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.
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