| Flight details: | Well Mark and Finn took the high road and Crispin and I took the low(er) road, but it was Crispin who got to Shipka afor them, despite dropping some way behind at first. A fabulous flying day with cloudbase rising to over 9000' and cumulus popping up all over the place as the day went on. High seems to work best, but it comes with some risks: the profile of the mountain range is open top slopes, but tree cladded lower slopes with, the further East you go, an increasingly shallow slope. So, as Mark found out, you can have all the height you prudently think you might need when the sink monster grabs you and your glide ratio drops to 2:1, or lower!, making somewhere landable suddenly seem more of a challenge. Finn opted to stay on the high road and top landed.......
My decision was to move onto the flatlands after the first half of the flight. This had worked before, but despite the encouraging sky, I got decked some 5km or so short of Shipka. Down but not downhearted! A great flight for me.
And let's not forget Owen who swapped around between high and low road whilst shepherding us around before also landing at Shipka after 3 hours or so. |
