ESP club Blog WordPress weblog for members & friends of East Scotland Paragliding club

24/10/2007

Alan Coffin’s first flights on a DHV 2/3 wing.

Filed under: Club days in Angus,YouTube — Murray Hay @ 08:40 pm

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

12/10/2007

Paragliding on the South Downs near Eastbourne

Filed under: South England — Dunc1261 @ 03:37 pm

Recently I had an opportunity to fly with my New Zealand friend Matthew Nutter who trained with Murray a few years back and with whom I stayed in London for a few months when I first started working at the London Borough of Hackney.

Luckily I had my glider from the France trip and the forecast looked good for the Saturday so I headed off to London Bridge and on to Sevenoaks.

I met up with Matthew and his other PG friend and we headed down the road towards Brighton and Lewes. The traffic was very busy and it took a long time to cover a short distance.

We saw a number of paragliders up working a small ridge. The hills on the South Downs are fairly flat and easy to climb, making the Southern Club members very lazy!

After going to one site where conditions were too strong, we headed to Mount Caburn where there were at least 40/50 people on the hill. Also there were EP pilots training. All within a very tight space indeed.

I launched and went in to the traffic. There were at least 15 gliders up. You had to keep your wits about you and look ahead, plan and turn. I had a few flights and conditions eased, so the pilots settled back on the hill.

A good experience and a witness to various ground handling standards!

Fly safe and see you all soon!

Duncan

03/10/2007

Late Sept Training Weekend

Filed under: East Scotland — Murray Hay @ 11:34 am

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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