| Flight details: | It looked like the day was going to start working very early with the potential for some very tall clouds, so I wanted to arrive early. Pulling into the Dyke car park at 8:30, I thought I'd be one of the first on the hill. How wrong I was. It was already looking pretty busy with lots of pilots already clipped in and waiting for the wind to pick up. The first few pilots took off into the bowl a few minutes later and it already looked very lifty. I took off at 9 o'clock with the intention of having a short warm up flight, but the conditions were so good, I took the opportunity to head to Truleigh along the ridge and get away from the crowds. As I arrived in the Truleigh bowl, another couple of pilots were leaving and heading back to the Dyke. I thought I'd stay and wait for the thermals to start working. Once they did, I just stayed put and practiced thermalling and trying to push forwards as much as possible. After a while I fancied a change of scenery. I could see lots of gliders high above the Dyke, but the clouds to the west looked closer than those to the east, so I decided to try and cross the Steyning gap. I got over to the next cloud street with plenty of height, but found myself just upwind of Shoreham ATZ. I was in a climb though, and decided I probably had a decent chance of climbing fast enough to get over the top of the ATZ before drifting into it. That seemed like a better option than trying to fly upwind and potentially finding myself in lots of sink. Once I got up high again, I decided that hanging around here wasn't the best idea, so I set off for the ridge and the next cloud street to the west. Unfortunately I didn't manage to connect with anything when I got there and the trees covering the ridge made it difficult to soar whilst keeping landing options open. So I turned back to land in an empty field taking care not to fly too close to the horses in the next field over. These horses weren't spooked though. They behaved more like ni |
