Sunday, 8th March 2009
Posted by Judith on 08 Mar 2009 at 08:59 pm | Tagged as: Flying
The forecast was for hot and sunny weather, and light winds, all of which happened. We were going to go to Puig d’Afrou with Nicky, but she couldn’t make it, so we decided to go to Belmunt instead. We don’t often go there, because of the endless windy road to get there. We’ll go more when we return in Autumn, when the new tunnel is open, which will shave about 30 minutes off the journey.
There were no cumulus clouds on the way and when we got to the top there were two HG pilots, but not a PG soul around. We assessed the conditions for a while and it seemed good. As we were sitting in the sun, a couple of PG guys arrived and got ready. One launched and got low, but the two HGs launched and the three of them got high together. We got ready fast and I got off, flew to the end of the launch gully, hit a thermal and climbed to 1000′ ATO, where I hit the inversion layer. It was really rough. I flew off along the ridge, but hit loads of sink. I choose not to scratch too close to the trees and black rocks deliberately (unlike Geoff) and spotted three vultures in a thermal in the valley. I headed there only to clip the thermal and see them then fly off. Some more scratching had me down in the landing field, while Geoff’s ridge hugging did the trick and he got high.
I flagged down a passing hang glider and got the car, retrieved Geoff after his flight, had lunch in the sun and we went back up so I could fly again. I assumed that at 4.30pm it would have smoothed off and there might be some restitution about, however, I launched, got to 900′ ATO and hit the inversion where it was bloody rough. It hadn’t changed a lot. Lots of active flying involved. After half an hour I decided to fly down – my heart wasn’t in it today.
Geoff writes: surprisingly rough and thermic. At ridge height the thermals were not well formed, just blobs coming off the rocks. Like Judith, I got to the inversion level and found it very rough, so stayed lower. No real chance of an XC. Finally, I had quite a big blowout, spun a little, lost some height, but it recovered nicely. But I decided to land. Too much excitement!
2 Responses to “Sunday, 8th March 2009”
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Geoff and Judith, You’re starting to miss some cracking proper XC weather back here (interspersed with lots of atrocious winter weather). Had my first thermic day at Devils Dyke recently and being there makes the mynd look like a quiet place to be. Fortunately it wasn’t actually ridge soarable, so once off the ground it wasn’t too bad and I was immediately up and away from the masses. I waiting for ages to try to go XC with others, but gave up waiting and kept heading crosswind after each climb to keep away from the sea breeze. Did 44k in a straight line and I should have taken it all the way to the north sea but made a big mistake and tried to reach someone who I was slowly catching up over the previous hour or more, and left a thermal too low. As soon as I landed the clouds started forming and the sky looked epic. I missed a good day recently at the Mynd, and there have been plenty of other sites getting XC’s in.
I know, we’ve been watching the league and the forums. But getting some very nice flying here too, and it is hot and sunny most days! We’ll be back in the UK early next month and will be chasing all the early starters in the XC League then.