Belgian Paragliding Open. Laragne, France 2011

Photo: Marko Väyrynen

Well last week we had the Belgian Paragliding Open in France in windy Laragne. Unfortunately we only had one task due to the Mistral conditions. The one task we did have was an ambitious 101km square task taking us over some of the breathtaking scenery of the Pic de Bure quite someway north of launch. Conditions were quite bumpy with strong thermals and a few inversion layers so I had the glider do a couple of funky things but sorted it out quickly. I had a great start and was leading for some of the way at the beginning but was caught by a few others and we formed our lead gaggle. Multiple choice of routes past the Pic de Burre towards the last turnpoint meant that we split up and went various ways. I chose the more direct line that had a large section of flat lands to traverse while others did a slightly longer but less risky route connecting a couple of ridges. Ultimately nobody got to goal as we were all hampered by a strong headwind under the inversion and the leaders all decked it at 85-90km. I landed at 86.7km but was quite quick and managed the third highest leadout points for the task. However some pilots managed a couple more kilometres and so I finished 10th out of 120+ pilots but was only 40 points shy of the winner (who got ~700 points). Due to the weather I was subsequently denied the chance to fight for a podium place.

I'm at the PreEuropeans now in St Andre, the first task is tomorrow so let's hope for some better weather.

2011 British Open - St Jean de Montclar, France

Start Gaggle - Photo Andy Smart

Well it's been a while since I last posted - A lot of things like work and weather have been getting in the way of my flying this year - ho hum. But at the moment I'm enjoying myself and am in the middle of a 6 week flying trip. I'm a wandering paragliding bum living out of my new camper van and a third the way through doing three paragliding competitions: The last round of the British Champs in St Jean de Montclar, the Belgian open in Laragne and then finally the Pre-Europeans. All of them are in Southern France; I've just finished the British round and am now relaxing on the shores of Lake Como in Italy with family as I write this.

The ban on open class gliders seems to have really shaken things up a bit and I quite like the fact that punters like me flying ordinary serial gliders have a chance at winning these comps now. I'm flying my usual bad racing style and finished 3rd out of 150 pilots (and top Brit) for one of the two tasks - this is the second time now I've arrived over the goal field with no other gliders on the ground, it's a nice feeling! The other task I raced myself to the ground, not an unusual outcome ... I hope soon to find the balance between racing and gearing down with the aim of being fast and consistent. One thing for sure is I like to race - bimbling around the course isn't for me.

Lets see how the next two comps go - in the mean time I'll order another becks and read a couple more chapters of my book, not a bad life ..

A Win at the Winelands

An intimidating launch

So I came first in the serial class at the South African Winelands PrePWC in Porterville! But more satisfyingly I came 15th overall in the open class out of 120 pilots beating some seasoned competition pilots on their hot ships. I’m still somewhat amazed I did so well and am trying to figure out exactly what I did that was different to my last two competitions. It has definitely boosted my confidence somewhat which can only be a good thing. Because of some unusually bad weather we only had three tasks (63.9 km, 63.7 km, 66.8 km) but they were good ones with a little bit of ridge flying and a lot of flatland flying. This was great practice for me as I’m not so great at flying over the flats away from the consistency of the mountains.

Flying with Julian Robinson high over the flats

The launch was very small with only enough room for two gliders side-by-side, the thermals were powerful so we had to carefully time our launches to coincide with the brief lulls. While watching the R10 pilots launch I felt the usual mix of hilarity and horror that really did nothing for my confidence. Somehow I managed (with a lot of help from our meet director Rob Manzoni) to launch and once in the air I would do my ‘thank god for that’ and ‘I must do more ground handling’ mantra.

The open class winner - Paul Schmit from Belgium

Task-1: I got to goal in 11th place only 6 minutes behind the task winner Paul Schmit on his R10.2. I only took the strongest of climbs and found the elusive convergence line in the Citrusdal Valley. I was particularly pleased with my average speed for the 64km task of 31.38 km/h which is very fast for me.

Task-2: An elapsed time race where I came 14th overall. I was only a few seconds behind a bunch of other gliders but being an elapsed time race meant that I didn’t know this until the results were in as we all started at different times. If I had known that it was going to end up so close I would have tried harder to beat them. For this reason I’m not a fan of elapsed time races.

Task-3: To maintain my serial class lead all I had to do was get to goal. So I decided to fly conservatively and cruise around the course being careful. I flew like a plonker! I only just made goal in 42nd place and on several occasions I was just seconds away from decking it along the course and was even out of my pod harness with my landing gear down (my feet) only to be saved by the weakest of thermals. This was a real learning experience for me; I will from now on fly the best I can and stick with the better gaggles …

The long ridge north of launch

This was a nice way to end the 2010 flying season. In 2011 I plan to participate in another 4 FAI category-2 competitions; so let’s hope the learning process continues as well as it did in 2010.

India Again - Oct 2010.

India this year wasn't so great: We had a flying ban during the Commonwealth Games, a very unusual weather pattern with violent storms lasting several days that was even reported on the front page of India's national newspapers and to top it all a bit of Delhi belly. But for me the main problem were the crowds on Billing launch; the place to some extent is becoming a victim of its own success, so I'm not sure I'll go again until things change a bit. Being India this may take some time ...

Anyway I made this short video flying my light weight kit along the front ridge of the Dhauladhar mountain range, part of the southern Himalayan chain.

Paragliding in Bir India Oct 2010 from Colin Hawke on Vimeo.

Boomerang GTO

A nice promotional video of the Boomerang GTO flying in the French Alps - I've got a red one and they do seem to go very well.

Gin Boomerang Gto , shooting 2Alpes & Annecy from Jean-Mi ARA on Vimeo.

British Open. Saint-André-les-Alpes.

Gaggles forming after the start window opens

I've just returned from another competition, the second round of the British Open in Saint-André-les-Alpes in Southern France. This place has a rather fierce reputation and it lived up to it with ten reserve parachute rides and several crashes. I'm embarrassed to say that I was one of the unlucky pilots who threw their rescue parachute during a particularly weird day in which we had a lot of incidents. But I hasten to add there were no serious injuries.

In general I thought the competition was incredibly well run; we had six tasks (62km, 82km, 88km, 68km, 86km, 77km) during the week in which the first and last were stopped due to deteriorating conditions but still scored.

I didn't do so well in this competition as I was very inconsistent. In task one I almost made goal but it was stopped for safety reasons, task two I got drilled pushing against valley winds about half way around the course. In task three I went down on my emergency rescue parachute. Task four I did well and got to goal in reasonable time. In task-5 I took off too late when a huge area went into shade killing off all thermal activity. Finally, task 6 was stopped when I was half way around the course due to increasing winds. So in this open I only managed 104th place out of 150 pilots. This result combined with my Slovenian results meant that I was placed 26th out of 66 British pilots in the Championships which I suppose is OK for my first attempt at competitions but in reality I wanted to be in the top 20. Hopefully I will improve with more practice; the next competition I've entered is the South African open in December ...

Task-6

There is no denying that this competition had way too many incidents but it is hard to work out why this is the case; was it to do with the venue, risk taking by the pilots, task setting etc? There is an interesting discussion about this on the paragliding forum here but as it stands there are no obvious answers. What I will say is that the organization was second to none. We were all issued with personal tracking devices so the position of all 150 pilots were known at all times during the race. There was a safely committee; a subset of pilots evaluating the conditions around the course on their own radio frequency. The main safety frequency was monitored at all times by a very experienced meet director. And we had a very sophisticated retrieve system which coordinated the retrieval of downed pilots throughout the course and brought them back to base. The support team was quite simply amazing.

Where I landed under my rescue parachute.

80km Declared Goal flight to Home

Approaching a lovely cloud
Light southwest winds were forecast yesterday with some good thermals predicted, so Julian Sears and myself shared a lift with Bob Johnson and his family down to Wiltshire. We went to the Pewsey Vale area just south of Marlborough, specifically to a little 60m bump of a hill called Rybury. I decided to declare a goal flight back home to my house in Princes-Risborough in Buckinghamshire, about 80km to the northeast.

But when we arrived it didn't look too promising as the sky was empty with everybody sitting around waiting for things to improve. But by midday people were able to scratch and just about stay airborne. A little later we noticed a couple of gliders climbing out and going cross country from Milk which is another little hill next to ours. I wondered if we had chosen the wrong hill again. But an hour later Bob managed to be the first to get away from Rybury soon followed by Simon Twiss. I was determined and finally managed to climb out in a very weak thermal. After a short glide towards the golf courses in Marlborough I was rewarded with my second climb. The crux of the flight was definitely at a village called Lambourn. Here I got very low, about 300m (~1000ft) above the ground; I aimed for a small 30m wooded ridge downwind of the village hoping that it might be releasing a thermal. Luckily it worked for me and I climbed out to 1729m (5669ft) back up to cloudbase in a few minutes. Drifting with the thermal I realized I was about to enter a boundary of some 5500ft (actually FL55) airspace. So I did a quick 180 degree about-turn and flew a few minutes to get some distance from it and then did a spiral dive to get me down to 5000ft so that I could safely glide on to my next destination. I flew to the west of the Harwell nuclear facility (P106 prohibited airspace) and the ring of the brand new Diamond Syncrotron and I remembered visiting the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory there back in the late 1980's whilst still at university. I flew on to Didcot Power Station where I out-climbed a couple of sailplanes to get back to cloudbase. I had a good look at Oxford and thought how nice it looks from above with the river Thames glistening in the sunshine. I carried on to the south of the Abingdon parachute drop zone and north of RAF Benson and RAF Chalgrove (where the Martin-Baker company tests ejector seats). Finally, and with all the difficult airspace out of the way, I aimed for the Chiltern Hills and home. I landed in Princes-Risborough exactly as planned, i.e. near the Bird in Hand pub for a pint, only a 5 minute walk from my front door. No car retrieve necessary, how refreshing!
Didcot Power Station

I found out later that the two pilots I saw climb out from Milk Hill were Emile Vanwyk and Richard Bungay and both were flying Boomerang GTOs like mine; they landed in Cambridgeshire for an amazing 154km. I'm sure I could have flown further but probably not as far as that though. They are both outstanding pilots; Emile & Richard took first and second place in the Serial class of the British open in Slovenia, whereas I placed in at 31 ... There is something special about flying home though. My flight can be seen here or here. Thanks for the lift Bob & Julian.