Category: Flights
-
Yay! My first thermal for six months…!
Yes, it’s sad but true, the last time I did more than one 360 in a thermal was on Monday 29th August when I had a fantastic flight from Batcombe to Swanage. But, like riding a bike, you don’t forget how to do it. And after three hours of parawaiting at Westbury yesterday (not to…
-
More routes added…
There should be something for everyone now… Click here. NB. These are all southern England routes – I’m afraid I don’t know any northern ones.
-
XC Planner…
I’ve been playing with Tom Payne’s excellent XC Planner tool and have put up a few choice routes on this page. I’ll be adding to the list in future… Have fun planning your own routes!
-
Classic coastal cruising…
At this time of year with the thermal strength dropping off coastal flying becomes a more attractive prospect, and with Saturday’s RASP looking a little uninspiring, Mike Humphries and I headed down to the tiny West Dorset village of Eype hoping to enjoy some mellow coastal flying. Neither Mike nor I had ever flown this…
-
Magic Monday! (for some)
Well I’m not sure what happened to the 8-9 mph NW’lys that were forecast, but when Nick and I arrived at Batcombe at about 1130 we were greeted by winds of at least double that and much parawaiting! After an hour and a half of people popping up from behind the shelter of the nearby…
-
Ending on a high
So it’s the last day of the comp and we’ve only managed one valid task despite lots of free-flying… What will this final task bring us? The answer – a fantastic 68km race to goal including a trip to the Morgon (much less intimidating with lots of company!), two turnpoints on the opposite side of…
-
Into the heart of the Morgon…
Well, guess what? Task canned at 1600, conditions switch on at 1610! C’est la vie 🙂 Oh well, pas de probleme, Hugh and I had a mission, and that was to fly to the Morgon – a massive lump of rock to the north of the Dormillouse. We climbed up to 2800m at the Dormillouse…
-
Comp day 3 – Sod’s Law
Briefing at 1000 – sunny but too windy. Rebriefing at 1300 sunny but windy and forecast to remain windy. 1400 – first gliders appear above St Vincent. 1415 – ten gliders above St Vincent, climbing high. 1430 – we’re at St Vincent preparing to take off, and by 1500 I had climbed out level with…
-
Comp Day 2… no task, but not no flying!
Briefing at 9am then rebriefing at 11am… Sunny but too windy so team Avon decide to hire some mountain bikes and take the easy way up the hill (ie. chairlift) for a afternoon’s biking. Amazingly there were no incidents or injuries despite the fast decents on gravelly tracks. We had actually seen quite a few…
-
My first visit to Rybury…
Last Wednesday (29th June) I took some time off work and headed to Rybury on the promise of a pretty good forecast. Sadly it (the forecast) didn’t live up to expectations, with light winds initially but 100% cloud shadow, then when the cloud cleared the wind became too strong! Still, I had a fun couple…
Advance paragliders in the West Country 