Day 2 at Algodonales

Today was a slow start as it seems it often is here. We went out to the Westerly take off on Lijar the mountain that overlooks Algodonales and sat around a good while before the conditions were flyable. Once everything got warmed up nicely and the thermals were coming through we watched a couple of gliders launch and some were even maintaining height. At this point Neil who is always the keenest to get airborne in our group launched and started gaining height. Slowly all the group got airborne and on my turn to launch I made a hash of things by failing to brake the glider as it came overhead. Unfortunately as the conditions are so different it took several attempts until I was in the air.

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Initially when I was airborne I was struggling to even maintain height and I was concious of the little height I had above the small lump of hill in front of take off that is the height marker we use to decide whether we will make the landing field. It took a while of flying in (and often out) of lift in 'S' shapes before I had scratched enough lift to get me clear of the hill and be able to do full 360 turns in the thermals. Slowly and with the help of some of the many vultures that live in these parts I managed to gain height and eventually I was 1500 feet above take off.

I gained so much height that I started to get a little uncomfortable, this is of course the opposite of what is deemed safe as the more air between you and the ground there is the more time you will have to sort out any problems. Up high I seemed to be getting rocked about a little bit more than I did lower down so I decided to make my way over to the landing field.

After a spending some time loosing height I landed in the landing field. It wasn't until I had packed up the wing that I realised how tiring thermalling is, it is physically and mentally much more demanding than the ridge soaring I usually do back home.

Today I reached the milestone of completing 10 hours air time. This means that I can officially remove the red ribbon from my harness that indicates to other pilots I am a very low airtime pilot. I wont remove the ribbon until I at least get home but it is another task checked off.

Day 1 in Algodonales

Flyspain is a company that organises paragliding holidays around the world, I booked myself in for a weeks thermaling training in or around the town of Algodonales in Spain.

After the necessary faffing around with paperwork. We set out for an inspection of the huge south-east landing field just outside Algodonales, it was comfortingly massive and only had a clump of small trees and an old farm house as obstacles. We set out for the south-east ridge above Algo in the sunshine with a plan get a confidence building top to bottom flight under our belts. There was very little cloud cover and the temperature must have been around 25C and rising.

I didn't feel nervous at all until we parked the car and I saw the take off area full of people, hang gliders being rigged and paragliders being checked, very intimidating. After a while I managed to find myself a tiny spot just big enough to do my daily checks.

Checks done I clipped in and moved to the take off queue (if you can call it that). With helmet, gloves and harness helping to bake me in the sun I was soon sweating.

After much confusion about who was going next and where the queue was (there isn't a queue) I was up. Having watched a few others launched it is obvious that the idea when doing a reverse launch is to bring the wing up and while making sure that your lines are as they should be and then turn and run like stink. My launch was similar to this but probably not as elegant. Finding very little lift on the way down it took about 10 minutes before I was in the landing field. As I was coming in it seemed to take ages before I could see the wind streamer on top of the farm house so I could land into wind. This was probably because I was so high to start with. It turns out that it was about a 2200 feet top to bottom which beats anything I have previously done.

Picture of a paraglider over the South-East landing field.

We all packed up and sat in the shade waiting to be collected by the FlySpain bus. We then set off for the westerly take off and stopped along the way to look at the landing field. The field was big but had trees around it, a road and electricity line running along the side facing the mountain. We were talked though a suggested landing approach so that we had a tried and tested method for avoiding the power lines when landing.

At the take off it was the same story of people everywhere and very little places for setting gliders out. Rob walked us though the site and gave a talk on general thermalling techniques. I found a space but only after I had the wing fully out did I realise that it had thistles everywhere.  I eventually made my way to the front baked in my helmet. I fluffed a couple of launches, it seems I am not braking my wing enough when it comes overhead but on my third or forth attempt I got away.

Having never really thermalled before I thought I did quite well. I worked a few thermals and was able to stay underneath a couple of gaggles (a gaggle is the name for a group of gliders in a thermal). Another first was that I was close enough to a few vultures  as they were thermalling and was able to make use of them as markers. Unfortunately I didn't turn on my GPS and so failed to make any recording of the flight, still there is always tomorrow.