07/12/2007 by Murray Hay.

As usual with club meet days the ‘day’ started for me a few days earlier, building to a peak the evening before with several hours on the mobile to try and ensure all those attending would be singing from the same hym sheet! As well as collecting Nairn’s wing in case he ended up with a walk up as family commitments ment he would be arriving late morning.

A lot more ‘mobile’ time on the morning followed on from the normal (FIVE THIRTY… AM!) MET office weather check and printing out, along with ensuring enough maps were printed from the Memory Map software of the flying site and landing locations for members new to this site (including ME!) this is done with an eye to the wind directions & forecast conditions.

Final equipment loading & checking all done and it was on the road to Braemar with enough spare time avaliable to drive around Morrone to assess the landings at first hand to the NE valley, an area I was not familiar with.

With the first batch all on location the estate Landrover driven by Barry and the club pickup loaded with wings and a couple of bodies started up the track, the plan being to get the first group sorted, checked, test flown on tandem (new site) where needed and then back down for Nairn, Joe & Ian etc. who were arriving about 11:30 - 12:00 ish, as it happened Barry did the second drive as I was teaching his older son Ryan on G-BZJI.

With the second group all on the hill top and Nairn, Ian Archer, Jonathan having had a check flight on the tandem, solo flying & training was the order for the rest of the day in very nice light smooth (and sunny) mild conditions, till just before sundown when, as forecast, conditions quickly started to pickup.

With solo flying underway Ryan, Barry’s older son to started tandem flying, getting two 15-20 min flights with most of the time on the controls (his first flight while Barry was driving the ’second batch’ to the hill top).

Barry’s youngest (photos) son Lee up on the Philou 29 rigged as a tandem, as Joe who had had the wing on loan had brought it back which was perfect as Lee being only three would have been too light for the normal tandem gliders! Once Lee had flown a few times his dad, deciding he could not go home without having flown it was back to G-BZJI then a LOT more retrive driving and fitting in a few solo flights on students and my own wings.

 The final BIG fly down was delayed by a few problems (mentioned elsewhere!) so with Nairn high out front and starting to feel it was getting ‘intresting’ as soon as the Vertex was off the ground it was one quick beat to gain just enough height and cut back low over the hill… flying through the wind shear (NB. not rotor) and often passing instructions on the radio made for (I am told!) some ‘very intresting’ views of the TOP of my wing by those down on the ground at the LZ… still no Murray adrenaline was released (is that a scary thing?) but for safety I sent Nairn over to the far side of the valley (lift but better air) while I punched down to the river ‘jumped’ the water just and no more at tree level (don’t try this at home!) and ’spotted in’ to a nice clear field suitable for Nair landing in.. on the radio and it was Big Ears and turns/360* for Nair to work his way down, at one point after letting the ears back out he was going up again showing just how good the performance of his wing is!

But pulling in the ears again and he did a very nice job of getting low,  so once below the wind shear (upper wind V very light/nil valley wind.. boundary)  layer he had a sweet approach to a nice nil wind landing… still buzzing, glad to be on the ground but very pleased with the Big Ears and turns… a short walk to ‘chill’ while Alan C drove me with the wings back to the parking at the bottom of the track 5 mins away..

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24/10/2007 by Murray Hay.

Having first started flying with a ’EP’ summer spent at a BHPA school in Scotland, Alan had a “grand total” of about two hours airtime when he decided to get back into the sport and chose to re-train with Precision Paragliding almost one year ago in late 2006.

After his first afternoon at Precision Paragliding with a mix of Dual Control tandem flying and then solo flying on his own Nova glider, Alan was soon averaging over 3 hrs per training day!

Now after almost 12 months flying of with the club and close to 100 hrs airtime he was well and trully up to speed for some serious aircraft airtime on a DHV 2/3!

Murray Hay
With thanks to Ian Archer for the still photos of me flying Alan's Nova (red wing) with Alan on my white Nova Vertex 24

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03/10/2007 by Murray Hay.

The last training weekend of September started with early flying at some of the sites on the south bank of the river Tay for Jonathan (first short solo’s), before moving on to Forret Hill NE face, Alan & Ali flying the main face while Jonathan was joined by Andy, both doing some ground work and ‘hops’. As the conditions were now looking spot on for East Lomond the last swithc of site for the day was made and phone calls sorted out the location for other students & pilots to meet up, retrive transport sorted and all the pilot to the top carpark…

After Dual Control tandem flights it was time for Jonathan to do a number of short solo flights with radio instruction to just below the hill top then the “Biggie” with Ali and Alan already down in the ‘Ruin’ landing field JR was off flying the tasks with radio from above till the change over to Ali talking him through the last circuits and final approach to a perfect landing!

After another GV pilot up to the hill top with his folk’s had a quick taster tandem flight (they are booked for another day, but wanted to meet up to watch/perhaps get in one flight) time for Andy (booked for Sunday flying) to start the ‘practical’, having spent much of the day watching/listening in to JR’s instruction we were able to get straight to flying giving him a head start for Sundays training.

Andy’s first flight was the 1,000+ ft tandemed down to join the others before heading back up for one  last sunset flight, joined by Ray (borrowing the Sigma) to fly, the wind having switched to SSE on the Tandem to the bottom path near the car park, Ray landing near the top path.

Sunday saw Andy getting in a lot of time on the Dual Controls at the south bowl at Glenshee before one DCT flight at Backwater then ground work to finish the weekend at The Knock, Murray giving his wing a quick test flights after runing a ‘line length’ check.

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10/09/2007 by Murray Hay.

While getting ready to fly from the camp at Mount hill after lunch on day two, Alan Coffin takes out the time to do a line check and length reset. Club members not sure about the (fairly simple) procedures just ask and I will go over this with them next time they are out, it takes about 20-30 mins.

Alan checking the cloth attachment tabs and comparing the lengths both before & after applying a load to see if the line had shrunk.

 After 80+ hours of flying there was a noticable shrinkage in line lengths on the glider due to ‘relaxing’ of the woven outer ‘tube’ that protects the inner from UV and physical abrasion, in addition there was on loading a failure of one single brake ‘fan’ line where the outer had been damaged some time in the past, this (one of the final thin lines) snapped at approximantly 10-15kg load….. but after removing the broken line and a quick test flight was not enough to cause any concern over flying while the spare line is on order.

The main common sign of lines needing re-set is: Does the glider seem to ‘hang back’ when ground handling at launch more that it used to? 

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26/07/2007 by Murray Hay.

For those who have seen the film ‘Con Air’, this could be the PG version!

 http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=v549ZCWbQiM 

Garland Green: “Define irony….bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.”

Here’s hoping none of our members do “Ah Perfect” landings!

For more ‘expert trained pilots’ try this clip…. Includes tandem ‘launches’…. scary stuff!

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=5jvdpC_RMLs

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01/06/2007 by Murray Hay.

With the conditions getting WAY too punchy inland by eary afternoon (a couple of PG accidents involving heli rescue etc! at other sites in Scotland) Duncan (thanks for the pics and myself headed to the sandy bay at Elie which is always a good option when Fife main sites ‘blow/thermal out’…. a great site to work on launch/landing and general ground control/safety stuff, with the potential for some exclent technical flying.

Using the wing to jog up the hill, plus the usual playing about on the poles & blocks (war time tank traps), with a lot of the lift (west component to the wind at times) along the ridge out to the point short (!) ‘out and return’ flights even over the water were on.

The bay is also a good site when the wind is right and the air is ‘lifty’ for extended tandem flights, even with heavier P2’s, in fact Alan Littlejohn started with his first flights here..

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24/05/2007 by Murray Hay.

Hi all I’ve started encoding video clips for YouTube from the NINTY or so hours of paragliding footage shot since ‘98….

There are over 200 clips up now…! You can search under Paragliding + Scotland to see all the videos put up by PG pilots flying in this part of the world.

To view the Precision Paragliding student training video clips as well as some of ESP members flying, follow this link http://www.ParaVideo.co.uk

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17/05/2007 by Murray Hay.

Hi all got a bit of luck a few days ago when it came to getting photographs showing the effect of the coast land/water boundary setting up a sea breeze… all afternoon the MET wind based on the synoptic charts was due to be NW - West in direction and a high chance of being blown out in the hills, however the TAF’s & METAR’s (generate the display on XCWeather, MET Actual Report) were starting to show a sea breeze developing on the East Coast of Scotland (EGPN, EGQL & EGPD) so it was up to the ridge & cliffs at Arbroath, (one of our restricted sites).

The wind vane on the tower is showing a nice SE which the balloon did not match until after 7:30, up till then the upper winds (NW) resulted in me looking at the tail end of the tethered balloon for most of the day!

The leaves folded over on the trees next the Dundee Arbroath road show a 12-15kt SE wind at ground level almost 180* in direction compared to the wind at balloon & cloud level! From the angle of the teather line it looks as if at the balloon height the wind is of a similar strength but NW.

Posted in Weather Stuff | 1 Comment »

13/04/2007 by Murray Hay.

Ending the day getting some solo, then tandem flying up at the ‘Cairn’ with Susan up visiting Ali from ‘doon south’, we were treated to the clearest example of late evening lee wave acting on pollution trapped lying along the boundary layers generated by inversions that I have ever seen, unfortunatly the pictures do not do it full justice as the sun was just too low by the time I had my work camera. Worth posting none the less

Looking lower the smoke which had been rising to just below the inversion half an hour before is now ‘up side down’ in appearance showing just how low the warm air from above had dropped on sun down, not good for the last bit of flying of the day but intresting to see!

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05/04/2007 by Murray Hay.

Ali and myself having a blast with some close quarter flying over the main quarry at Forret in a mix of ridge & mild thermals, by the end of the evening one gorse bush had been half garoted and a couple more squashed….

The AWACS did three take off and landing practice ‘circuits’, but instead of over flying the hill (normal) was braking left early so not making as good a photo op for us PG pilots!

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