| Flight details: | Camped near the Malverns but the forecast was looking NE and too strong so headed North to Corndon (Long Mynd club). After a Caburn size walk up the wind seemed very light but it was just soarable with punchy lift. After about 5 hops over an hour with the wind rapidly increasing I climbed out with a gaggle of five into a completely blue sky. After drifting in rough, broken lift for what seemed like ages people started to loose patience and darted off down wind kindly marking the thermals where Steve Newcombe, myself and an unknown pilot on a airwave hopped in above and topped up to about 3500ft before heading on. Most landed at Newtown for 20k but I managed to scrape up from a quarry from about 600ft below takeoff height to 3500ft. Found another couple of climbs, all marked by buzzards but it was tricky flying alone and getting windy (75kph ground speed at trim) so I wasn't too disappointed to land after 40k. Easy retrieve from an old couple who'd taken their camper into the mountains for the weekend and happened to be driving almost past Cordon hill on their way home. (The tracklog for the first hour of the flight seems to have some very erratic readings - its a garmin 76c and seems to do this quite a lot. If anyone knows who to solve it I'd love to know.) |
