Judith's blog

Geoff writes: A sunny day, but a little windy. Also totally blue, with the usual, now permanent, inversion. We did half heartedly go up to Corndon, where it was sort of flyable, if a little windy. A few people were there, but, being Corndon, in spite of the wind they were getting no height at all. After sitting in the car for a while, and chatting to various people, we decided to can it, went home, picked up the archery stuff, and went to do some shooting. Very pleasant, and infinitely better than another frustrating day on Corndon.

 There is a shoot there on Friday, for the royal wedding. I’m assuming it’s to celebrate the wedding, rather than have their faces painted on the targets, so I guess we won’t bother going. Amazing how many people fall for this sycophantic rubbish. I never cease to be amazed at how so many people can be so gullible. It’s very sad – people’s brains have so much potential, and yet they are used so little.

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Another day of decisions! Go to the Lakes (a 5 hour drive), go to the Peaks (a 3 hour drive) or stay here and go to Corndon (a 15 minute drive). The Lakes looked promising for triangles, but we thought the Peaks may be blown out, so we went for the easy option and stayed put.

It was cloudy early on, but it was forecast to break, so we got to Corndon early to sit it out and wait for conditions to improve. They did so slowly and it turned completely blue. People had several punts, including me nearly going down to the bottom and having to walk up again. Dave T, Geoff and I didn’t leave the hill until nearly 4pm, when Dave marked a great thermal that I managed to squeak into, but that Geoff got into lower than even I was. He took it over the hill and despite getting some leeside lift, he was too low to make the most of it and landed near Chirbury.

I got a second thermal over Tuffins and another near Sarn over a field that was being ploughed, but I didn’t get the height to cross the next ridge. I landed in Sarn village in the local football pitch. Dave was always higher than me and managed to maintain his height better and found a fourth thermal after I went down to land near Newtown (24km). Not epic flying, but nice to get away and have a change of scenery.

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A dreary day. Cloudy and spitting with rain at times. RASP was completely and utterly wrong here today. Good thermals my foot! I went off to do some retail therapy. It didn’t do me any good though… I’m a terrible shopper – better in a sports shop than in a clothes store any day.

So the classic conditions up north continue. Not only did Ian Miskin break the Scottish distance record yesterday, but today Mike Cavanagh, Richard Westgate and Brendan Reid broke the declared triangle record from Beinn Toaig in the Highlands. A 90km triangle, which with the multiplier counts as 338km in the league. The highest counting flights ever submitted. It looks increasingly like Richard will have to pay out the £1000 for a 1000 points prize. But with 708km in only four flights, he might be paying the money to himself. It’s a damn good incentive, if ever I saw one!

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It started off a beautiful sunny morning, but the wind also started pretty much straight away. It was forecast to blow out here from mid-morning and reports from Sarn, Corndon and Llangollen confirmed it. The only option seemed to be Long Mountain, but there also seemed to be a little east in it, which isn’t good.

We sat in the garden with the wind howling around us and the cumulus popping off everywhere. It was a classic sky, so we set off for Long Mountain, not expecting to fly. We met Martin and Jay there and the wind was eerily light. Martin gave it a go first and it seemed a little rough and the thermals really broken. He top landed, having not really enjoyed his flight and we waited for the next person to test conditions. DJH obliged and the lift was better and he reported it a little smoother.

Geoff took off and got high, but lost the thermal, so had to come back through all the rough stuff at the back of the hill to try to have a reasonable walk back for another go. Martin meanwhile was up and away. I launched and got high, but found it very rough. You had to actively fly all the time to keep the glider above you. I pushed forward and got to 1200′ ATO, so plenty of height to go with, but a huge blue hole had developed between the hill and Corndon. It’s a 10km glide, so impossible unless you can get some lift on the way.

My heart wasn’t in it and I wasn’t up for the rough conditions, so I decided to land. Geoff had also re-launched and hated it, so he landed just before me. We have dinner guests tonight, so we decided not to bother and just went home. Royston and Angie arrived about 10 mins after us, so we had tea in the garden and beer in the Castle.

It seems it was a better day everywhere else – both north and south of here. And strange that it was so windy here and in the Peaks they were doing triangles.

Geoff writes: Martin landed near Clun, maybe 20km or so. In retrospect, seeing what was done in the rest of the country, both north and south of here, we should have gritted our teeth and tried harder! The sky undoubtedly, and suddenly, blued out just behind Long Mountain, and that was a problem. Had we tried to leave a bit early, we would have been ahead of that, and certainly could have been on for a long distance.

We did mess up yesterday, but conditions in our local area have been very, very poor so far this year. Hopefully, it will change soon.

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Today looked promising, until the wind started picking up. I hadn’t seen this on any forecasts, so was a bit stumped as to what to do. Andrew said it was 15mph (and picking up) at Llangollen and Viv found it was howling on the Long Mynd while driving to Stretton. It was getting windier in our garden too, so we opted for Corndon, just so that we could have the flexibility of wind change and it’s close enough to home to be able to can it and do something else.

It was much lighter on top of the hill than at the bottom (that’s normal), but the promised cumulus never materialised. Throughout the day the inversion just got stronger and stronger. We were on the edge of the front all day, but with few thermals. It was flyable pretty much all day if you took off, landed, took off, but it wasn’t until after 3pm that Mark Begg got highish and made a dash over the back. Viv then did the same half an hour later. The couple of times I got high enough to look over the back I couldn’t see anything to go for. Just more haze and high cloud!

Michaela turned up to do some ground handing and then had her first fight in 8 months. Grounds to celebrate…

Llangollen or Sarn were the place to be. Actually, Yorkshire or the Lakes were the place to be, but what’s new?

See photos of today.

See David McKenzie’s video of us thermalling today.

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The forecast for today was all over the place in terms of wind and we had considered going up to the Peaks, but a chat with others had us decide against it. Too much chance of thunderstorms and if you went XC, you’d probably just fly into the front anyway.

Here the forecast changed and started to indicate that it would be west in the afternoon, so we decided to go to archery for the first time this year and then try to fly later. Given that we would still be in the same (crap) airmass as we have been for the whole week, I wasn’t too optimistic. Driving over the Long Mynd to the archery club in Stretton the wind was north, but very light, with the usual haze. What we didn’t know was that there was a longbow competition at the club, so no shooting for us with recurve bows. They did encourage us to have a go though and we were lent a couple of bows by the very nice Rupert.

It’s very different from shooting recurve. You don’t have a sight, have to balance the arrow on your knuckle and I found it harder to pull than our more flexible bows. Still, it’s a far more pure form of archery and it was really great to get a chance to have a go. All the longbow men hoped they had couple of recruits to the other side, but I’ll need to have another go before I comsider investing in another bow. I did find it a bit distressing though to shoot at a target with moles on it!

By 1pm, we couldn’t stand the sky any more and left to see if the wind had turned west. Much to our amazement, it had gone strongish east, so we went home to do some gardening and wait to see what would happen. Viv and Phil were at Corndon and reported the wind on and soarable, but they didn’t fancy it without any locals around. It was a good call. We heard the first clap of thunder about 45 minutes later, coming from the direction of Corndon. It stormed/rained from then until after 6pm.

See photos of today.

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Another high pressure hazy day. Wind forecasts were very contradictory and we expected some thundery showers later on, so we were hoping this would break the inversion and give us some cumulus for a while. We originally thought of going to Bache, but after a report of hazy skies, weak thermals, strong inversion, we decided to stay local and go to Corndon. If it was rubbish we could always go to archery instead.

The wind went from gentle to strongish pretty quickly and it was on the SE face of Corndon. Steve Pym was already flying and Mark had just finished a tandem, but it seemed breezy and as we were chatting wave bars set up. Of all the things, I wasn’t expecting wave today. They got bigger as we waited and started extending out into the valley ahead as well. When high cloud also came in, Mark had a short flight but landed as he felt there was too much lift around. We could no longer assess what was above us and with storms forecast for later we decided to abandon the flying and do something else.

We got to the bottom of the hill and then the sky rapidly cleared, but the wind picked up. We couldn’t resist the temptation and drove back up, collecting all the wings we’d just driven down for people back up. By the time we got out of the car it was completely sunny, with just wave cloud and haze downwind. But it was windy.

Mark, David, Gwyn, Steve, Alan and John launched, but it looked rough. Lots of pitching of gliders, small (and one not so) collapses and sometimes zero penetration in the air made me decided to leave it for a better (and safer) day. Unfortunately, the fact that mixing wind, wave, thermals and cunims (albeit in the distance) doesn’t make for good flying conditions was proved by one pilot. Hope he gets well soon.

It did storm late afternoon/early evening, so we didn’t even go do archery. Hope we lose this damn airmass soon!

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