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 ! ...

80km in Greifenburg Austria

The weather has been pretty awful in the UK with a constant low pressure system hanging around giving high winds. So after looking at the forecast for Austria I decided to pop over to try and do some big triangle flights in Greifenburg with Trias a Scottish pilot. I had my mind set on a classic 115km triangle and so went to the take off in Embergeralm to have a go at it. This is the first time I'd been here and was pleasantly suprised with the setup; a nice take off area and next to it a place to have coffee and cake. You have to pay a small fee for this convenience but it was money well spent I felt. The main landing area in the valley is similarly setup and although there is no cable car there is a regular navette or minibus service that takes you to launch for 5 Euros. So I managed to fly two sides of my triangle for a total distance of 80km but the last leg was difficult and so I landed near a train station to make an easy retrieve back to the hotel. The cloud base was quite low at about 3200m as we had more humid southwest meteo winds, but with drier easterlies the base can get much higher apparently. It was challenging flying but fun so lets see what the rest of the week has in store. My flight can be seen here

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 ...

Zillertal Open 2009

My first paragliding competition! A bit nervous obviously, mainly because of the start gaggles; the thought of 100+ pilots flying aggressively close together did give me some concern ... Wagga and Nicky both very successful comp pilots (British team) gave me lots of tips and dispelled a few of the nerves I had. Although it was just a local Austrian League comp it was attended by most of the Austrian Team and had a few of the big names there. It was a two task race-to-goal comp on two successive days.

Interestingly I found the race starts not too stressful. Obviously we were all competent pilots and although the flying was close and aggressive everybody was observant and predictable.

The first task was extremely frustating for me as my new Flytec 6030 all singing and dancing comp vario died on me and I was forced to use my backup GPS which I've never bothered to learn to navigate with (duh). So I attempted to learn how to use it mid flight with lots of traffic around me wearing thick gloves, not ideal! It wasn't very successful and I ended up following other pilots around the sky most of the time. This strategy worked some of the time until I flew a few kilometers too far past a turn point to a free flying pilot that wasn't in the comp! The acronym RTFM comes to mind 'Read The Fxxxxxg Manual'. The good news is I did the task and got in to goal, the not so good news is that I went over the goal line in orbit 2000m above the valley floor over an hour after the winner got in! I sheepishly handed in my instrument in the download area and sneaked out before the laughing started. You live an learn.

The second task was much harder and a lot fewer pilots got in to goal, so the fact I only got half way around didn't bother me too much and I got a reasonable amount of distance points. I did however stay up in to the night learning how to use my GPS. I also was keen to fly faster and so pushed on low not taking climbs to their maximum and using a lot of speed bar. Not really the best strategy for the day. Again you live and learn.

Anyway although I only came 37th I did learn heaps about comp flying and am really keen to do more.

Zillertal Open 2009 Results.

A five hour flight (almost)

Climbing above the Ahorn Spitz (click the image to see the sailplane between my lines).

So this was the first day of the course run by local guide Kelly Farina. We all headed up to the Penkenberg launch where we had a weather briefing and given a 102km task to fly around the local mountains. But conditions were strong with climbs around 6-7 m/s and strong north winds to contend with. Not unexpectedly things were especially rough in the sunny leeside climbs, so much so that only 10km in to the task Kelly cancelled it for safety reasons. Most of the guys soon landed but Kelly, Wagga and Joe heroically carried on trying to take a wider line further out in the valley which was reasonably successful. I was a little disappointed and as I'd already flown to the end of the valley a couple of days previously I decided to go exploring. I had in mind the task of climbing up over the top of the Ahorn Spitz mountain which looked spectacular still in its winter coat. But that was only going to work later in the day when the sun would warm its more west facing slopes (the other obvious faces would have been leeside), I therefore had several hours to kill before I went for it. Not keen to get a kicking by staying in the leeside conditions deep in the western side of the valley I decided to try and soar the north slopes of little side valleys on the more windward eastern side despite the limited solar heating. On the main valley crossing I spotted a lone glider doing exactly what I had in mind and joined it, it was Adam! Together we worked weak little climbs on the Gerlossteinwand. Eventually I got enough height to safely head over the top of its ridge to fly around the corner into the main Zillertal valley where I got a much better climb that took me to cloud base. Now high on the eastern side of the valley I decided to fly south and try to get above the Ahorn ski area which would be my base for an assault on the Ahorn Spitz and also where I could kill some time. Unfortunately whilst climbing out above the ski resort I noticed Adam over a kilometer beneath me struggling to get up and regretted not radioing him about my climb when I left him in the side valley (although to my defence he did look like he was doing ok when I left).

Watching the skiers above the Ahorn Ski Resort

I then just relaxed and waited patiently for the afternoon sun to come around. I'd play little games such as aiming my gliders shadow at the all the people sitting at the tables outside the resort restaurants who would subsequently peer up at me hopefully not too annoyed. I'd also fly close to the cable car when it started its regular journey down in to the valley waving at the skiers. I drank a load of water, ate a bunch of fruit bars, had a leak (no not on the skiers!) and with the sun arriving and feeling refreshed I headed around the base of the Ahorn Spitz to look for a climb. After noticing some cloud forming I connected with a great climb that took me all the way to base; two sailplanes spotted me and joined me in the thermal one just above and one just below. It was great climb and we ascended 1235m (4050ft) in 10 minutes at an average climb rate of around 2 m/s to a max altitude of 3050m (10,000ft). High enough for me to fly close to the iron cross on the summit and see the footprints of climbers. After that I went for a fly up the valley skimming base before finally calling it a day at just under 5 hours flying. A great day out all in all.

Looking east over the Ahorn Spitz