| Flight details: | Arrived late after some pilots had flown but landed again because of increasing wind. Waited around for a couple of hours watching hangliders. When conditions had eased took off (apologies to spectating pilot who I nudged as I became airborne). Initially went up almost vertically and had to apply speed bar to move forward over the front of the hill. After soaring for a while caught a thermal from the spur by the modellers bowl. Dropped out of the back of it a few times but managed to reconnect staying with it and drifting back to just short of cloudbase. The lift was increasing in strength as the climb progressed reaching just over 4m/s. Set off on a glide at about 1400m heading over Asda (I hear they had some special offers on yesterday) towards Loose Bottom hoping to connect with further thermals off the slopes there. Did not connect with anything of much strength along there and was down to about 280m. at the end of the ridge where it turns south down the valley there was some weak lift and turning in it I was still drifting to the SE. As I moved in to the valley the sink rate started to increase and although I had the height to cross the river I did not have enough to cross the power lines on the far side, Instead I used the remaining height to push further down the valley towards the foot bridge that crosses the river. As I lost height the wind direction changed to SW as I entered the sea air pushing up the valley. Thanks to Hairy Dave for a retrieve, tea at the Lay and lift back to the Dyke.
All in all an enjoyable 17.79Km flight. |
