| Flight details: | I've spent the last week in Bassano, Italy on one of Kelly Farina's thermalling courses (www.austrianarena.com). The watchwords of the week were: inverted, stable and sticky. The airmass was so stable that by the end of the week pilots were thermalling over the ridge at cloudbase in t-shirt and shorts.
Three of us from the Southern Club went on the course together; myself, Rob and Guy. We met up with a mix of other pilots, some of whom had been on courses with Kelly before, so they gave us the heads up on some of his catchphrases. We were dining with a German hang glider pilot called Volker one night and he remarked that Kelly talks like a machine. If repetition is the key to effective teaching, he's got it nailed. I'm not sure that sounds like much of a recommendation, but it really is. He knows what he's talking about and it's great to fly with someone who demonstrates that he can walk the walk as well as talk the talk. Just don't ask him any stupid questions!
Despite the stable conditions, we got 7 consecutive days flying and I clocked up more than 14 hours airtime, my best flight being a 14km FAI triangle lasting 3 hours. There was a competitive element to the flight; to be the last man down and make everyone else hungry while they're waiting for you. We started off practicing our thermalling skills in the smooth early evening conditions on the ridge, then heading out to the blue skies in the flats later on when the pressure dropped and the heat that had been trapped at ground level all day released. After a couple of attempts to get through the inversion on the ridge at 1100m, I found a climb to get me through and up to cloudbase at 1700m. I waited there for a while, but everyone else was stuck under the inversion, so after bouncing around between a couple of clouds, I used my height to glide out to the flats and try my luck there. I found a good climb from 800m back up to 1500m over Romano. Meanwhile Kelly, Magnus and Roy had pushed out into |
