| Flight details: | Left the hill at 11:30 with Owen who unfortunately landed at Brighton.
Caught up with an Ozone Geo at Lewes and got the usual snotty climb out of the back of the town to take me over to Ringmer where we parted company.
Routed north of the glider club (where were all the sailplanes ??) under some good clouds inland of the sea breeze front.
Tried to stay north of the SBF flying the clouds in a WNW wind. Got squeezed up against the 3500 ceiling as the SBF front pushed in from the south past Hastings.
Had to duck under the 3500 airspace past Headcorn to stay out of the sea air and tiptoed past the M20 heading for some sailplanes climbing out of Challock.
Never really got back up to the proper cloudbase of 4700' amsl as I was climbing in the sea air.
Got a low save at about 80km that took me back up to 3000' and managed to push on to Canterbury to make it past the 100km mark - my best flight from the Dyke.
I think I could have made it to Margate if I had managed to climb north of the convergence back up to base at 5000' where the sailplanes were boating about.
The other option was to push under the SBF convergence but it was looking pretty dark and base was below 3000'amsl.
Despite flying in some fairly active air at times my Venus II behaved impeccably (Craig was right - they do go well!) and having a harness (my Sky Excite with pod) that gives you enough feedback but doesn't overreact and is extremely comfortable made the 5 and half hours in the air a real joy, it was just a shame I was flying on my own and couldn't share the experience! (I did briefly share a climb with a hangie coming back the other way.) |
