
Posted by Geoff on 16 Aug 2008 at 11:00 am | Tagged as: Flying, Party, party, party...
Geoff: Ever since I realised I had a chance of winning the League for the best pilot with a 1/2 glider (my Niviuk Hook) and so started putting my flights in the League, our flying and decision making has fallen apart. Today was no exception.
All week the forecast for Friday was that it would be the only good day of the week, and would be SSW. That is a lousy direction for here, but good in the Peaks, with Eyam Edge being an excellent XC site, and our intention was to go there. Come Friday morning, and we began to get different forecasts – first, it was actually west at the Long Mynd; and second, Ali, our helicopter flying friend from RAF Shawbury said that their met person was forecasting WSW all day – a great direction for the Long Mynd. So, we duly went up the Long Mynd, which was bang on. (We had another reason too for staying here; we had tickets for a music festival close by, which Judith will write about below). I launched reasonably early, just after James, and as soon as I was in the air it seemed very southerly. I got to about 500′ ATO, tracking along the ridge, almost parallel to it. The wind had abruptly switched to SSW. No-one else got off, those in the air landed, James got away to do about 8k! Phil Bibby launched (in the SSW) and headed into the valley, but got nothing. We took his car down, and decided to go to Clatter (SW) along with a few others who had been on the Long Mynd.
At Clatter, it was on and flyable. People launched, and began to get up. I blew one launch, and got the glider very tangled in the thorns that are there. The wind was picking up and I couldn’t untangle it there, so I carried back a little, out of wind. By the time I untangled it, it was too strong to launch.
Those in the air had a reasonable flight, but all landed as the wind picked up. Judith went over the back first – she thermalled over the back and then couldn’t get back to the front, so had to go with it – and landed, going backwards, for 8km. Wayne a little later did exactly the same, for 4 or 5km. Another pilot went XC, but along the ridge rather than over the back; not sure where he got to.
So from our point of view for XC it was a lousy day.
And in the Peaks, the best flight was by Jean-Luc, 128k to Bridlington, with others flying shorter distances. Andy Wallace did just over 80km.
SSW/SW is a poor direction here. Clatter is a potentially good XC site, but it does get blown out easily, and that was the problem today. In general, in such conditions, it is far better to go to the Peaks, even if it is a 200 mile round trip for us; the other advantage of the Peaks is that if the wind does change slightly, switching sites is very easy since they are all so close together. And though usually the Peaks is windier than round here (though not this year) that really doesn’t apply to sites in Wales, like Clatter and Elan Valley, which do get blown out quickly.
So next time, we drive! And two lessons from today:
a) At Clatter, it was a very short window, and the lesson is to get in the air as soon as it is flyable, don’t take too long to set up!
b) Even the RAF met officer gets it wrong!
Judith’s comments: Another mistake we made was not to pay attention enough to the occluded front which came through. All week I predicted that today would be an early day, as the wind would pick up in the afternoon. We should never have gone to a site where the wind would change from, rather than change to. We should have gone to a SW site and waited till the wind was right, not go to a site where there would only be a short window before it went off. Further north, they got the benefit of surfing the front of the front, whilst we had the high stuff from the word go. Next time…
In the evening we went to Farmer Phil’s festival (“Geddon moi land!”). Great bash. Michaela and I got new funky wellies especially for the occasion. We got there in time to see the end of Chumbawamba’s set, but they didn’t play Tubthumping, much to the consternation of the crowd. Wayne’s taken up celebrity stalking and got his picture taken with them. Next came Hazel O’Conner. She did a set only accompanied by a harp and she was fantastic. Wayne stalked her backstage for more snaps. He needs to get out more!
We had a great evening, listening to the bands, looking at the stalls and watching fire juggling. Roll on tomorrow for day two!
6 Responses to “Friday, 15th August 2008”
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Sorry guys! Best intentions! 🙁 He was confident.
Bad luck G+J, but don’t beat yourselves up too badly about not coming up north … although there were a few very good flights done from the Peaks, it was a very tough and slow day there, and lots didn’t get away or went down just behind the site. We also had cirrus from the word go and during the flight … have a look at the pics posted on the DSC website, or the satpic for 2pm, you can see the bands of cirrus. Eyam was totally dead and not even ridge soarable til about 11.00, then it took another hour for the first thermals to come through, and even then we all left in pathetically weak and broken stuff. Most of us nearly went down around Sheffield. A very slow day, with extreme patience required. I think the really classic sky was down south ….
Hope to see you both soon!
Andy
134.2km if you don’t mind geoff ;-)AND if you thought your sky was cr@p(can you say cr@p on a blog?), have a look at the sky on pics on dsc! or this one…
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/daten/sat/2008/08/15/ukuK1303.jpg?1218805380
Was good fun though 🙂 and hard work!
you shouda come to great Eyam….
oops.. andy said it first
Sorry if it doesn’t work! I’m trying to put a pic taken by a pilot on the ridge to show the sky state on Eyam..
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/alabase/Eyam.jpg
J-L snd Andy, sorry if in my pigue at having done nothing on Friday I didn’t mention how impressed I was with your flights, particularly J-L! Excellent flying, both of you. Sometimes I miss the Peaks!