Flight

Got to plumpton ridge at 9:15 and it was 10-15mph North!!!! So got my new RC model glider out and had my first ever soar on it, thermic and got it to about 500ft- great fun!... Was half tempted to rig the glider up right there as it was obviously flyable, but I had already committed to the Aerotow group. We rigged the tug, had a good pilot breifing and then the general hill banter and discussing how Ozzie was Phone-a-phobic as the wind slowly came around to the west by late morning. A few paragliders came over, first one (blue and racy looking) seemed to be heading straight for newhaven or beachy (foot and fly???) and the rest seemed to get low near Falmer. Looking forward to see there track logs.

Dave Matthews was first to launch and I got ready to go next. A good tow and pretty much straight into wind, I had already decided to head towards parham as the forecast looked better that way with a solid line of convergence by early afternoon. The forecast was right, a couple of inland climbs and I caught up but below Dave by the time we got to the Dyke, and then a nice 4up to a seabreeze cloud with a yellow paraglider corkscrewing up underneath us. Dave got to base first and headed to truleigh, I tried to get higher even when the climb dropped off and then glided too fast (50+mph) to try and catch up with him, the sky was not as good past steyning and the seabreeze hadn't formed very strong yet, which resulted in me getting below 1500ft over a big quarry in front of the hill- I thought for a while that I had messed it up. Dave was higher up and climbed out but I continued going around in zeros for ages. Dave head back to the dyke along a now much better seabreeze front street and out of sight whilst I eventually clawed back up until it turned into the largest smoothest 5 up ever. The seabreeze cloud I was climbing in stretched from 2500ft to well over 5000ft!!! It was awesome climbing up the side of it just about going into it on every circle with sailplanes screamin