| Flight details: | Persistence finally paid off but that was story of the weekend. Saturday had us hiking up Talybont via the "short" route to find no wind. After watching a few wings climb out far side of the bowl we then hiked around for another hour to find � no wind. So forward launch top to bottoms were in order. For Sunday John T and I decided to abandon the comp and decamp to Milk Hill where the wind was decidedly off the bowl so we wandered over to the White Horse. Catherine and Gary were there along with Jess, Mark and plenty of others from the Southern. I then had a frustrating couple hours trying to follow everyone else up into a decent climb. I seemed to be able to get up a bit in the first thermals but just I cleared the ridge and could 360 I'd fall out. Very disconcerting as you feel the wing almost grind to a halt when you bump out! Luckily the Chili is a thermal seeking monster and after some words of advice from John T post his XC about having to turn tight, I had one last go, and despite losing a couple hundred feet and feeling ready to land at any moment I kept it up, cranked it really hard and tight in 0's and 0.2's and finally creeped back above launch. Finally I started to get 1's and 2's and was able to follow it up to around 2500 ft - not quite cloud base but by then I was well past the bowl and on my way. However - same problem - fell out the thermal and forgot to widen my search to find it again. Instead decided to head over towards another cloud street (probably shouldn't have left what I was in). Now drifting along the A4 towards Fyfield when my very clever Oudie started warning me of class D airspace. Didn't remember there being anything that close so headed N to avoid it whilst gliding down into a big field. Whilst lining up for a nice safe landing I disturbed two of the largest hares I've ever seen - and so ended another sub 10km XC. One day I'm going to work out how to reconnect with the next thermal over the flatlands� (oh - and Manton airspace turned |
