Thursday, 2nd July 2009
Posted by Judith on 02 Jul 2009 at 06:14 pm | Tagged as: Competitions, Flying
Judith writes: Third task today. Lots of different weather forecasts, but stronger west wind today, so a 116km task to Segovia. I got off ok and thermalled along the ridge. The big promise I made myself was not to go anywhere until I was high and to be patient! It was hard work getting up and I scrabbled about at ridge height for ages working my way along trying to find lift. I got it just before the start point, climbed up and was on my way. I made it over the pass via a circuitous route and found a weak and drifty thermal on the other side. As I was drifting over a ridge I saw an open glider with the pilot lying down not moving. I radioed in to HQ to tell them the situation and then flew over to have a look to check if he was ok. Once I was circling lower the pilot stood up and waved at me. Damn!
You should get up and bundle up your wing immediately so this kind of situation doesn’t happen. I then had to go hunting for another thermal and got a weak climb, but I was then in the centre of the valley. My last ditch attempt was to fly to a black field and I hit the thermal very low (maybe 150 feet off the deck), but on turning in it, I stopped dead and sunk out. On the ground the wind was howling. 25km, so disappointed, but at least my attitude was better today and I made it over the pass!
Terrible retrieve. Geoff called me to chat about my flight and this meant I ran out of credits, so after a 3km walk in the sun I then had to walk an extra 2km to a petrol station to get more credits to call the retrieve bus. Another lesson learnt.
Not much news of from the goal yet. Kai and Craig did 55km and Dave Thomson is in goal.
Geoff writes: there’s gratitude for you. I phone her and she complains about the cost!
Bit windy here today, ESE, supposed to be going south as the day went on. That didn’t really happen, and Corndon was the best bet, in retrospect (or maybe the Malverns?). But Dave Broughton did phone from Corndon to say it was a bit gusty, and he was on his own, so didn’t fly. I did some work, and was about to go to archery, when Martin Knight phoned to say it was flyable where he was, so off we went (I picked up Michaela on the way). In the end I had about 40 minutes or so of evening soaring as the front approached, so a lot better than nothing.
Tomorrow looks distinctly possible on the Mynd. Change to get a westerly.
And apparently, yet again, the task was stopped in the hang gliding comp in Laragne, because of “extreme gusty conditions at goal”.
3 Responses to “Thursday, 2nd July 2009”
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Sounds like you’re having fun and learning loads of useful lessons!
I especially like the one about not letting hubby burn your phone credits before you have a retrieve sorted .. classic!! Bloody nuisance calls eh? Just put him on call blocker, that’ll sort it 🙂
Good luck for the rest of the comp. Hope you can make it to goal! At least you seem to have the pass sussed ….
Where is the pass that everyone always talks about. I’ve flown there a few times years ago on HG, and only went between TO and Bottom landing so never got to see anything further than a couple of miles from there. As we were 30 HG’s from Northampton club and not paying him we didn’t get any briefing from the local skygod.
“The Pass” is at Villafranca about 8km NE of the Pena Negra launch, where the main Avila road passes over the mountains. It’s a notoriously unpredicatable area to cross – sometimes so easy you cruise over it high and don’t even notice it, but other times you find yourself getting flushed into some horrible little rotory gulley praying for a low save. The sailplanes often fly down towards Piedrahita from Segovia, but even they usually turn back before the pass! I think basically the famous NE/SW convergence line does funny things here. Even the locals like Steve Ham sometimes get caught out by the dreaded pass ….