15th March 2009
Another day at Westbury. My first launch was blighted with a twig in my lines on the left hand side which I missed on inflation. I did see it as my feet left the ground though. I tried to shake it out but it wasn’t budging. I headed for the next top landing point to make an immediate landing. As I turned left back into the wind to land, the canopy span me into to the ground from around 10ft. I landed on my back/side without injury but was shocked at how quickly the spin was initiated.
Another launch set up later on saw another snag in the lines but this time I spotted it before I inflated the canopy. I tried to shake it out but again it was stuck fast. It transpired to be a piece of wire so I put it in my pocket so that I or any other pilots would not be caught out by this again.
Other than these incidents it was a decent day but with variable conditions giving me several flight of between 5 mins to 25mins with height gains of up to 400ft above take off. Not an epic day by any standards but a pleasant enough day apart from the spin.
22nd March 2009
Well I got to Combe Gibbet at somewhere around 10am. It was blowing a hoolie. Very windy in other words. Hung around on the hill for 30mins or so to see if there were any improvements. No luck though so I made the decision to go on to Liddington. It was still strong but doable. I Launched low down on the hill and made sure I stayed forward from the hill and it was quite flyable.
Due to the strong wind the lift band was at some times fairly tight, not wanting to drift too far back, but once the thermals started it open up the front of the hill and made things less scratchy.
Later on some good height gains were made by 2 or 3 of us soaring at the time as the thermals really started kicking off. Then the thermal of the day came through and we got up to over 1200 feet above. A couple of the guys went with the thermal, but as I had the foresight NOT to bring my map or gps up with me decided belatedly not to go XC.
I was quite far back on the hill though and was struggling to move forwards so turned downwind and landed in a field behind the hill. A 25min walk got me back to take off where I launched again and got another 30mins flying before deciding to call it a day.
The best day I’ve had at Liddington.