| Flight details: | A lovely day at Pandy. In advance of the BCC competition lots of pilots, including many Southern Slackers, arrived for the better-forecast Friday .
A little windy and gusty on take-off but plenty of thermic cycles which saw some pilots leave the hill early (those ambitious combined service boys had declared a goal of Port Talbot).
On my third flight I managed to get a good climb and at over 4,000' I felt in danger of being sucked into the black cloud above me. Already getting a little milky although probably still 500' below cloud base I pushed back to escape and found myself in total blue with no signs of lift other than a climbing hang-glider in the distance. I headed towards the hangie but only sniffed (but never caught) a scrappy bit of lift just above where all the walkers were enjoying the view from the top of the Sugar Loaf and landed just beyond shortly afterwards.
Unlike Matt's experience I had a golden retrieve. I knew my wife had gone walking Sugar Loaf with her brother and phoned them as soon as I landed to find that they had just got back to his car. A pin sent from my blackberry identified my location and after packing up I walked down to a farm just as they got to the top of the dead end lane. They kindly drove me all the way to the top of Pandy (a brother-in-law is a wonderful thing) from where I was able to pay the favour forwards by retrieving Catherine.
A lovely day out in fantastic weather even if my flight was a one thermal wonder.
(NB KML file downloaded from Kobo mini. I have matched the track compared to my Garmin 76 and the co-ordinates match pretty much exactly but the Kobo registered the heights fairly consistently about 20m lower than the Garmin) |
