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.

British Open. Slovenia June 2010

The all important task board
One of my goals for 2010 was to enter some competitions and I specifically wanted to enter the British Championships. This is a high level competition and as I essentially have no real competition experience I thought It would be a great learning experience for me. I was also keen to see if this would add a new dimension to my flying.

First I must explain how this competition is set up. The 2010 championships are made up of two separate competitions in Europe; one in Kobarid in Slovenia and the other in Saint André-les-Alpes in France. These individual competitions are known as the British Opens and have up to 150 suitably qualified pilots of any nationality participating. They each last a week with as many daily tasks set as the weather allows. The British Championships are then just the combined results of the British pilots who do both of these open competitions. There used to be a UK round as well but this year it was dropped as historically the weather has been too unreliable to make it justifiable. So this year it started with Slovenia and it turned out to be a wonderful venue. It is a 70% tree covered and sparsely populated country with very little heavy industry and lots of mountains to fly over and fields to land in; perfect for free flying.


Green and not so rolling hills
Together with friends Tom Kane and Hugh Ginty we rented a lovely apartment just a short walk from the competition headquarters, it was the perfect place to relax after a hard days flying. We arrived a week early to get some practice in with local guides Brett Janaway of XTC Paragliding and Toby Colombé of Passion Paragliding. Although the week didn't start off great weather wise we did eventually manage some reasonable cross country flights and get a few lectures on competition flying from Toby. Importantly, it also allowed me to familiarize myself with my brand new glider, the new Gin Boomerang GTO. This is Gin gliders latest high performance EN-D serial class wing, a real hot ship ...

Doesn't she look nice!
The competition went really well. We had great weather and managed to get in 6 cats cradle tasks in the area. High level winds meant our arena was somewhat restricted to a couple of valley systems but the tasks were of reasonable lengths (69km, 57km, 59km, 62km, 73km and 64km).


Some big clouds brewing
As I'm a competition novice my strategy was to keep it simple, not to race but just try to get to goal everyday. After two days of doing this and finding that 100+ pilots were getting to goal I decided to start racing; besides it's just so much more fun.

So in task three I went around the course at speed trying to race, amazingly I was in the first handful of serial class gliders to make goal. But as it turned out I missed the last turnpoint by a couple of hundred meters, I had inadvertently pressed the 'next waypoint' button on my GPS when trying to go to my final glide page. I got a good amount of distance and leading-out points, so I actually got the same score as if I had bimbled around the course; what a plonker!

Task four saw me get to goal pretty quickly in 37th place. Considering there were 20+ seasoned competition pilots above me mostly flying those ridiculous Ozone R10.2's I was very pleased with myself.

Task 5 was frustrating, I was racing too much, got low and ended up getting stuck for half an hour kicking trees finally making it in 60th position. Task 6 was slightly different, I had made a conservative decision to top up height between turnpoints and avoid getting low and possibly getting stuck like the day before. But it evidently wasn't needed as others jumped in front and pushed me down to 62nd place.

So some mistakes were made and only the experience of lots more competitions can help improve my performance. I certainly can't blame the glider, it's a great wing and has heaps of performance and provides a lot of feedback about the air I'm flying in - it honestly felt a bit of a handful at first but I've nicely settled in to flying it. In fact pilots who got first and second place in the serial category were flying the same wing. The overall results can be seen here and the serial class results here. I got 69th place and considering I'm new at racing paragliders I'm reasonably pleased with myself. Roll on Saint André!

25km from Mt Bakewell, Western Australia

A video from yesterdays short 25km flight. There was just too much high level cloud to get very far; that's my excuse anyway.

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.