27/09/2012

Dungiven. Wind a bit too strong

Today I took a days leave from work to fly Dungiven. I set out about 9.45 and arrived about 11 am as several others were just arriving. The wind was smack onto the hill and nearly too strong to fly. Mike who passed this CP the week after me was already there and he set up and before long he was up and flying. Conditions looked good with plenty of lift so shortly after he was joined by Phil Barron and a student on his tandem, another pilot and finally me.
Michael was the first off the hill.
There were wispy clouds coming and going at the edge of the hill but nothing that you couldn't see through but I stayed in familiar territory just in case it developed into orographic cloud. At one point I was in a bit of mist and decided to use my big ears (which is a rapid descent technique where you pull the wing tips in) in a half hearted fashion but there was no real need. I threw in a 360 degree turn just because I had the height.

After about 15 minutes I thought I would land for a bit as I would have the rest of the day to fly and practising top landings isn't a bad way to spend my time. As I was lining up for the landing I noticed an inch or so of standing water right where I was planing to land so I revised my landing spot as I came in. I used enough control to descend vertically and when I touched down I turned and killed the wing by running towards it and pulling the controls.

Phil's tandem landing was interesting as he called over to myself and another pilot (Jim) to grab the controls from him when he landed. Jim took the controls and ran away from Phil which quickly killed the wing.

Mike had several goes at top landing and missing (well flying back out into the lift for another attempt) getting further and further back over the hill until he was able to get his feet on the ground.

Mike decided he wanted another flight so I stood and shouted wind speeds at him from my wind meter while he chose his moment to inflate and take off. While he was up the wind picked up a bit and Mike ended up landing way back on a flat part of the hill away from the lift.

This was the end of the days flying for me. The wind spent the rest of the day dropping to acceptable speeds just long enough to dupe me into getting ready to fly again and then strengthening to beyond my comfort zone.

I have booked a guided paragliding holiday in Algodonales, Spain so this is probably my last day's flying until  I get there on the 6th October. I am going to try and take pictures and blog about each flying day but I suspect the post frequency will be directly inverse to the number of bars.

22/09/2012

Big Collin and a opportunity missed

Another tiring day at Big Collin mountain today. Once I got my chores out of the way (mostly running children back and forth in the car) I got to BC just before 1 pm. There were already a load of other pilots there and I joined them in a tiring afternoon of running up and down the hill. The wind was off to the west and was coming and going which was why staying up was so hard.

Gary and Bertie at a wonky angle.
After a few hours I found myself on the top of the hill by myself, so while there were people still on site I took off , bottom landed a few minutes later then packed up. This was a mistake because I found out later that a few pilots stayed behind after most had left and they got about 2 hours in the air as the wind came around to the south to produce better conditions. I'll just have to be more patient in future. Still I got my feet off the ground and looking back to 6 months ago when I first got CP things have improved immensely because take off is considerably less nerve racking.

08/09/2012

Knockagh monument

As my experience slowly grows the range of sites that are available to me as a pilot broadens and today I got to fly one site that has been fairly high up my wish list.
Knockagh is the closest site to my home. I can see it when I look out of my home office window. There is a wind turbine on the ridge that is great for quickly getting the wind direction so if I am at home I will look at it at least once a day. You would think I would have flown it before now but unfortunately the bottom landing options are very restricted. To start with there are several power lines that criss cross the foot of the cliffs, many trees (maybe there are enough trees to call it a wood) not to mention houses, fields with race horses and other live stock.

I wasn't going to fly initially as the pilot I was meeting (Ian) was already in the air when I arrived (of course I had put the glider in the car, just in case). I switched the radio on as was pleased to find that Ian had his with him as well. He kindly talked me through the site from above over the radio and I ran around the take off and landing fields. He made it very clear there were effectively no bottom landing options except the Knockagh lodge area and it was a site that commanded respect.

Out of the blue (not literally) another pilot was on the radio asking about conditions. He was heading to another site when he saw a wing in the air above the monument at Knockagh. So I went to take off to chat, he also did a good job of explaining the pitfalls of the site then I watched him make take off look easy (as he so often does). I watched for a while and my interpretation of the feedback over the radio from both pilots was that conditions were great. After a while I thought that the exercise of carrying the glider out to take off would not do me any harm and that conditions would probably change by the time I made it out to take off again.

By the time I got my gear to take off things were looking increasingly like I couldn't blame the weather for not flying. So I walked about a bit, then decided that it wouldn't harm to run through my daily checks. Before I knew it everything had been checked (at least twice) and the conditions were exactly the same. In fact the comment over the radio was that these were the best conditions for this site for some while i.e. smooth and consistent.
The take off area is very small and surrounded by trees behind so this means if you loose control of the wing even for a moment there is a good chance you will end up picking your glider out of a tree.

I moved the wing so that if I were to take off I would head out over the gorse where it was lowest. I strapped in and performed all my pre flight checks, asked on the radio if conditions were the same (they were), went through my pre flight checks again and then visualised bringing the wing up in a controlled manner several times in my head while blocking out the vision of the trees that were is spitting distance.

Pre flights checked again, slight lull in the wind onto the hill and I crouched back in the harness and got the wing above my head in a controlled manner, turned and ran at the gorse in front of me at full pelt. At this point I realised that as you run down a hill towards something it becomes taller the closer you get and if it were not for my committed run I wouldn't have made it over the gorse bush with 6 inches to spare.

Once in the air I went up at a consistent rate. Unlike the other pilots I stuck very much over the ridge, this is where you feel safe as a low air timer and usually has the most predictable lift. I was soon high above the ridge and grinning madly.

After a bit of boating about and even waving at someone who was taking photographs of me from the monument I saw that both my fellow pilots had landed and thought that it was time I should do the same. I had had my fun and if conditions changed while I was on my own in the air I didn't want to be flying alone. I tried to land well back from the edge in the same field I had seen used earlier. Unfortunately I turned back into wind too late and missed putting myself down in a field of calves that was immediately behind the field I was aiming for.

I landed and killed the wing at least as cleanly as I have ever done before but the calves took an instant interest in me and started running over to get a closer look. Now being a city/towny all my life I have no idea how to handle a gang of large creatures that could easily take me for a ride around the field if they get caught up in my lines. I started by making sure that they didn't get too close by the odd shout or clapping of hands but clearly this wasn't going to keep them back for long. As the calves at the back push forward they push the ones at the front closer to you and before you know it they are nearly on top of you. So I decided that the best course of action was one more hand clap to push them back then a quick march over to the gate to throw my gear and myself over. While I marched across the field Ian was calling me on the radio to check that I had landed safely but I couldn't respond until I was over the fence.

Once over the gate, after a quick "I am fine" on the radio I didn't really know what to do, I didn't want to fold the wing in the lane where it might become tangled in the hedges or worse barbed wire fencing. After some consideration I decided to do something I regretted doing last time I tried it. I carefully stuffed it into the harness but this time keeping the risers together and put in last.

What a flight! I found out later that several people had seen me. Apparently a friend of the wife was waving from her back garden at me (she lives at the foot of the ridge). Others had spotted the Gliders from slightly further away and were wondering if one was me, which I confirmed later with a tweet.

The hurriedly packed wing worked out because I repacked it in the front garden when I got home just before I headed of out to friend to celebrate my achievement.

05/09/2012

12 minutes air time

Today I drove over fifty miles out and fifty miles back all for 12 minutes air time. Last night a few club members expressed intentions of going out to Dungiven or White Mountain. I left the house about 10 and arrived about 11 at Dungiven, I sat eating sandwiches until a fellow novice pilot arrived and we both went to check our kit before the 'grown ups' arrived. Although the wind was a little off to the north it seemed like it could be flyable.

Buy the time we were ready to fly other pilots had arrived and they helped the other novice to launch off the hill. Unfortunately her flight was short and a top to bottom. Another quite experienced pilot took off only to land shortly after and announce that the conditions were "not nice" by which he meant turbulent due to the North element in the wind. Having just been put on my arse by the wing when I failed to stand with it above my head for more than a minute or two I had to agree. So I packed the glider and followed the 'grown up' pilots to White Mountain.

I was up against the clock because I needed to be back to collect the kids from school. When I arrived at White mountain I didn't waste any time in getting to the top of the hill but when I saw the conditions I slowed down. The wind was strong at times but this seemed to go in cycles. I watched nearly all the other 6 pilots get off the hill before I was happy enough with the conditions join them.

After a few false starts I got the wing above my head and launched into great dynamic soaring conditions. After a few minutes flying I noticed one side of the glider lifting more than the other I turned the glider towards the side that was getting more lift (like I have read I am supposed to in a thermal). I think that today I was starting to tune into a thermal. I even performed a 360 turn to see if I could find more strength. I am far from captain thermal at the moment but I guess you have to keep at least thinking about these things.

02/09/2012

Longest flight yet

It has been a while since I got a truly decent flight in at Dungiven and given it is both one of the best and one of the most used sites this end of the country it would be surprising if you didn't take this years horrendous weather into account.

Last night I got a text from Ian (my closest fellow paraglider pilot) saying today was worth an early start, so I did my best to arrange things despite a celebratory slap up meal with the Brother and Sister in-law. After some arsing around in the morning involving keys and cars I set off to pick up Ian and head out.

When we arrived there were no other pilots about so set about our daily checks, and I found I was had left a cable for my radio at home, another thing to add to the checks before I leave next time.

Ian was off the hill first and he was struggling to maintain height so I made myself busy by getting the wing up above my head and watching for a bit.

Other pilots had started to arrive and I was conscious that I should take off before the sky was filled with pilots (which wouldn't take many in the light conditions). I launched and did a few beats of the hill then landed back with a close to the top slope landing, lost my footing nearly falling over and completely losing control of the wing which spun around and ended up front down behind me. After a quick look around to see who had seen me I remembered that no one actually cares if you lose control of the wing or fall over as long as you are safe so I bunched up the wing and moved back to take off.

I took off again after only a brief breather and managed to get a bit of height, enough to give me the confidence to fly further away from take off and before long I was going more or less from end to end of the ridge that is almost a mile and a half wide. I decided that while I was staying up I would try for an hours air time in one flight. This turned out to be difficult to gauge because although I had my new GPS with LK8000 loaded on it which could tell me my flight, I had forgotten how to use it, and at one point took to pressing the screen with my nose but to no avail.

I gave up worrying about the length of time and thought I would just have to guess. I started to set myself little tasks to try to complete. I firstly I got enough height to try slowing down the wing more than I have done previously (but not so slow to make it stall of course). Next I tried to make it to 500 meters above above mean sea level, so using the vario (height gain in meters a second) data on the GPS I tried to stay in lift right at the south end of the cliff and eventually (maybe more luck than judgement) I made it. At this height I was more than happy to try a right hand 360 turn, then a left hand 360. I then set off a good way out the front of the hill to head for the north end of the ridge and tried to stay in lift as and where I found it.

Eventually after I was fairly sure I had my hours flight time I came back close in to the hill and performed a gentle top landing with crouched knees, then stood up (to unload the wing) and turned to face and killed the wing with the controls while jogging towards it. I even got a comment of approval from one of the club coaches about the landing.

I bunched up the wing and moved it behind a small grassy wall that runs the length of the take off field (a good place to make sure the wind doesn't unexpectedly re-inflate the glider). Hands now free I worked out how to get the flight time from the GPS and to my delight it was a few seconds over one hour and thirty minutes. I promptly turned off the GPS which I found out later will eventually shutdown the flight software in a way that it will not save the flight log. another point to note next time.

Unfortunately that was the end of the flying for me because two minutes after my landing the wind picked up and didn't let up until I we decided we had seen the better part of the day. The wind didn't stop everyone from flying as there were a couple of mini wings and a hang glider for us to watch.