| Flight details: | Drive-In Saturday
“It's hard enough to keep formation with this fall out saturation”
It had been a week of morning cross-countries, and a similar effort from Liddington Castle, near Swindon, had been the obvious plan (it turned out to be a good plan). But RASP suggested it would be good in Sussex all day (it turned out to be wrong), so I got up at dawn and zoomed on down - if zooming can describe my cautious-old-lady style of driving my camper van.
Many wings were already high as I drove up the hill, so I spent only a little time in greeting the Devil's Dyke massive - no tea, no biscuits. It's unusual to have so many pilots at the Dyke on a Saturday with a good forecast, and yet have it so uncrowded in the air, thanks to the excellent lift all over the place (even though few people went along to Truleigh). I found it boaty at first, and once over 2,000 feet in my first climb didn't get low for the next hour and a half.
I thermalled with Nigel, Gandhi and Rob Simpson, before chasing Carlo out front on his BGD Cure, but ending up with Roger and another Delta 2. We tried to push forward enough to cross to the Ditchling ridge, and eventually made it. There the two Deltas outclimbed me and set off eastwards. But I then climbed fast and high enough for my Oudie to warn me that I was approaching the 4,500 airspace, while the Delta boys got low and pushed back to the ridge hoping for salvation – I don't think they got it.
I carried on downwind, and saw Mark Watts and Catherine climbing over Kingston. I arrived two late to join them, and at 600 feet picked out a playing field to land on. The air had other ideas; a drifting buoyant patch turned into a real climb. I began to see my 20k turning into a 30, but I knew that to do a really big flight I'd have to go further inland. An attempt to fly to the Firle ridge produced a terrible glide ratio, so I decided to head downwind to Newhaven in search of a few more kilometres.
Seagulls over the Ouse valley marshes |
