| Flight details: | For diversity, here is a different point of view on Sunday: whilst some of the better pilots flew their socks off, I've spent most of the day on the hill. I checked my instruments and I've been waiting to launch from 10:55 until 13:22. Now that's a long wait. All this time I watched pilots struggling to stay up, bottom landing, and birds flapping - nothing to inspire me off the hill.
I was about to give up and derig when Clive and Dave came around and took the piss out of me, enough to make me stick to the original plan - thanks guys, it was your pisstake that made me fly :)
I saw two birds thermalling and launched straight into it. The climb took me nearly to base, but then it weakened and I pushed in front trying to find something better. I didn't find anything else, apart from a climb in the same spot as before which I used to get back up. Then the cover spread all over and it seemed to cause a strong sink cycle so I top landed.
This was the best mixing with paragliders I ever experienced. They all flew very well, and I felt we collaborated, marking and sharing the lift, without inconveniencing each other. That could be because they were all great pilots, including the one red ribbon who was flying (I think it is a she, but I am not sure - I didn't get close enough to tell), who was doing at least as well as I did.
Lessons learned:
- this is the first time when waiting for this long has paid out with a climb. Maybe there is something to be said for all this waiting, at least I didn't bottom land like I did on the other days when I impatiently launched in the first 10 minutes.
- I had the radio on, which was good, we had some quality banter on it, but not much flying info. After I landed I had some very good feedback from Miles, who saw me shooting for a big cloud but missing it by about 500m west. It would have been even better if you told me that at the time, on radio. It only occurred to me afterwards :)
- I gave up a slowing climb before cloudbase, to |
