| Flight details: | Very nice flight from Plumpton Aerotow, 3 of us went xc - John Birchall - and myself and Paul harvey. I was sinking out rapidly and heading the wrong way back towards the launch field when John Barratt told me over the radio 'Luke, you're heading the wrong way- the cloud behind you looks good' a quick 180 and about 1/2km crosswind and I got a beautiful thermal to about 3800ft. Paul Harvey was over towards Falmer and headed for me as we had decided to try and get to Deal and get retrieved together. By the time I had minced around at cloudbase for Paul to top up a great cloudstreet had set up to Caburn. I minced around going too slow enjoying a very lifty glide in the wispys but Paul told me he "wanted to get a move on, this cloud street ahead looks good". Off I went following him, circling in the stronger bits of lift. Before long we were at Caburn climbing with Steve U on a black paraglider. I don't think he liked to hang around with two speeding rigids- slicing the clouds with there wingsptips- so of he went inland. I suggested we go inland too and start heading for Heathfield but Paul liked the look of the convergence clouds near firle and again near polgate, so we headed for a decent cloud over the Arlington reservoir. It was very broken and we were only slowly climbing to about 2500ft before deciding to head to a sunny hailsham with a big cloud above it. I had a much better glide about 100ft to the right of Paul and arrived at hailsham around 300ft higher, but we both got the best thermal of the day over hailsham and climbed up the landward side of the cloud. Base was getting lower at the coast and we were now not really getting to 3000ft on climbs. There was now quite a big blue hole with nothing to go for until just before battle where there was a big working cloud. Time to put these awesome gliders to the test and see if we can make the jump.........
We landed short of Battle...
Sinky glide all the way there, possibly glided into the sea air? possibly sho |
