02/08/2007 by Ali.

Well, I headed down to the Wickerman Flying Festival a few days ago, and did a bit of bungee bouncing and I think I listened to some rock music. But that might have been a dream, like the smell of herbs and stuff. Arent the policemen nice in Galloway.

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02/04/2007 by Ali.

There comes a point when rhapsodising about the weather becomes pointless, and I guess this weekend has been it, so to speak. After yesterdays blast in Glen Coe, and last weekends romp at Lunan, maybe it’s time to start expecting the met to be generally magnanimous and benevolent, and well disposed to the gliding fraternity, para doo dads included. First of April, time of fools and showers turned out to be a shower of fools doing what comes naturally, fooling around, about and above the hill in glorious sunshine.

Murray, Martin and myself, as well as a couple of others, met up at East Lomond expecting pretty much what we got: light and variable winds, mainly easterly with continually changing quantities of north or south depending on the whim of whatever thermal was going through. Go through they did, very broken, workable yes, I think, but not for me really. I just took off, flew up in vario song (wish I’d had the vario yesterday) to rival the larks, then landed as high as I could after a couple of turns so I could get another go. I did that pretty much all day, until about seven o’ clock, as did Murray, with Martin flying down for his tea (he lives at Falkland, lucky sod, or would be if he didn’t have to spend so much time in China!)

Maybe some cynic out there will say “So, what’s so good about flydowns under a great big inversion?” to which I answer “It was warm, it was continual, it was educational, it was excellent practice, but most of all it was great fun.” The guy in the tiger moth obviously thought so too, as he dived and stall turned just to the south. He came over to say hello, passing a few hundred feet above the top of the hill. I  rather cheekily gave him six points for his efforts, and he obviously thought he owed his audience a loop, cos he went out and did one. Excellent fellow.

Murray and I took a turn each at retrieve towards the end of the day, so we could get a decent long downhill flight. I was quite surprised to see five down on the vario, but the sink is quite bad out the front sometimes. After I had picked Murray up in the pickup, we headed back to Dundee. If the rest of the years weekends turn out like this, I for one wont be complaining, but I’ll bet it gets a lot better yet. I’ve been predicting it since last September, and I reckon it’s going to be…..I won’t say it. Fingers crossed though, and this high looks set to stay for a week or so yet, and there’s a cold front due to go through, I think about lunchtime tomorrow. Hee hee. Watch this space for a post cold frontal shower of April fools, coming in, need it be said, for perfect landings.

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01/04/2007 by Ali.

An early drive up on Friday ensured a couple of pints at the Kingshouse before bedtime.No point in taking unneccessary risks, what? There were red deer in the car park, hand tame, presumably looking for food , but nonetheless an enchanting sight in the moonlight. If omens exist, this must have been one of the best.

A cold night, frosty in the morning sun, promised at least the chance of thermals even if the forecast was for high pressure and the “glass ceiling” that often entails. By half past eight Murray and I were at the chair lift, decided not to have a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich at the ski centre, and headed up to Creag Dubh.

We were early. It was sunny. There was very little wind. These are the conditions I find it virtually impossible to reverse launch in. These are some of the conditions Murray loves to reverse launch in. He took off, and flew away. I stayed on the ground after three botched attempts at taking off.

I was still there when Murray reappeared for his second flight; I felt quite chilled, as in relaxed, and let him go off again. I reasoned that if it was so light as to make launch so marginal for me, then conditions probably weren’t soarable, and a fly down was all I was going to get, and I was still there when loads of ather people with big rucksacks started walking past me, right up to the top of Creag Dubh. I sidled up that way since I was feeling silly, and vulnerable, and kind of camouflaged myself in the middle of them. I chatted to a couple of people, and I remembered days on the hill in the peak district, and even spoke to a couple of people from the D.S.C. which club I began flying with straight after I completed training with Peak Paragliding at the end of the eighties.

But still no flying for me, and not for many others either, but as usual, Murray kept appearing and disappearing with a rather monotonous regularity which did not bode well for the poor lass at the top of the chairlift. I myself fell for her, and I made her laugh, which I took as a good sign. Murray said it was more to do with the wet patch on my arse where I landed after said fall. Embarrassing.

But it was all still very quiet up on the tops, and noon drifted past at about the same rate as the cumulous which were appearing sporadically over the summits. The wind, what there was of it, backed, then veered, then backed again, although there was a fairly steady 8 knot Nor Easterly at car park level. There was an inversion at 500 feet-ish above the bottom station, according to Murray, up until about three o’clock, when it all kicked off, according to the gaggle that went hurtling skyward as I was packing up my glider in the car park after my first landing. Joe and Ian had turned up and gave me a hand to to an alpine launch, just as the wind semed to be dropping again. Turned out I just, just missed the start of the best thermal conditions of the day, but it put me in a good enough position to view it all.

After that, I changed gliders, from the Xenon26 to an Xray20, because it did actually feel bubbly on the way down, and I’m still a bit light on the Xenon. Joe, who’s in the mountain rescue team at Killin, gave me an elastoplast by way of broad hint, after my ’sky diving’ at Glenshee a few months ago, and I decided  on a respectful approach to these early thermals.

Back on the tops, I mixed in with the hordes of gliders that were mixing like midges way over the tops and out the front. Distant groups were skying out a couple of thousand feet above me, over Leacann nam Braonan, and also later on, over Sron na Creise. I got into some good thermal, but I wasn’t coring it properly. Still, flying without a vario wasn’t really giving myself the best of chances in that department, so I wasn’t too bothered.

It continued excellent thermal flying for perhaps two hours. I came down because I lost the lift, promptly finding it again over the car park, and following a series of wingovers, and going to the edge of a spiral dive, managed to touch down within four feet of my selected spot, albeit a bit off balance.

Murray landed a few minutes afterward, having foolishly followed me down. Joe was already fixing himself a brew, but it wasn’t till twenty minutes afterward that Ian Aitchison followed his grin in to land after a damn good 41 minutes (on that flight). Despite a very late start, I think everyone must have had a great time that afternoon, and to judge from the standard facial expression at the bottom landing, delight was probably closer the mark. Murray has to post his own comments on this one though, because our opinions are somewhat from different perspectives if not at actual variance. Something to do with car arrivals or some such, I dunno. You know who you are.

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26/03/2007 by Ali.

Well, it has to be said it didn’t LOOK like much of a start to the day, no matter what Murray forecasted, it was a mediocre morning, clocks forward day or not. Only the wind strength was right, but a little too far north of east for my liking. Overcast, muggy, nothing dreadful, but not a lot of sunshine on the ground. Driving past Arbroath en route to Lunan Bay at twenty past ten, there was a distinct lightening of the sky to the east though, so I began to feel at that point that a little optimism might not be altogether unrealistic.
Arriving at Lunan to meet up with Alan C, in the public car park, the wind felt more like it was parallel to the beach, but that was to change quite quickly, or rather we were to change site, moving down to the gorse ridge as soon as Alan C arrived. After a rather bumpy ride in the back of the pickup, (Sorry M’lud) I went down to the base of the gorse ridge, popped up the canopy, and went walkabout, right along the its 500 metre. There did seem to be more of a cross component than would allow me to climb out from the beach, so I struggled round the north end of the gorse ridge, and up into a bowl about 200 metres in diameter. First flight from there took me round the corner, and onto the front, where I proceeded to do a very good landing. The fact that Murray and  Alan C were soaring non stop throughout this last attempt to launch, and through most of  my futile ascent into the bowl, fuelled a certain impatient sulk in me, which always leads the kind of fluffed takeoff which I now proceeded to demonstrate my expertise in. Time after time. Gosh, I am a good swearer.
In the end though, even my incompetence could not prevent me taking off, and once in the air I settled into staying up there. The wind was indeed well off, but there was plenty of lift. Getting to about 100 feet over the top was about the most I could hope for (the very most) so it was down to using the airtime to practice penetration flying (low height loss wingovers), high speed scratching, an interesting mix of easy lift, rules of the air, and then, an opportunity to get into the bowl, there to use thermals rising from a seeded field.
As the afternoon wore on, the sun came out, and the field heated more and more, so there was a really cool dirt track, paraglider style: Climb at the south end of the ridge, wingover where beneficial right up to the pill box at the north end, then turn into the bowl, and either follow the rim to the thermal source, or fly straight to it across the field. It felt quite low at times, but I always managed to climb out again. It was just a blast. I’d get up to the north end of the bowl, and then hurtle along just above the gorse with the wind well behind me, back down to the south end of the ridge, turn in the house lift there, gain height then do it all again, and see if I can do it faster/less height loss/ low as I can/ big eared  etc.

 

 

 Alan Coffin enjoying his first ‘feet wet’ (as the RAF say) flight out over the sea.

Bottom image is me flying the far headland, shot when Murray landed to drive Alan back to his car.

About four oclock, we went up to the cliffs (pictures above), and walked along the tops. Murray took off from above the huts and flew along to the section we were going to soar, but Alan and I had a good enough look from the cliff top path to see that bottom landing was not an option so we walked. When Alan and I arrived at the takeoff, on the next bay up from the fishing village, the wind seemed well on to the hill. Obviously there was enough lift, with Murray getting 150 feet over the top. Alan promptly took off. I promptly screwed up my takeoff like I did in the morning, following up with a linethrough which took 10 minutes to clear. Eventually, I too took off, as Murray and Alan disappeared down the ridge to the beach so Alan could get a lift back to the public car park and keep the family happy by getting home on time!
 So, here I am on my own again, I thought, as I pushed forward to the very front of the cliff line, but absolutely no further. A series of little bays, a serrated edge between the sea, the land and the sky. A row of houses, and of boats in one, the others grassy, or rocky, broader or narrower. Over the spume and froth of the rocks, red sandstone reef, water deep blue, flecked with patches of fleeting turquoise. The smell of coalfires, the fast run towards the beach, turn and work your way up to the front again.
And then Murray came back from delivering Alan C back to his car, and for a few minutes we shared the air. I turned and ran for the beach, And discovered I’d been in the air for an hour since my last takeoff. Bliss. More of the same soonish, I hope. Maybe even tomorrow. 

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18/02/2007 by Ali.

Really, you would think that this being Scotland, a little bit of winter would be mildly in order, but no, none of it. The great wise Sky God, in his wisdom, appears to have decreed that summer shall, at least for this season, commence in the month of January, with February forming the start of truly high summer. At least, if yesterdays weather was anything to go by. Clear skies till latish afternoon with a little cumulous forming up towards dusk, perhaps just for a little variation.

I hear voices asking if it was actually flyable. The answer may depend on whether you tried to fly at Bishop, or were content to soar Forret Hill and Walton. Certainly these two latter provided a thoroughly worthwhile days entertainment with enough yahoo factor to keep grins firmly in place on quite a few faces. Forret was great early in the day. With conditions perfect for ridge soaring with the addition of a little bit of thermal, we might not have been in too much danger of exceeding the 1000ft QFE limit agreed with Leuchars zone on the radio, but nevertheless it would have been a bit churlish to complain about a plethora of cycles and lifty areas which kept students and more experienced members alike both airborne, and having to think about next moves. With up to five gliders in the air at one time, and two first time pilots taking turns at p2 on the tandem(dual control), there was still plenty of safety margin, even if it took a little coordination to play the big version of musical chairs.

When the wind direction shifted, it was off to Walton, where the work was a bit harder, but new pilot Ian Hunter thoroughly enjoyed his first solo flights there, after getting perhaps 40 minutes soaring time on the tandem. Couldn’t stop him, he kept running back up the hill, and taking off again. Except when the retreive could get down quickly enough to chuck him forcibly in the back and carry him up. Lordy, aint life hard.

Good to meet Johnny Blunder after a few emails, and his mate Jim, who’s keen to fly as well. Still keen I should say, as Murray took him upstairs to fly the tandem under supervision. John has had a turn tandeming already, and was soloing his x-act in the gentle afternoon /early evening lift.

An excellent day. Jim and John came over from Stirling, Murray from “The Toon”, Duncan from the Granite City, Ian from the sticks (Alyth), Trians from Greece (oh alright, Dundee)and Ian Hunter and Mesen from Carnoustie by the sea. Marvellous. It all had to end sometime, and that was half an hour after sunset. Honest.

And so today came round for Murray, Alan Coffin and me. We went to Forret first, then on to Lindifferon, and finally Little Ballo.  Conditions were as they say, light and variable. In fact at Forret, I noticed at least one 180 degree change in a matter of seconds, but it was so light it didn’t really make much odds. Light wind takeoffs are NOT my forte, so I had to suffer the indignity of watching Alan take off TWICE, as I struggled to get my glider off the ground. I am told I may blame my tools to some extent, flying the Xenon, but I scorn such cottton wool, preferring to name myself duffer of the day instead. Still, I did have some success between driving retrieves, taking the dog on walks now and again, and in the end I was getting into the air, having got(I am again informed) my shit together. Hoorrah for me, I’m a horses arse. 

Aside from the serious business of my deflated ego, Alan Coffin did some impressive stuff, not only showing me how to perform nil wind reverse takeoffs, but demonstrating for the first time, his abilities regarding cliff launches. With the wind almost strong enough to soar in, he proved several times he can taxi through a changing airflow, reliably control the glider, take off safely, carve, I say carve a turn, and land into wind on a tiptoe. Cool!Great stuff

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