{"id":3576,"date":"2010-08-30T21:22:25","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T20:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/?p=3576"},"modified":"2010-08-30T22:31:58","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T21:31:58","slug":"monday-30th-august-2010-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/?p=3576","title":{"rendered":"Monday, 30th August 2010 (UK)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Geoff writes:<\/strong> after a run of poor flying by me, I did manage to do a decent flight today. Wayne and I went to Llangollen, along with a lot of other people. It was pretty busy, with lots of people in the air when we got there (we weren&#8217;t particularly late, just that people were eager). There was an inversion, and it was blue above, so no-one had gone XC at this point. After two abortive launches, I finally realised I had a knot in my lines, which Liz sorted out for me. Next launch was fine. I climbed out fairly quickly and got more or less up to the big gaggle. Everybody must have got bored at that point, since they all went on a glide (Grouse had already gone, and was climbing over the back, so maybe they were just following her), so I went too.<\/p>\n<p>The first few km were a bit tricky, in the blue, but the gaggle I was with made it easier, for all of us. Quite a few people seemed to go down just behind Llangollen.<\/p>\n<p>After that it got a\u00a0lot easier, as the clouds started to form, and, for me, all the ones I went to worked. The first part of the flight, I tended to be playing catch up &#8211; which has one advantage that you can see where the lift is. Later on, when the gaggle I was in was getting smaller, I\u00a0did do some leading\u00a0out (maybe that&#8217;s why I went down in the end!).<\/p>\n<p>Most of the climbs I was in were quite strong. Interestingly, it got rougher around 4.00pm, when I was expecting it to smooth off a little. Base was higher, I think around 4800&#8242; was the highest I got. It was, though, an incredibly slow day, with the drift petering away to nothing &#8211; and when I landed at 5.00pm, at New Radnor, it was nil wind. Altogether, I flew for five hours &#8211; with only the first ten minutes or so on the ridge. 84km with turnpoints (my longest PG flight), so clearly a very slow day. very scenic though, with good visibility, and flying over, or close to,\u00a0plenty of other sites &#8211; the Gyrn, Rodney&#8217;s, Long Mountain, Corndon, Sarn, and finally Bache.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, I made a mistake, and instead of hanging around at cloudbase waiting for some clouds to form in the blue hole ahead, I took a risk, found nothing, and went down. Naturally, there were plenty of clouds ten minutes later. But I was tired, and getting impatient.<\/p>\n<p>Not so tired, probably, as Grouse, who flew for seven hours and did, I think, 103km.<\/p>\n<p>Wayne, who had a shorter XC than me, did the retrieve honours. Otherwise, on a bank holiday, I&#8217;d still be at the side of the road hitching.<\/p>\n<p>Tracklog on XC Flights page (see top tabs) as usual. No photos. Unlike Judith, I can&#8217;t do two things at once, so flying <em>and<\/em> taking photos is impossible for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geoff writes: after a run of poor flying by me, I did manage to do a decent flight today. Wayne and I went to Llangollen, along with a lot of other people. It was pretty busy, with lots of people in the air when we got there (we weren&#8217;t particularly late, just that people were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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\/3576"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3576"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3582,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3576\/revisions\/3582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.judithmole.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}