| Flight details: | ...paragliders in the air at one time (although admittedly not all were in the immediate vicinity of launch).
Sitting by the party campfire the previous evening, I thought as I watched Mark Watts stoking the flames with his pitchfork that the scene looked rather infernal, but if hell were to be like the SHGC end-of-summer part, it wouldn't be as bad as expected.
Carlo was kind enough to say at the do that he enjoyed my write-ups of my flights, and that he'd like to run a Literary XC League. So I felt under pressure, as I flew on Sunday, to come up with something worth reading.
So what should I write about? The pressure to become one of those airborne wings without scaring myself and other pilots stupid? The frustrating of watching those at the top of the gradually elevating stack enjoying a lovely day, while those at the bottom didn't seem to be enjoying themselves at all? My first hop, which quickly became a dash to the bowl to avoid the throng? The admiration of the skill and sense of whoever went to Truleigh on the orange Tala, got high on his own, and stayed there?
Or the joy of timing a take-off well enough to climb quickly back from the bowl, into the cool and - more importantly - almost empty air above and behind? The overcast sky to the east which put me off my usual downwind dash? The calculations about Truleigh and turnpoints and triangles and the little brass plate on a wooden shield which might be mine if I got everything right and moved up to third place in the Sussex league?
The rather bizarre behaviour of the rigid pilot who, as I thermalled to the right as per site rules and the pattern set by Dickon a couple of hundred feet above me, arrived at my height and insisted upon thermalling left, despite my strongly-worded advice to the contrary?
The satisfaction of seeing Carlo well below me at Truleigh, meaning that I was almost guaranteed a nicely-marked climb? (Yes, he found one.) The fascination of trying to stay high enough out fron |
