Saturday, 6th March 2010
Posted by Geoff on 06 Mar 2010 at 08:51 pm | Tagged as: Flying, France, Party, party, party...
Geoff writes: today was forecast northerly – not tramuntana, just a north wind. Sometimes Santa Brigida will work then, but often not. We thought it might be too strong for Sant Pere de Rodes, and our ideas of going to Ager were scuppered by the north wind, and the fact that the next two days’ forecast is poor here. So we decided to take a trip across the border to Ceret, which has a north and a south launch, and where the forecast was light northerlies. John and Johnny decided to come too, their first time flying in France.
After looking at the landing field, we went up – which took a bit longer than usual because the centre of Ceret was closed for a carnival.
The only other flyer was a guy doing tandems – no other pilots there at all, which was a bit surprising on a Saturday. He had launched just before we got there, and gone more or less straight down.
The wind was nicely on, but there were no cumulus. I decided to launch anyway, and see if it was working. After sinking a few hundred feet, I connected with something, and then it just got better and better. The others rapidly launched, and we all flew around for a while – the thermals got stronger, and the higher you got, the rougher it was. Or, possibly, that was just because I was flying the Artik 2, which is certainly more dynamic than the Hook. It was nice to fly, and thermals really easily, turning very nicely into the lift. Whilst it was a lot more dynamic, it wasn’t anything to worry about, and I had a great flight. Lift everywhere, very easy to stay up.
Once we had all landed (through choice) we decided to go up again, hoping it would have smoothed off a little. In fact, it was more or less dead – very light on launch. John and Johnny flew, both getting nothing on the ridge, but light lift in the valley, low down, which they both worked really well, until they finally went down. Judith and I decided to drive down – it would be a long retrieve for the sake of an extended top to bottom.
After beers and food in the landing field, off to Ceret to see the end of the carnival. Some great floats and costumes.
All in all, a very pleasant day!
2 Responses to “Saturday, 6th March 2010”
Leave a reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
lovely to see pics of one of our old sites. Many a good time had there. Looks like you had a great day.
El sabado estuvimos en Ager, tuvimos un dia soleado……….. como en todas las zonas de vuelo y se cumplió la prevision de E y entrando el N a unos 2200mts. Se volo hasta bastante tarde y el unico problema fué un espantoso frio, funcionaba la ladera superior………..aunque nadie se le ocurrio acercarse por el posible rotor que provoca el E, se voló por el altiplano entre las dos laderas, la ladera inferior y el llano, fué bastante facil mantenerse entre los 2000mts y 2300mts y en el llano hubo gente que abandono la termica a 2500mts por no aguantar el frio. Oriol, Joan y yo vamos a volar a Ager el 1er y 3er fin de semana de cada mes……………..ya sabeis.