| Flight details: | With high pressure forcast and a pronounced inversion I nearly did not bother going to the Dyke, but the RASP forcast and the Lasham gliding forecast were modestly optimistic that thermals to 3'000 would arrive by between 11 and midday. Also I had to drive part of the way to the Dyke on an errand anyway, so got there early and waited for the day to develop. The wind was NW and very light when I arrived at 9, so went for a glorious spring morning walk. By 10.30 short scrappy flights were becoming possible,and after an hour or so the small thermals began to get stronger. After landing to change harness from a lightweight one to something more suited for the strengthening conditions I looked up to see the leading gaggle looking pretty high above the dyke. The wind was still light, so catching a thermal right in front of launch it was fairly straight forward (although a little rough) to ride it almost vertically to about 2,500' ASL. By now there was a large gaggle marking a thermal over Newtimber, so headed off that way. The thermal was still there when I arrived, although the gaggle had moved off in the direction of Ditchling. After topping out I had drifted too far south east to make the Ditching ridge, so set out towards Falmer, via some ploughed fields. Steady sink followed, and after reaching a sunny ploughed field which refused to work, I deciding to head north, land short of the ridge, walk to the Ditching take off and fly again from there... but as I lined up to land the wing began twitching and with a little hunting around a nice low save materialised, taking me up to 3,200' ASL (before banging against the inversion). From there I could make Falmer with plenty of height, so set off, but was disappointed to find no lift at all over the university campus or the hill with scraped earth and building works beyond. The wind was still NW so headed on for some NW facing slopes south of the A27 (the slopes behind what on my OS map are marked Loose Bottom and |
