Saturday, 4th October 2008
Posted by Judith on 04 Oct 2008 at 08:59 pm | Tagged as: Trying, but failing, to fly
We got up early this morning to drive to Berga to hook up with Nicky to do some flying. Berga is another place where we have a checkered history. Lots of trips, little flying.
The landing field was full of paramotors and we realised that they had a comp on. We met Nicky and Tim, the honorary Icelander, and headed up the hill. The forecast was for south winds. Perfect. When we got out of the car if was blowing strong N. Hmmm… On launch the thermals were sometimes bringing it on, but most of the time it was decidedly off. Nicky knows the area really, really well and said it was very strange conditions. We decided to go for lunch when a series of dust devils came through (in October!).
As we were driving past the Primera Maria launch we decided to have a look, just so we could learn more about the area. Enric was there and it was lovely to see him. On the Primera Maria (only about 1km from the Segunda) it was smack on with no northerly wind. It was pretty sinky, but Tim launched and went up a little, but then had to bottom land. Enric launched a short while after, but struggled to maintain. After about 15 minutes he and another pilot got a thermal and crossed onto the higher ridge behind. We rushed to get our gliders ready but the guy in front of me couldn’t take off because of paramotors soaring back and forth in front of launch. Once he got off the wind picked up. Big style. 5mph to 25mph in 2 minutes. I backed off because the wind had also obviously picked up in the bottom landing field. Nicky and Tim came back to take off and reported strong N in the car park and very strong winds in the bottom. The paramotor task was a ‘stay in the air as long as you can’ task and two guys stuck it out for as long as they could. It provided us with a lot of entertainment, seeing them getting tossed about in the howling winds. In the end it became a strongest bladder competition instead.
It was a strange day indeed. We canned it at 4pm and headed down. We bumped into Enric later who said he had got 2600m AMSL (8530 feet).
We don’t really need to learn this lesson again, but you should never, ever go to a site and not get your wing out, as you won’t be ready when it does get good. On the other hand, I always get some ‘new site’ apprehension, especially when you get contradictory winds, dust devils and sudden picking up of the wind. I don’t regret not flying, and am quite glad I wasn’t in the air 5 minutes after I would have launched, but I should have got ready.
We drove home and found that there was an international festival of witches going on in St Joan les Fonts, the next village. We stopped and saw a procession of giant witches and devils as well as women and little cute child witches. There were loads of hippy stalls and even a stall where you could get your aura cleaned. I tried to persuade Geoff, but he reckons his aura might be a little frayed at the edges, but not in need of a spruce up yet!
3 Responses to “Saturday, 4th October 2008”
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I was flying at Ager not far away from you. It was stange there as well since for the first mid-morning flight the thermic wind was comming nicerly up the Southerly face, but by the time we came up again for the second flight it had weakened (normally it gets stronger as the Southerly face heats up) and then it started comming over the back (N wind) and got gradually stronger, grounding the large number of pilots present. We then had to dash off to the airport. A great week flying though, with our excellant local guide and host Winston of ‘wegofly’.
Steve
Thanks for being so generous about the conditions. I’d been thinking it was total absence of skill that had me sinking out 😉
Hardly! It wasn’t easy to stay up. Enric is a very, very experienced pilot who lives in Berga and he nearly went down several times. No reflection on your skills at all.
J.