Thursday, 27th May 2010
Posted by Geoff on 27 May 2010 at 10:55 pm | Tagged as: Archery, Flying, Miscellaneous activities
Geoff writes: the forecast was for nice sunny weather, but windy, not even dropping off in the evening – and so it turned out. We decided to have an active day, after doing a bit of work in the morning.
Judith was in Church Stretton at 10am, and driving back home there was one PG flying, a visiting pilot, Richard, trying to get in a flight before they returned home (having been here three days and not flown at all). Whilst he was flying, the wind picked up, so he very sensibly turned and ran, landing at Marshbrook.
We loaded up the van with paragliders (just in case the forecast was wrong), the hang glider, and the archery stuff. We started off at the Acton Scott Working Farm Museum, somewhere we’ve been planning to go for ages, not least because Tom, from the Long Mynd Archers, works there as a farrier on Thursdays. It’s a nice place, well worth a visit, with plenty to see, and it was interesting to see Tom working as a blacksmith. We spent a few hours there, whilst the wind slowly continued to increase, but the sky was a really good XC sky. Since we thought it would stay windy into the evening, and I wasn’t fussed about an XC on the hang glider, we decided to go to archery – it’s usually a bit quieter in the day, and we can get more shooting in. Unfortunately, there were some people today who were incredibly slow retrieving their arrows (more chatting than walking!), and we can’t shoot whilst people are walking up the field for their arrows. So eventually, we got a bit frustrated, and the wind seemed to be dropping a bit anyway, so we packed up and went to fly.
As we arrived at launch at the Long Mynd it seemed relatively light, and we did consider gettitng the PGs out, but it soon started picking up again, so we rigged the hang glider, and I flew for 40 minutes or so, very pleasant, then landed. The wind was still increasing, and it was quite strong as we left, with wave bars forming to the west. No other PGs – apart from a speed wing – had flown since the one this morning, though some HGs had been around most of the day, and it was certainly flyable all day for them.
So a fun day, and just possibly, depending on which forecast you want to believe, it might be flyable for PGs tomorrow at the Long Mynd.
One response to “Thursday, 27th May 2010”
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Got to fly at Frocester, after trying Leckhampton, selsley and then onto Frocester to find somwhere pointing in the right way. Got involved in really big blow-out when Tim launched, and then when about 10ft off the ground had a full frontal – I was mesmerised until I had to drop to the ground to avoid all the paraglider and lines draped around me. Fortuately the airbag did it’s job very well. I flew later and it was nice for a while, but ended up at the bottom where Wayne Seeley had landed after a flight he didn’t enjoy. Best of luck for Friday – looks like a 200km day from where I’m sitting.