Saturday, 9th April 2011
Posted by Geoff on 09 Apr 2011 at 09:39 pm | Tagged as: Flying
Geoff writes: a strongish forecast, but it seemed the place to be was Bache. Others thought so too, and there was a good turnout from the Long Mynd Soaring Club, and the Malverns Club too. When we arrived it was quite breezy. Paragliders flew early on, then it picked up a bit, it seemed quite rough, with some bad collapses (though Briggsy took it all in his stride), and the sky eventually was left to the two hang gliders, Jason and Tim, who had the best of it – it was very thermic then, with some good cumulus cloud development. It later dropped off slightly, and the PGs again took to the air. It was still breezy, and penetration was slow, but the lift seemed to be everywhere, and they all got some great heights (4000′ AMSL), and managed to push a long way forward. Not me and Judith though – we were amongst the last to take off, being a bit (overly) cautious in strong winds, having just got back from Spain, where we never fly in more than 14mph. But we still had a pleasant, if not spectacular, flight.
One response to “Saturday, 9th April 2011”
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Just a note about the previous couple of days – the cure is to eat more pies. I had loads of ballast on the first day, had no trouble getting forward in the wind, the glider felt rock solid in the strong thermals that appeared later on (4 times to cloudbase). Next day no ballast as no wind, and had the biggest blowout (assymetric) I’ve ever had, and got turned 180 degrees very rapidly (still climbing oddly enough even with only half a wing). I was only at just over 200ft above the hill so it worried me somewhat. I really could do with finding the next size down Factor – but it has to be yellow as I love it so. I’m half way without ballast and 5kg below max with ballast so it’s not as though i’m pushing the limits of the certification but it just makes such a huge difference to the feel. At the Malverns the other week, my whole body ached after 2.5 hours of thermalling without ballast, and weight shift seems less effective so I have to use more brake. Actually I think I might post on the forum about this – I bet a lot of pilots have no idea what a difference it can make as only comp pilots tend to ever think of ballast, or trying different all up weights.