Slieve Gallion again

I think the fruits of flying six days out of the last eight have been realised today. I felt a little bit more confident about what I was doing. I still found my self checking and double checking my pre flight checks but when I was ready to go I simply checked there was no-one in my way (and that I wasn't going to get in anyone else's way) and launched.

My first flight plan was to get a bit of height and top land, I did get some height, then I lost it, then I found it again so I had only been in the air a few minutes when I was coming in for a top landing. "Top landings, nothing to worry about!" It had been playing on my mind that I hand't performed a top landing completely on my own before, i.e. without the comfort of an instructor on the radio should I not quite get things right. I was glad to get this out of the way.

We were sharing the hill with Phil and a few students (well they were there before us). The wind had moved further around to the West than the previous day and this meant that the face we were soaring was smaller. So after trying to share and fit in with the other pilots I got another flight in with the same plan to top land, but this time maybe keep the wing inflated and relaunch straight away. This wasn't to be as the loss of height meant a slope landing and a short walk back to the top.

Before I could launch again a huge thermal came through, the experienced pilot I was flying with was able to make the most of it but the student (Jim) who was up at the time probably had a bit of eye opener. The instructor Phil talked him calmly through pulling big ears to lose the height he had been gifted. He eventually went on to safely bottom land in a field that seemed miles away.

After I had watched all the fun I realised that there were what seemed to me like rain clouds heading our way so I packed up happily in the knowledge I had now slain my top landing demon.

Not quite read to go home we headed for another site where we knew a pilot was trying to ride out the rain. We parked at the bottom and watched the clouds pass just over the top of White Mountain while we ate sandwiches and tried to spot the hiding pilot. The weather didn't lift so we drove up to Dungiven which was only a few miles away but it was deserted. We were going to head for Magilligan but saw that from a distance that part of the world was also in cloud. At this we headed home but no one can say we didn't try.