An Early Start to the Season

It was on Monday March 11th when pilots started spreading the word that Thursday March 14th was possibly going to be a great day.  Our main prediction tool called "Regional Atmospheric Soaring Prediction" or RASP for short was predicting a great cross country day with strong thermals, a 6000ft cloudbase and light post-frontal northerly winds. The new somewhat controversial 'star rating' was even showing five out of five stars. Pilots that had some flexibility in their work schedule were taking heed and booking days off from work or pulling sickies, as the Aussies would say. This was all quite unusual as it was still very early in the season and only a few days after the South Eastern counties were still buried in snow. I might add that predictions for the temperature at cloudbase were in the negative double-figures so it was a day to wrap up warm.

The RASP 'Star Rating' Parameter

I had arranged to fly with Jim Mallinson who lives in the same Wiltshire village as myself, so early in the morning we were looking at the wind 'actuals' and thought that they looked a lot more west than predicted. The prediction was for the day to back more west in the afternoon, but it was looking like it was doing this earlier than predicted, so we chose Westbury White Horse as our XC launchpad rather than Combe Gibbet where the hoards were all going. Westbury is a rather unusual option for paragliding cross country flights, as you cannot fly over the back with the thermals and drift with the wind as you normally would. There is the Salisbury Plain danger area to avoid so a lot of crosswind flying is necessary to successfully fly around the restricted airspace, and this significantly adds to the difficulties.

Flying towards our village and Milk Hill

We launched and easily climbed out to just under 3000ft and started heading off along the edge of the danger area also trying to miss RAF Keevil parachute drop zone. We had to take lots of small climbs and then bail out of them as they drifted very close to the boundary of the danger area. With the airspace issues out of the way it was 'situation normal' and we headed more downwind towards Combe Gibbet and ultimately the coast. However my day came to an abrupt halt when my speed bar broke in a sinky hole and I went down. I watched Jim squeak back up with some difficulty to eventually make the coast for an amazing flight of 132km (147 with turn points) where as I made only 59km (67 with turn points). But what a great start to the UK cross country season and the earliest 100km flights in the season recorded from paragliders (made by Jim, Wayne Seeley and Alex Coltman).

Leaving cloudbase over Andover

Paragliding World Cup: Porterville, South Africa

PWC South Africa from Colin Hawke on Vimeo

I've become terrible at updating my blog and should have written a post much sooner about my recent experiences at the first 2013 Paragliding World Cup (PWC) event in Porterville in South Africa.

The first task was literally over before it began. The conditions were quite rough and unfortunately Japanese competitor Akira Horiguchi managed to lose control of his glider before the start and cascaded into the mountainside, without deploying his rescue parachute. I witnessed with horror the whole thing and was convinced we would be dealing with a fatality but with relief eventually saw a pair of arms flailing about. Medics were already on stand-by on launch so were scrambling to locate him aided by aerial cameraman Philippe Broers who was circling above the accident site. They gave the critical first aid needed while the rescue helicopter was on route to medivac him to hospital in Cape Town. A very professional rescue indeed and I'm glad to say Akira is back in Japan and expected to make a full recovery. Philippe documented some of it in his video below.
 
Porterville rescue ops.. from Philippe Broers on Vimeo.

The next day we had a great task, I say it was great because I won it!! But in reality it was a 57.4km task in strongly inverted and very windy conditions entirely out in the flatlands; it was quite frankly a very difficult flying day. In total only 20 pilots made goal, but it was especially fun and rewarding for me getting over the line in first place. It was also my very first task win, I have been third and fourth on occasions but never first and not at this level, so it was a bit of a confidence booster for the future.

Crossing the line for my first task win ever

The next two tasks were incredibly frustrating because of the strong wind. We never really seemed to get any downwind legs as the wind changed direction making every glide against a headwind. A typical situation is as follows: I'm 5km out from the turnpoint and very low and in need of a climb desperately, I find a low save and milk it back to a decent height only to find I'm now 12km from the turnpoint, having drifted downwind with the thermal. So I go on glide again and get back to where I was, 5km from the turnpoint. But now I'm very low again and I need another climb, repeat, repeat ... I'm sure you get the picture.

The next two tasks saw us all finally rewarded with great racing conditions, we also crossed into the Citrusdal Valley for a change of flying scenery with a goal line in the stadium at 'Constriction'. I was quite pleased with my performance on these tasks and often caught up the leading pack when needed and on occasions I even got ahead of it.

By the final task I was still in the running and was close in points to the leader and with a chance of a podium place, so I became determined to really push for a win. The goal field was set in the Clanwilliam rugby field, about 88km distance in total. Unfortunately I had a bad start and was well back in the field for the beginning of the task but I managed to claw my way to the front by the last turnpoint. I was in the leading gaggle 12km from goal and decided to make a break from the pack with a 9.2 glide ratio needed to make the goal on final glide. My idea was that there would be some lift somewhere on that final glide and I could use that to get over the line if I needed it. But I never found any lift, nothing at all! So although I got to the End-of-Speed section with one of the quickest times I didn't make it over the goal line, landing short by a few hundred meters. Literally a few more turns in the final thermal could have put me on the podium, but instead I got 33rd place overall. That's one to chalk up in the experience category! I'm not in to the 'could've, should've, would've' mentality and all I can say is that I learned a lot on that task at the front and will certainly try and work on my final glide calculations in future.

Over Citrusdal in Task 4. Photo: Arnold Frankenburger

Overall I'm pleased with my performance and am delighted with the task win. I seem to be developing a 'flying style' where tactics and decisions are becoming more intuitive rather than analytical. This year has started very well and if I count the free flying, 7 tasks in Colombia and the 7 tasks in South Africa I've managed close to 70 hours airtime since the new year. That's not a bad start to the season.




PWC South Africa: A quick climb-out above launch from Colin Hawke on Vimeo.

Roldanillo Open, Colombia January 2013

Photo: Silvio Zugarini

I meant to blog during the competition but I never managed it and I also didn't manage to take any pictures either but here is short post on the recent competition I did.

During the last couple of years Roldanillo in Colombia has been gaining in popularity as a paragliding destination and so I took the opportunity to do their Colombian nationals in early January. This comp directly preceded the Paraglidng World Cup superfinal and attracted a few PWC pilots wishing to practice for the big event, so the standard was pretty high.

Roldanillo is a small town of less than 50,000 people situated on the west side of the huge 'Valle del Cauca' some 40km wide and 200km long. Each side of the valley has reasonably high mountains and on the valley floor are flatlands containing large sugar cane plantations. Smaller vineyards and other fruit farms dot the edges of the valley.

The main take-off used by the competitions is locally known as ‘Los Tanques’ and is a pretty 45 minute drive from town. There are others like 'El Pico' which are much closer but are smaller, tend to get crowded and somewhat tricky to launch from. The flying day here starts early and you should aim to be on launch and ready to go at 09:30 and are usually launching an hour later when the first thermal breezes start to flow. However generally after midday a strong west wind arrives presenting a back-wind on take-off and quite rotary conditions close to the ridge. This obviously prevents late starts to the day.

During our competition we had the good fortune to have 7 tasks on 7 consecutive days (80.2km, 104.7km, 80.9km, 53.9km, 117.6km, 69.4km, 49.5km) and provided great racing both in the mountain ridge and a lot out in the flats. In general I flew pretty well and was up the front often with the leading pack on most tasks but I made a few mistakes that cost me places and so my result was a slightly disappointing 25th out of 134 pilots.

Conditions were very strong with average climbs sometimes 7+ m/s on the ridge and perhaps half that in the flats. Unusually we were on occasion getting close to 3000m at the tops of the climbs whereas in previous years the maximum heights reached was significantly lower. Apparently Roldanillo normally produces nice gentle thermals and so it was a shock to most pilots to be confronted with strong turbulent conditions. The cause of  this was an incredibly dry season whereas in previous years it had been very wet making things much milder. I heard several stories of pilots last year landing in waist deep water in the fields, but this year the only water I saw was in the river or the swimming pool, even the irrigation ditches seemed dry.

All in all, including the practice days, I managed 500+km of XC and 32 hours of racing. Good practice for the PWC in South Africa.

2012 British Paragliding Open in Meduno, Italy

Waiting for race start - Photo: Olivier Montel

I've just returned from competing in the British Paragliding Open in Meduno in Northern Italy where I managed to come 6th out of 112 pilots. To be fair pilot numbers were down due to a lot of the big guns not showing up, so it was somewhat easier to get a good result. I'm not complaining however, as it allowed me to get the good PWC qualification letter that I wanted. I also had my new wing to fly, a Niviuk IcePeak-6 which is an EN-D competition 2-liner. I'd only put a couple of evening flights on it at my local hill and being my first 2-liner I was quite excited to try it out racing with the other notable hot ship, the EnZo from Ozone.

This competition followed the recent trend as the weather was yet again marginal making the job exceptionally difficult for the task & safety committees, but we did manage to get a valid competition by getting three tasks in.

On the first few days of the competition the US Aviano Air Base allowed us to enter their airspace so we took advantage of this by setting a 54km race out towards Aviano and back. I had a really bad start, really bad - low and late. I'm not sure how I managed to put myself in such a bad place at the beginning of the race but I managed it in style. My only strategy now was to fly fast and try hard to catch the leaders way out in front. Nearly the whole field took the mountain ridge line, but to me this route looked quite tricky as it wasn't a classic linear ridge like in say Slovenia or St Hillaire. It resembled the ridge in Bir with lots of perpendicular spurs to cross and with a headwind it would have made the air turbulent and messy. With nice fluffy clouds forming in the flats I decided that would be the best option so along with two other pilots we flew the flats fast, spinning up to cloud base when we needed to. This strategy was working wonderfully until near Aviano when a huge area went in to shade and we were forced to scuttle for the ridge. About this time a pilot had an accident and the task was stopped to allow safe access to the rescue helicopter (he is recovering well).

Task Board - Photo: Olivier Montel

The task was still scored and I managed 15th, not bad for such an appalling start. However, one of the best bits of the day was waiting for the retrieve! I chose a village to land in that had some sort of festival going on, I could hear music and see lots of parked cars and people out and about. I was joined by other pilots and we gate-crashed the party. It turns out that on this day each year the residents of the village have an open day where they supply wine and food for each other and the villagers go from house to house eating and drinking as they go. One particular nice bunch were the Italian Alpini who invited us in to their trophy laden hut and cracked a couple of bottles of wine together with a feast of bread, cheese and anchovies - what a result!

Photo: Olivier Montel

The next two tasks you could only describe as short, technical and racy (fish bowl racing), but they were still fun. Unusually for me consistency meant that at the end of the competition I managed 6th overall and 4th Brit. I learned a couple of lessons: Don't always assume that the goal turn point altitude is the same as the goal field as in this competition the goal was the castle, a good fifty meters above the landing field. This really messed up my already conservative final glide calculations and I easily lost 5 places with this mistake on one task. The next mistake is not to have your speed bar set up correctly as it is quite embarrassing to have intermediate gliders overtake you on full bar; this was soon rectified! Finally, don't drink spirits, evil stuff ..

Yours truly trying to catch a matching Icepeak-6 - Photo: Andy Smart

The Niviuk Icepeak-6 is without doubt the best glider I've flown, it's certainly the fastest and best performing but it also turns nicely too and is great at banking up in tight choppy climbs. I can't wait to fly it in the Belgian Open in Annecy in a couple of weeks.

A Paltry 100km flight from Leckhampton

Well what a weekend it was! We had a couple of good days of good weather and everybody was out making the most of it. On Saturday we had a northerly wind and good thermals predicted, the northern pilots mainly chose Long Mountain as a launch point, whereas the southerners chose Leckhampton. I managed a 103km flight which is a pretty mediocre result compared to what others did, in fact not even in the top 20! See here for the flights logged that day, in total 6000km were flown by 80 pilots which has got to be some sort of record in itself. Kai Coleman did a fantastic flight of 243km and Simon Twiss managed the coast at Weymouth for 150+km. The next day on the Sunday we had strong southwest wind and Kirsty Cameron took off from the hill behind my house (Milk Hill) and flew to near the Norfolk coast taking the open distance women's record to 233km from Helen Gant's record of 166km set the day before, amazing. I was an hour too late and found it too windy for me to climb out safely.

The North-South cup is this weekend but to be honest the weather forecast looks pants ..

Respite from the Rain

The spring weather has been atrocious in the southern half of the UK this year and flying opportunities have been few and far between. Yesterday we did have a respite from the never ending rain and I managed a nice little 50km flight from the Malverns.

On glide with Steve Ham crossing the River Wye

A quick climb out from launch to base just after 11am saw a good 20+ gliders start their XCs together and several gaggles quickly formed. There was quite a lot of cloud and huge areas were in shade which meant conditions were quite fickle and difficult in places. Our gaggle chose a more northerly line towards what looked like a better looking sky. It was below freezing at cloud base and we got snowed on; I was uncontrollably shivering I was so cold (an important lesson to wear warmer clothes). Several low saves later we landed in the same field full of lovely ancient oak trees. The other main gaggle went further to the south towards overcast and murky conditions, they managed Abergavenny and beyond so did better than us ... We also could have done better but I'm not sure I could have handled the cold for much longer.

My new Icepeak-6 wing arrives soon - I can't wait.

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.

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.

Sun, Sun and more Sun

Work has brought me to Western Australia for a two month contract with a small oil company in Perth. As I was leaving England to go to the airport snow was falling, on arrival I was greeted with 34 degrees and crystal blue skies; what a contrast! It's late summer here and the landscape is scorched, it hasn't rained in months and water restrictions are firmly in place. I know the place quite well having spent nine years in Australia, six of which were living in Perth. So the memories are being jogged out of retirement everywhere I look and after only a couple of days being here it's all starting to look a little more familiar; even my accent has a little Aussi twang returning! I met up with some local pilots who took me to one of their XC sites called Mt Bakewell, a small hill above a town called York nestled next to the Avon River. However the names are the only thing that resemble O'Blighty as in reality it's a charming little sun baked town out in the wheat belt of Western Australia.

As usual I was way too optimistic and had planned various big XC options the night before. Eric a local French expatriate, Bruce (the same Bruce I met in India recently) and Rod had all done their weather homework and thought that once the temperature reached a magic 32 degrees an inversion would break and we would all sky out. It didn't quite happen that way as nobody seemed to get much above 1300m (4265 ft) and combined with a little too much east in the wind meant that I was staying local. Eric and Rod have both managed 150+ km flights from this site so it does have potential. The launches were pretty sporty though! A reasonable meteo wind combined with strong thermals meant that it was often howling on launch and you had to pick your moment and wait for the lulls to get off safely. A lull here means that there is a big thermal sitting out front blocking the wind, so once off you often get hoofed up in a screamer (paragliding parlance for zooming skywards in a thermal). My first launch here caught me by surprise and I got off in a rather ugly fashion, but armed with this experience my second was text book. A nice day out all in all. Thanks to Bruce and Eric for making it happen.


Eric on his Aircross U4

Snow, Snow and more Snow

Photo: Julian Sears

Well I've been out flying a few times in the last couple of weeks. The UK has been gripped in an unusual cold snap, with lots of snow and road closures. The UK always seems to grind to a halt in two or more inches of snow. Luckily though I've got a couple of very close flying sites that allow me to do some local soaring. Granted it's not the most interesting of flying, but it's nice to do now and again in the winter and helps keep the wheels oiled so to speak. In the picture above I'm launching my Axis Venus-1 in deep snow at Chinnor Hill in Oxfordshire, it's a very pretty place normally but when snow covered it's absolutely beautiful.

I've also been flying at Dunstable Downs a few times. Jamie Adams put up a little video clip shot on his new camera, the matchbox sized Hero Gopro HD. He can be seen flying his Axis Venus-2 and I'm somewhere in there flying my red&white Venus. [Edit March 2012, Jamie removed the video].

I'll be off to Australia in February for a couple of months of work and will take my wing; it'll be shorts and tee shirt flying, hooray!

Incredible Pakistan - Videos from 2009

Christian Rankl just put up some great footage of his trips in Pakistan this year. I'm going again next year and have some projects in the planning stages, I may even take the video camera. Check it out.

Paragliding in Pakistan from Christian Rankl on Vimeo.

Also have a look at the 2009 Pakistan Expedition by Demian, Rufo and Romain. Fantastic!



And Matty Senior with Brad et al.

Bir India, October 2009

Bir is a village set on a plateau above the Kangra valley in the state of Himachal Pradesh in north India. It's a friendly place full of rural Indians, Tibetan refugees and a surprisingly large number of paraglider pilots from all corners of the globe. The reason for its popularity is the Dhauladhar mountain range, part of the southern Himalayan chain. Many spurs run down from this range and on one of these the Tibetan government-in-exile is headquartered in McLeod Ganj above Dharamsala. The main paraglider launch site of Billing sits on another spur and from which classic flying in spectacular surroundings can be made, either on the front ridge, or over the back in the more serious mountains. It's been on my paragliding wish list for some time and so I finally went on a trip in October, and what a trip it was! It started off with a 10 day guided tour with Jim Mallinson, Eddie Colfox and John Silvester aka the Himalayan Sky Safari boys but I ended up staying on my own for an extended month long flying adventure.

Spur after spur after spur ...


I'll start with an account of the guided trip and then describe some of the classic flights in the area that I managed to do (sometimes several times) with lots of pictures and a few track logs. No doubt it will be a long post but it should give you a flavour of the place and hopefully persuade one or two pilots who haven't been there yet to go and taste it for themselves.

The Himalayan Sky Safari Guided Trip.

First off I think I should start with answering a question I've recently been asked several times by fellow pilots - "Why take a guided trip if you are an experienced pilot already, can't you just go on your own to Bir?" Of course you can! But remember this is India with all its quirks and consequences. If you can afford it then it makes some sense to take a guided trip on your first outing there. You hit the ground running; acommodation, food and local travel are all taken care of. Being relieved from any organisational burdens gives you more time to actually enjoy your hard earned holiday. More importantly you have at hand the people with a wealth of local knowledge and experience of the area you'll be flying in. If you are a cautious pilot (which is no bad thing) being guided will likely give you better flying experiences, as on your own you'll likely be too conservative for the conditions on the day. Finally, the safety advantages are obvious, especially as Himachel Pradesh doesn't have rescue facilites to haul you off the mountain like you have back home in Europe or the US. Having an accident in the mountains of India can have big consequences as some unfortunate Russians have recently found out.

The motley crew. Darwin, Eddie, me, Jim and John (Bruce absent).


Back to business then, what did I do with those guided days?

102km Flat Triangle with Jim Mallinson
I must have been doing OK on the evaluation day as Jim took me 'over the back' on the first real flying day. What a great day it turned out to be as we ended up flying a 102km flat triangle in 4 hours 45 minutes at heights close to 5000m. Thanks Jim!

Me from Jim's perspective


See here for the track log. The route took us initially over the back of the front ridge in to the bigger mountains and then towards Dharamsala the 'high way'. From there we went back to Bir along the front ridge jumping from spur to spur.

Another of me from Jim's perspective


It was a very strange day for me, as I was being 'guided' I basically just followed Jim around the sky. My instructions were to stay near the leader and not go off and do my own thing ... I obeyed my leader and made sure I'd do a couple more turns in the strong climbs, this put me just behind and quite a bit above Jim most of the time. I can climb and control the glider pretty much automatically so being deprived of any decision making meant that my brain wasn't really doing much except to look at the views and take some pictures; a very pleasant experience. After landing back at Bir I didn't feel tired one bit after almost 5 hours of flying but I did feel a tiny bit guilty that I hadn't really earned my first 100km triangle ...

Jim from my perspective, can you see him?


60km Mandi flight
This was a nice day with all of us - that's Darwin, Bruce, John, Eddie, Jim and myself all flying together as a group. I'll explain this route in detail in a following section as it's a classic and probably one of my favourite flights in the area (in fact I did it a couple more times on my own).

Mandi town, photo courtesy Nishant Sharma


Mandi is quite a large town 50km east along the ridge from Billing. On this particular day we first top landed on a spot on the ridge for lunch, the place is nicknamed Camp360 for its panoramic views. We probably spent too long chin wagging and eating as we relaunched a little late and couldn't find that last crucial climb that would have given us a stress free final glide into Mandi. Instead I had a slightly nail biting end to the flight worrying about the myriad of electrical wires spanning the river. Most of us landed on a rocky sand bank on the outskirts of the town but Jim, who was heroically leading out, landed a little short ...

Two days bivving out - Hobbiton and Camp360
I had prepared for the expected (and any unexpected) nights out by obtaining light weight bivouac gear: specifically a sleeping mat, bag, bivvy sack and even a very light weight wood burning stove(!) that all neatly fitted inside my harness. Needless to say I was keen to try it all out.

My kit being used. Notice the whisky, essential bivvy gear ...


So we all took off and flew 30km west towards a ridge nicknamed Hobbiton by Jim and Eddie, this was due to a collection of small shepherds huts suitable apparently for Hobbits. The ridge, a perfect thermal trigger, was pumping as usual and top landing was pretty tricky. It took me quite a few attempts before I finally got the glider down safely. Eventually all of us landed but Bruce had a slightly harder landing than most ... Several shepherds saw us arrive and joined us for a cup of tea made on my new wood burning stove I might add! Then our fluent Hindi speaker Jim had a conversation with the Shepherds who asked to use our satellite phone to order new provisions, lucky them!

Our shepherd meeting. Bruce looks a little uncomfortable ...


We collected wood and spring water and set about making a fire and putting on the dinner, oh and multiple brews as the English do. Whisky was supplied by Bruce and John Silvester showed off his camp fire culinary skills. A great night out, enjoyed unanimously by everyone. The next morning we launched and flew almost 50km east to Camp360 and did it all again. But this time in luxury as the camp was prepared by the Colonel and his staff providing us with a great evening meal and comfortable tents to sleep in. Quite a few other pilots flew in for the party as well. The next morning we flew back to Bir for a well earned shower at the Colonel's place.

The morning launch


That was pretty much the end of the guided trip. A fantastic effort was put in by John, Jim and Eddie to make it a very enjoyable holiday. The following section just details several what I like to call classic flights that I managed during the couple of weeks following the tour.

The 90km Dharamsala Out & Return
This is a classic flight that can be completed almost any day during the flying season. It's not easy however, you have to fly fast as the autumn day starts around midday and is essentially over by 4pm. I managed to do this flight a couple of times on my own and both times I only just made it back ... One of these flights can be seen here. There really isn't anything special you do on this flight, you just jump from spur to spur obviously using the eastern faces more on the way out and the western faces more on the way back. You save time by climbing as fast as you can and only climbing enough to get to the next spur and the next climb. The recognised turn point seems to be just past the slate quarries on a ridge above McLeod Ganj called Triund.

You can see the spurs running right to left off the main ridge.


The 50km Mandi Run
I've already hinted at this before but I really enjoyed the original flight to Mandi we did on the tour so much that I flew it a couple more times on my own. The ridge gently drops over 1km in altitude over its length and gets noticeably flatter towards Mandi. What makes this flight so special is you really don't have to thermal that much and you spend most of the flight just skimming along the top of a ridge waving at the people working in the fields or shouting Namaste to kids playing in their back yards. You really are connected to the ground on this flight, really special.

Unusually high above the ridge to Mandi - it's much better lower.


The final 15km is a little more stressful as the landing options are few and far between and don't forget about the wires, they're everywhere. So you need to keep a keen lookout if you're unlucky enough to be getting low. One of my track logs can be found here.

Flying over Victoria bridge to land on a beach near the burning ghats and temple.


The big one: A 60km high flight to Manali
I've known about and heard about this flight for some time, it's a committing flight through the big mountains 'over the back' northwards to the buzzing town of Manali. I managed to do it this year with Tom and Scott, a couple of Scottish pilots staying at the Colonel's.

Heading towards Danesar and onwards to Manali.

I talked over the route with John Silvester before I attempted it and what became obvious is that you just pick your own route through the mountains to connect with the Kullu valley as late as possible - the exact route depends on the height of the cloudbase and what mountain cols you can get over. As it turns out we had 'only' a 4800m base and had to skirt around Danesar and its lake. Near there Scott and I got separated (he missed a climb I took) and Tom was 30 minutes or so behind us so I was on my own. I just took a couple of climbs and glides and another col and flew out into the Kullu valley at Manali. Then I managed a simple glide to the Solang landing area in the north of the town. Scott joined me 10 minutes later and finally Tom arrived in orbit above us 30 minutes after that. We had a quick bite to eat and then endured the 6 hour jeep ride back to Bir.

Scott on glide towards the big stuff.


What a great flight it was with spectacular views. But it also felt a very committing flight as going down early meant a very long walk out and a long bus ride back. I'd certainly always carry the bivvy kit just in case ... The track log of the flight can be seen here.

So that was my month flying in Bir. A great way to end the 2009 flying season.

Dreaming

I missed some unusually great flying days in the French Alps recently. The 19th and 22nd of August will be go down in the annals of French paragliding as some of the best in the last decade. There were a lot of high flights and amazingly 13 pilots even managed to make a top landing on Mont Blanc at 4810m (15774ft). It's a shame I wasn't there to experience it but at least I get to see some videos. In a couple more weeks I'll be in the Italian Dolomites and then India for some great flying, weather permitting ...

Massif du Mont Blanc, 4200 m à l'Aiguille de Bionnassay, Dôme de Miage. from Stéphane Boulenger on Vimeo.

And here's the way we do it in England, a bloody great video!

Pimple Queens XC Clinic from pimple queens on Vimeo.

25km from Coombe Gibbet

Tom Kane and Carlo Borsattino Skywalking

I managed a 25km flight (with turn points) from Coombe Gibbet today in what I thought were quite tricky conditions. It was all a bit scratchy at first but I finally managed to climb out with Tom Kane to a pretty low cloudbase of around 3700ft. We had three climb&glide cycles (one of them a very low save) before finally decking it. I landed in an organic farm and one of the owners drove me to the train station in Whitchurch; he seemed to know quite a lot about paragliding and was obviously used to gliders landing in the area. Some other Thames Valley pilots did better so it'd be interesting to see what gets put up on the league.


Tom Kane on glide

32km from Rybury

Kirsty Cameron at base high over the Wiltshire countryside.

There was a sudden break in the atrocious weather today so I went to Rybury for a fly. It was quite busy with people skimming this tiny hill but I managed to climb out with Kirsty Cameron and avoid the chaos. Briefly at the roughly 5000ft cloudbase there were three of us circling; there was Kirsty on her Skywalk Poison-2 and Chris Jones (I think) on an old Nova Mamboo. We all went on glide in different directions no doubt each with their own tactics in mind. Mine was to fly to a nice looking cloud that I thought was building but was rewarded with nothing much. So I continued on a glide towards Hungerford hoping for some lift from the town but got a lazy climb before I got there. Whilst climbing in weak but usable lift I noticed Kirsty circling high in the distance and Chris and another glider climbing well underneath her. I thought they were reachable on glide from my position so I broke the cardinal rule of never leaving lift and went on what turned out to be a death glide towards them. I hit major sink along the way and that left me with very little height to work with when I did hit the bottom of their climb. I ended up landing and watching them glide in to the distance. It was a bad decision and I should have stuck with my climb and got on with my own flight instead of trying to join the others. Kirsty ended up flying to Reading for 65km or so, nice. Still my little 32km was a nice flight with some great views over the Wiltshire countryside.
As usual I landed at a nice pub! I watched paragliders fly overhead whilst having a pint in the sunshine, not so bad I guess.


The pub with paragliders overflying me!

Curse the British Weather

I am writing this watching and listening to the rain and wind hammer against my living room window and I'm cursing the British weather again. Why is it that the UK seems to be a magnet for low pressure weather systems lately? They bring the strong wind and often the rain so it's not been very conducive for paragliding for the last couple of weeks. And it's past midsummer already! I expected to be flying a lot more and as I've turned in to a bit of a cross country snob it's been even more frustrating. But there have been some small windows that have just about been flyable and some people have managed to put some flights on the league, but nothing epic. I've managed to get some very windy flights in at Bunster Hill in Deryshire, the Long Mynd in Shropshire as well as locally around here at Chinnor Hill. But I've not managed or been particularly inspired to go cross country so I still have only one flight in our UK league. I'm waiting patiently for the 'Big Day' but Murphy's law dictates that I will be doing something else when it comes along and so will miss it ... I do have a couple of pictures from the last two weeks below. I wonder why England looks so green?

Looking down at Long Mynd on a windy & cloudy day.


Cherry picking a flyable window at Chinnor before it became too windy.

SIV above Lake Annecy with Jocky

photo: John Porter approaching our caravan park.

I just returned from a very enjoyable SIV course in Annecy in the Northern French Alps. SIV is a French acronym for Simulation d'Incident en Vol or in English Simulated Incidence in Flight. Basically you get to put your glider though all sorts of configurations that you'd usually prefer not to see it in and then learn how to deal with it. So you learn things like recovery from max amplitude spins, flat spins, canopy collapses, stalls etc. All this is done above a lake with a safety boat and comforting radio guidance. We stayed in a nice caravan park at the South end of the lake right next to the SIV landing field. The course was organised by Jocky and his team at Escape and was flawless. We also managed to do a bit of free flying each side of the course with a few flights from Marlens, L'Anglettaz and Semnoz as well as the popular Forclaz and Plan Fait launches.

I met a great bunch of pilots who were on the course with me. Paraglider pilots seem to come from all walks of life; we had oil workers, kitchen worktop specialists, graphic designers, nurses, trainee fast jet pilots and even a professional cage fighter!

An SIV course is thoroughly recommended ! ...

62km from Nant y Moel in SE Wales

I did a great little 62km flight yesterday from Nant y Moel in SE Wales on one of the rounds of the British Club Challenge. I'd never flown in SE Wales before and was looking forward to flying from a new site, but as soon as I turned up I was doubtful that any decent cross country flights could be made as the sky was grey with a low cloud base. But as I was there for the Dunstable club I persevered and although hard work I managed to pull off a reasonable flight; perhaps even one of the best of the day. My strategy was to stay over the higher ground and away from any sky that looked grey and overcast. This meant I had to glide cross wind in a more northerly direction between climbs, I think most other pilots went further to the south in a more downwind direction. I passed over Merthyr where the British Open hang gliding competition was starting and joined a gaggle of hangies in a climb, probably much to their annoyance. Once high enough I carried on my merry way to get a more peaceful climb a few kilometers downwind only to find several of the hang glider pilots zooming over to join my climb, nice to reciprocate the favour! The rest of the flight was the usual mix of glides, getting low and climbing out. But when past Abergavenny I was faced with the choice of which way to fly to get past an airspace restriction, the D-147 danger area which is the Madley Satellite Earth Station I could clearly see from the air. I chose to fly north of it as the sky looked better, but it was the wrong decision and the one that put me on the ground. I landed in a sheep filled field and a nice lady drove me to the nearest village where I waited in the pub for my retrieve (Thanks Steve and Tanya).

Tracklog can be seen here or here.

A Great Time in the French Alps

Yours truly in restitution with Mont Blanc behind. Photos by Tom Payne

So after Austria we drove to France and met up with James and Joe who that night persuaded us to 'Ninja camp' in Annecy which involved my drinking a load of wine and sleeping on the ground, not so great for a 40 year old with a recovering back injury. Again Adam and I were a couple of days early for the course so we did a couple of flights one at Planfait in Annecy and another from St Hilare du Touvet.

Tom Payne (2009 X-Alps competitor!) was the organiser of this weeks mountain masterclass and as soon as I met him I realised that he had put a lot of effort in and that I was going to learn a lot from him. He brought along two helpers Toby Colombe (a very experienced local paragliding guide and XC pilot) and Quentin King another XC hound local to the area. We spent considerable time going over maps of the Northern French Alps learning about valley winds and convergence areas and generally getting a good understanding of the aerology of the entire area. The meteo winds were not ideal but they managed to select some great sites to fly from. We did a great little 40km XC from Montlambert which was hard won and very rewarding as well as visiting new sites to me such as Chamoux and Verel. We also flew from Planfait and St Hilare again.

Quite a wierd experience for me was an evening flight from Chamoux where I took off at 7PM and landed at 8:30PM struggling to get down! It was of course restitution or magic lift but I've never had it so strong and smooth; climbing to over 2000m in 2-4 m/s lift without really having to turn was a quite strange experience for me, especially as it was so smooth you could feel the wake turbulence from other gliders.

A fantastic weeks flying and more importantly it has given me the knowledge and confidence to plan some big XC's in the mountains. Thanks to Nicky Moss of Axis Paragliding UK for organising the trip!


Posing again for a Tom Payne photo ...