{"id":241,"date":"2008-10-26T20:07:41","date_gmt":"2008-10-26T19:07:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/?p=241"},"modified":"2008-10-26T20:23:40","modified_gmt":"2008-10-26T19:23:40","slug":"sunday-26th-october-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Sunday, 26th October 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"float: right; border: 1px solid black; margin: 8px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/images\/261008.JPG\" alt=\"Looking back at Santa Brigida.\" \/>Forecast was for less wind, but possibly going W later. We spent some time considering our options then went for the easy one&#8230; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog_map.html?mylat=42.021700&amp;mylong=2.612554&amp;mytext=Santa Brigida Launch\" target=\"_blank\">Santa Brigida<\/a>. We bumped in to Joan in the landing field and on arriving on top saw three gliders very high over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog_map.html?mylat=41.962954&amp;mylong=2.594093&amp;mytext=Puig d'Afrou launch. Puig d'Afrou is a hill near La Cellera. 900m high (approximately). Click on the maximise button to see a video of me flying at Puig d'Afrou in 2007.&amp;myvideo=judith_puig.swf\" target=\"_blank\">Puig d&#8217;Afrou<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>We got ready and Joan (as in the male equivalent of John) launched first and got straight up. We launched next and the thermals were strong, but smooth. I thermalled up to 1250&#8242; ATO and went on a jolly along the ridge to the east, whilst Geoff struggled to get up. I thought about going XC, but decided to stay in the area to fly longer. Geoff got very low and then got a low save from 400&#8242; BTO.\u00a0 We both top landed whilst Joan went down. A French guy flew over from Puig d&#8217;Afrou and we watched him stuggling to get down to land.<\/p>\n<p>Our second flight was surprisingly bumpy, with the thermals very rough. You&#8217;d shoot up, the glider would lurch forward and you&#8217;d try to wrestle the glider into a turn, all whilst the vario was beeping furiously. The thermal strength was pretty impressive for late October.<\/p>\n<p>Geoff top landed a second time, but it picked up a lot and each time I tried to get close to the ridge to come in, it got really, really turbulent. I opted for a bottom landing in the end. Geoff took me back up, and he had a nice evening flight.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Geoff&#8217;s comments:<\/strong> my tolerance for roughness is obviously increasing since I didn&#8217;t find it that rough. On my second flight I was in a very strong climb, but decided to try to make the ridge in front; a mistake, since my penetration on the Hook is poor &#8211; I have a very un-aerodynamic flying position, and the wind was picking up, so I had to\u00a0turn back. But great flights, a really nice day, and low saves are particularly satisfying, and good practise for the\u00a0XC season back in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Forecast was for less wind, but possibly going W later. We spent some time considering our options then went for the easy one&#8230; Santa Brigida. We bumped in to Joan in the landing field and on arriving on top saw three gliders very high over Puig d&#8217;Afrou. We got ready and Joan (as in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}