| Flight details: | "Ya should've been here earlier, it was much better!" someone told me as I was setting up my flying kit. Much better, it turned out, meant windier i.e. easier to soar and stay up. Unbeknownst to the pilot, I'd flown a bit earlier (doing my dealer checks on a new Ion 4 for a customer) and didn't like the conditions at all; easy to stay up, sure, but windy and the thermals were all broken up. Other, more experienced and discerning, pilots I spoke to didn't like the conditions either. "Look at the clouds. It's going to get much better, as in nicer, soon, I think. Better be ready!" I said to them, hopefully. Now the winds had gotten much lighter, so it wasn't so easy to stay up; you had to time it right and make use of the thermals. Just how I like it. More of a challenge, and far more interesting (for me) than just soaring up and down a windy hill.
My timing was lucky. I found a thermal almost immediately after launch and climbed out on my Artik 4. I saw Gandhi and Luke were doing well towards Firle Beacon so joined them for a bit. Gandhi headed back towards launch and Luke soon followed, so I was left on my own, but Nancy and then Pete soon joined me. Nancy got into the best bit sooner and soon caught me up on her Ikuma, whilst Pete, only slightly later, had to work a bit harder to get up. After working the climbs for a bit, step climbing our way up through the more stable layers of air, we all got up to cloudbase at around 3800 ft. With no particular place to go, I headed slightly east, towards a cloud, but Nancy called me over the radio and said let's go west. So we glided towards Mount Caburn, and Pete came with.
We worked very nicely as a gaggle as we worked our way along, catching a climb off Firle Vintage Summer Fair along the way. Pete was working the broken bits of lift we found along the way very well, I must say! Eventually we got up to base, at around 4200 ft, over the hills to the east of Lewes, south of our home village, Ringmer. We could've easily |
