Andy W in the air and Simon Gant's wing on the ground at Corndon.The forecast was good, until they increased the predicted wind strength. So, where to go? It was a toss up between Corndon, Bache or the Malverns. We opted for Corndon, as it would give us the flexibility of a direction change and we didn’t think it would be too wind affected.

Geoff, Simon and I headed up there and we met Andy, Helen, Simon, Nigel, John, Mike and Duncan at the second gate. A DSC reunion! It was howling, but we decided to go up and have a look and it was flyable, although a little top-end. Mike J. did the wind dummy honours and despite lots of wind and fantastic looking clouds there was very little lift. He stuggled to get higher than a few hundred feet for a while but climbed out with John S. after he launched. Cloudbase was very low and they seemed to have to go over the back with little height.

Helen, Andy, Nigel and Simon then launched, but they had to fly around in what looked very rough, sinky/lifty conditions for an hour before Helen got away. The rest of us watched and I decided that it didn’t look any fun at all being in the air, so my glider stayed firmly in the bag. We had reports of people flying at the Malverns and at the Gyrn, but Malverns was too far to get there in time, so we headed for the Gryn instead. On the way we saw Helen on the edge of Long Mountain, and we were willing her to get another thermal.

On getting to the Gyrn it seemed breezy in the landing field, but ok on top. Malcolm and Steve D. launched and got high, but the wind was gusty and it was 4pm, so I took it easy and chatted for a while. The wind seemed to be increasing on take off, but Nick Bubb launched and went straight up to 900 feet without turning. I launched next, and it took me a couple of minutes to fly forwards. I assumed I was ok flying the Zoom (size S) with 5kg of ballast, which put me way above its weight range, but I had trouble pushing forwards a couple of times.

The air was also lumpy. Not dangerous, but your glider would twitch in unexpected directions for no apparent reason. I flew out from the ridge for 1km and got lift all the way. There was no cloud above me and no wave apparent. I wasn’t sure I really liked it and it was picking up on launch, so I headed for the bottom. Because of the strengthening wind on take off and my lack of forward penetration Geoff decided not to bother flying.

Shame we didn’t go to the Malverns. Someone flew 130km from there. Amazing given how low cloudbase was!

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