| Flight details: | Video of today can be found here: http://youtu.be/kL2tDkqof4A
A busy day at Devils Dyke. I had 5 flights from about 9am, and on my third picked up a thermal near the modeller's bowl. It wasn't epic maxing at 1.5m/s but it took me back a fair way with the drift, topping out at all of 1500' AMSL.
I really am not keen on the crowds, so it was nice and relaxing to get away, and it was good to have the time to appreciate the scenery. The Shoreham airshow was running, and a NOTAM in place, but we had enough space in the NW wind to have fun. I did try to follow Mark Watts on his tandem with Catherine Castle, but I was just too low, and only managed to find zero's in my drift.
When I lost my lift, I hoofed it downwind looking for more, but found little. On crossing the A23/A27 junction, I had to make a call to go left or right of the A27. Left was all fields but a harder retrieve, so I opted for right over the houses and civilization, as there were some fields to bomb out in and I was still high enough. I should have "thought up" though, as I got nothing over the built up area, and ended up landing in a school playing field. Mark and Catherine were nowhere to be seen, but I did see another paraglider flying at about 2000' over me. I wasn't jealous at all, honest.
As I was packing up and about to unleash my hitching sign, a nice chap called Jon came to the fence with two of his boys, and asked me about my flight. They had seen my flying low overhead from his house. After 5 minutes more packing he came back and offered me a lift right back to the Dyke. What a gentleman! The flight was short at only 5.9km, and 30mins, but really good fun. Many thanks to Jon and his two lads Ben and James for the retrieve, it was very much appreciated. |
