| Flight details: | Having seen the flight that Luke's just posted, I feel unworthy to mention this one. But in case anyone's interested: it was my first trip to Pandy, and thanks to the excellent site guide I managed to find the right field to park in. I was soon joined by some friendly regulars, but the wind on the lower launch stayed a bit light. A few of us had brief flights from the upper launch before top-landing. Then a blue Niviuk (Ben Friedland, I later discovered) rocketed up from the lower take-off, and eventually a bunch of us realised that it was more or less stay-uppable.
Frequent thermals made things a bit more comfortable, although at about 8k north of launch a few of us failed to push over to Hay Bluff. Ian Pepper top-landed, Mike Long bottom-landed. Then a climb with a Magic 4, unusually supporting an old lightweight harness (and a rather good pilot, who consistently out-thermalled me), took me to well over 4000. Magic man set off over the back, while I unwisely pushed forward with thoughts of a triangle. It was too windy, and I only got about 2k from the ridge before giving up that idea.
Eventually, getting back up to 3700, off I went. I thought I might be coming down in the valley behind launch, then the next valley, but a series of broken thermals dribbled me on at about 2500. Eventually they coalesced into a decent climb (though indecent enough to give me a big whack half-way up). Past Crickhowell I think I suffered a bit of ground suck, perhaps still having my triangle head one; rather than head over the high moors, I stuck to the valley. The voices of kids playing on a football pitch at Llangynidr demonstrated the presence of another thermal, but it took me only a few fields further. Soon afterwards Ben Friedland came down in the village.
When I asked a couple of mothers collecting their schoolchildren the way to the main road, one of them kindly dropped me there -- her son had been among the kids yelling up at me. Then a posh car took me to Abergavenny |
