Judith's blog

My programme for today included a twist, B-line stall, accelerated collapse, autorotation and finding the negative spin point. Geoff was doing similar stuff, but no twists. All the others had progressed onto stalls and spins. I changed my speedbar and then headed out to do my twist. Everyone else I’ve ever seen doing a twist made in look effortless, they just spun around and flew backwards. I mean, how hard can it be? I yanked and pushed, pulled and prodded and didn’t even get a quarter of the way round before flipping back into the correct flying position. I was grunting like a weightlifter giving birth but no way could I twist myself round. I still couldn’t find the speedbar, so on to the B-line. I liked it. Nice and gentle, not scary, just the kind of SIV I like.

I was disappointed with my performance the previous day, when I really discovered my inner wimp, so I decided that I didn’t come all this way just to piddle about, and I decided to just go for it. I pitched the glider properly, whacked the collapse in and did a big autorotation. What I forgot to do in the excitement was to bend my knees. The pod and your outstretched legs cause a big pivot effect, so you swing more violently, making twists more likely. Seeing the video later really reinforced this. I did a few exercises to find the spin point of my glider, by progressively burying the brake (“More, more, more, Judith, more brake!”), until the glider deforms and starts going backwards. You then let your hands up symmetrically and damp the dive. I did manage to fix the speed bar and did the accelerated collapses, but realised that my pod wasn’t properly connected so bending my knees was made much more difficult.

The other guys were getting to grips with the stalls and we made the mistake of standing on launch watching. Nigel’s stall and subsequent thrashing about looked scary; as did Pat’s. I learned over the weekend that Richard is a man who doesn’t do things by halves. In terms of SIV, he is all the things I am not. On the way up I was saying to him that it would be interesting to see how his stall worked out given how radically he had done all the other maneuvers. Possibly the wrong thing to say….

He did an autorotation, but got a cravat. To get it out he did a full stall twice, but it didn’t come out. Fabien said to get ready to use his reserve, but by the time he’d finished the sentence, Richard had thrown it, pulled in the main canopy and landed gently in the water. Textbook stuff. He was rescued instantly and turned up at the landing field in his underpants. The beers were on him this evening!

Pat’s second flight also made for interesting viewing. Despite concentrating on not letting off the stall asymmetrically it came out that way and the pivot motion of the pod put him in a double twist with the glider not recovered. He sorted it all out fine and landed with a small cravat.

Before my last flight we had fixed in my cocoon properly, but made it too short, so I couldn’t get my legs in properly. I spent so much time trying to undo the buckles to release the straps that I didn’t have time to practise more stuff. I was gutted.

Cris, meanwhile, had taken off after me and was practising finding the spin point. He then did another stall and a perfectly controlled tail slide, but had a cravat when coming out. By the time he had recovered it he was too low to reach the landing field. Fabien told him to head back over the lake and placed the boat underneath him. Cris executed a perfect landing and Fabien powered up the boat and they flew the glider all the way to the shore. Coolest thing I have ever seen.

As soon as we got back to the HQ, we all realised just how exhausted we were. The lads had to leave at 6pm to get their plane, so we said our goodbyes. We drive to Dieppe tonight to catch the ferry back to the UK tomorrow.

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