Mayobridge

Last night I sent an email to the club email list to see if anyone was going out as today's weather looked promising. I sorted the kids out with their morning activities while I had my eye on Magilligan but when I checked with Phil who is based up that way it turned out to be too strong and Phil was heading for Portrush sand dunes.  I phoned Bertie, after umming and arring we decided to go to Mayobridge as we knew there were already people flying there. By the time I collected Bertie we had gained another passenger, Bertie's student Alistair, the more the merrier.

As we passed out the south side of Rathfriland we could see three gliders in the air at the high ground we refer to as Mayobridge as that is the name of the town that you can see to the NW when you are flying there.

By the time I had been blown around the hill a bit attempting to launch a couple of pilots left the hill for a chance at flying along to the Mourne mountains. We spotted a curtain of rain heading our way so we packed away our wings to stop them from getting wet only to watch the cloud miss us to the west. Conditions calmed down after the rain clouds had passed. I decided wait until Alistair got airborne because he only had "Dealing with a asymmetric tuck" and two top landings to tick off on his list of tasks towards his Club Pilot qualification. Knowing this, when I got airborne I could barely fly for watching him on his top landings.

I got myself an easy 20 minute soaring flight to recharge my batteries and I am glad to say that Alistair got those tasks completed. I am on the Blue Ozone Electron in the video.

Height at Mayobridge

Today is probably the only day I'll be able to fly out of the 4 flyable days we are set to get in a row. Fortunately for other members of the UHPC saturday and sunday are looking good for the UHPC Open which is a friendly competition for those that are at least club pilot with 10 plus hours of flying.

Today seemed that the only people flying were heading to Mayobridge. This is quite a forgiving site and one I have flown before a couple of times so I thought I would tag along. When I arrived at the site I could see other cars parked up and gliders laid out on the north ridge that you can see from the car park.My heart sank because that part of the hill has been pointed out to me that you can fly it but you wouldn't choose to come to this site when there is a north wind.

I changed into what passes as my flying gear and started walking over to the laid out gliders only to see that a pilot was heading my way with his gear all packed up. I asked him if he was packing up for the day, but he was just moving around to the NW side of the hill which was more familiar with. I quickly grabbed the rest of my gear and walked with him. While chatting away to him, it turns out that his was Tony whose blog I follow.

The wind was gusting up to 20 mph (my ideal is a smooth 13-14 mph). After a bit of waiting around the wind died down and I watched as Tony take off, soar about then lose his height in a passing lull and land in a field at the bottom of the hill.

I was up next and planned a bit of soaring then a top landing if I get enough height. I got the wing up and after a bit of a wobble of the left a bit I was up, got a few turns in but no real height, thought about a slope landing then bottled out to the soft boggy area out towards the north.

Quick pack up and climb up. Stuffed a sandwich down my neck then up for another flight. This time I concentrated on turning using minimum input on the controls and a lot of weight shift which seemed to help with the height. Before I knew it I had a stack of height but was enjoying myself and really throwing myself into weight shifting.

At some point the wind picked up a bit and made the turns at each end of the ridge quite bumpy. This I wasn't so sure about so I thought I would move further out from the ridge where the lift would be weaker. This lost me height nicely and made things a good bit less bumpy. I then tried to come in for a top landing but missed, so ended up in my favourite boggy field with a nice soft landing.

With the failed top landing in mind I think I will have to explore the lower end of the speed range on my glider to see if I can confidently get my speed down when I am landing. This exploration will have to occur a few feet from the ground though as I do not need to come a cropper to far from the ground.

Mayobridge and a bottled top landing

I had already booked today off work so I could potentially go flying. After the kids were packed off to school I went through my weather checking ritual and the two sites that seem to have possibles where either Magilligan or Mayobridge. Mayobridge was showing slightly lighter winds so I favoured that. I heard that someone was heading to Magilligan and after trying (and failing) to talk Bertie into letting me give him a lift for once if he was heading out (he wasn't) I heard that a few club members were heading to Mayobridge.

When I arrived there were three pilots on the hill, one ground handling and two getting ready. I watched the fun as the three pilots launched and at times they were getting height but soon lost it again. After a while they all came in to land as they were struggling to stay up.

I got myself ready, mentally made my flight plan which was to launch, try to soar for a bit, then try a slope landing, falling back to landing on a large flat field that wasn't far to the north of the ridge if the slope landing didn't seem right or I lost height. By the time I had done this and waited for a small lull in the wind I had gained a bit of an audience. Helpfully Colin checked that I had made a flight plan which I rattled off quickly to prove that at I had one.

Facing the glider I crouched slightly and stepped back and pushed back on the harness while guiding the wing above my head checking everything had inflated properly, turned while (mostly) keeping pressure on the wing and ran launching into the air (a perfect reverse launch by my standards). I quickly sat back in the harness and turned to soar the ridge and to my surprise and delight I seemed to be gaining height. I even remember sitting back a little to use the back rest on the harness to try to relax a bit. It was fairly apparent that I was gaining height because the other pilots were seen scattering to ready their wings to make the most of the lift I was enjoying.

Me with my "L plate" red ribbon wrapped around something as usual.

After several beats back and forth on the ridge the lift seemed to be waning as did my height. As I was so pleased with the flight so far and worried about suddenly loosing height I aimed for the large flat field to the North. I flew probably about two thirds of the way across the field and turned into wind with loads of height to spare before turning into wind. With the use of my controls I was able to make a more or less vertical decent to my landing spot, which ended in a gentle landing and fortunately in no way required me to remember to "take a wrap" (it wouldn't have helped anyway).

So on reflection I probably should have gone for a top landing early on in my flight when I had enough height but I was enjoying the soaring. By the time I realised I was losing height I am sure a more experienced pilot could have slope or maybe even top landed, I was happy just to take the easy option with a big grin. There will always be the next flight.

As it happened there wasn't another flight today, by the time I packed away my wing, stepped over a barbed wire fence, climbed back up the hill and cooled down the conditions seemed to be getting too strong. The last pilot to land had been up a while and gained rather a lot of height and by the time it he came into land conditions were a bit rough, fortunately he had the skills to land easily in such conditions.

Next time I may remember to take pictures or even break out the sunglasses with built in video camera I brought especially for flying.

Monday 5th March 2012

Mayobridge

The decision was made (by wiser men than me) to go to Mayobridge about 11:00am. I was picked up by Bertie and we headed out for over an hours drive. In transit we received a site report that told us the current conditions were too windy but with hopes that things will settle down shortly so we carried on to the site.

When we arrived Martin and Colin were just coming down the hill to greet us with news that the wind was about 20 mph (too fast for paragliders). Bertie had a new wing for Colin so Colin was keen to get his hands on his new toy and fly it.

New toy on the left

We took our kit and climbed to the top, which was about a 5 minute walk. Colin and Bertie busied their-selves with Colin's new wing while I stomped about and hoped.

During all this buffeting wind we were being overshadowed by dark clouds that seemed were at least partly responsible for the strong wind. Out in front of the hill we could see that that there were clouds dropping rain and heading our way so all the paragliders that were out of their bags got rapidly put away again. We stuck with it as we could see that there was a big chunk of blue sky behind the dark clouds.

Bertie, can I have a go yet?

After the clouds had passed things had calmed down to a point where Bertie got to test fly the wing before letting Colin at it. There were 10 minutes or so that the hill was soar-able, Colin and his new wing made the most of what little there was finally managing a slope landing. By the time I was ready to go the wind had dropped down to around 4mph. So it was a top to bottom for me. This first flight was handy to get my confidence levels up, plus I got to re-enforce the forward launching skills I had been working on. Colin followed me down to the bottom landing field and Bertie collected us in his car.

After climbing up the hill from the car park again to experience another cycle of gusts with threatening clouds then clear skies with no wind. By now there were 5 of us and as it was now looking like there would be no more soaring so making something of what was left of the day four of us took turns in doing a final top to bottom.

Bertie gave me the task of letting go of the controls and reaching up for the rear risers and using them along with weight shifting to turn and control the glider for a short while. The point of this task is to simulate the loss of a control during flight and giving you the confidence to still be able to fly the wing and land safely. As effective as it was to use this method I shall not be using it for landing unless I do not have a choice.

Bertie, the thoroughly decent chap that he is was left behind on the hill. He tidied up and carried down the left behind equipment then drove down to collect us.

This is the second time I have been to this site, but the first time I have flown it. Although it is a fair distance from me I am hoping that it wont be long until I am back to do some soaring.

Happily another task has been signed off for my CP qualification.