| Flight details: | Tempting marital discourse I obtained permission to go fly in the BCC again on Sunday, so drove down on Sunday morning. When I hooked up I found our ace organizer Catherine had put me in the "A" team with Mark Watts on account of my lucky (and longest UK 30km flight last weekend). Kiss of death unfortunately as I didn't get so lucky on Sunday, but it was still great fun. The details and video are below.
http://youtu.be/DMSVsKsvW24
Round 3 of the BCC at Pandy on June 9th 2013. It was blowing somewhat on take off when we arrived in the car park of The Old Pandy Inn at 10am, so said our Joint Services organisers. They thought it would drop off later in the afternoon, so we shared lifts to get up the hill.
If anything the wind had increased when we got up there, but following a long lunch and chat amongst the pilots, one paraglider flew in from stage right. A Red Ribbon no less, with all the XC hounds on the ground!
After watching the chap fly for a while, a number of the more confident got set up, and one by one off we all went assisted by the great marshals. It took quite a while between gusts to get everyone off from a single launch point (no-one fancied going higher), and it was quite wind blown at times in the air.
A few got away to the West side of the ridge, and when I got high, I took a trip up there as well. After losing my 2800' going back up to 3500' or so, and watching a sailplane well below, I followed a chap over the back.
I'd been warned about the sink hole and mixing air, but I still encountered both. The chap I was with seemed to come off ok, but I kept missing out and eventually got a bit low in the bumpy broken thermals to comfortably 360. I tried the lee of my last hill, but had to leave when I got lower still and flew out into the final valley of my flight. It was quite a posh valley, with some big houses, one with a helicopter in an adjacent field and more importantly a very quiet B road through the middle.
After a time going backwar |
