| Flight details: | Enough wind to stay up from ridge lift, I climbed with two other gliders to about 600m ATO drifting over the back, I was flying an Aspen2 size 26 at about 85 kgs so only just into the 80-100 weight range, this combination climbed very well but seriously lacked speed and made thermalling with other gliders difficult as I was so slow in the into wind part of the turn the others caught up with me, I tried to make smaller circles than the others so as not to get in the way but inevitably did, sorry.
The other two gliders with me left the climb at about 600m ATO and headed back for the hill, I realised that due to my lack of speed I had no chance of making it back and decided to stay with it and drift as far as I could. I stayed with the blue climb up to 780m ATO and by this stage was over the road island where Devils Dyke Road meets the A27, the wind was still strong and I was gale hanging when pointing into wind, I was nervous about getting blown over Brighton. A bit of indecision about where to go cost me a few hundred meters while faffing.
I spotted a cloud that looked good just ahead over brighton and headed for it but it decayed in front of my eyes and turned into a mess of hanging bits of scrappy white when I was nearly there and I hit some sink at about 3-4m/s, Ok i thought down to land back by the island and a hitch / walk back to take off.
I started planning which field to land in and was down to 140m over the deck when the vario started to squeek again, nice, the field had been in the sun for some time and kicked off nicely, blue above but took it 600m and headed off along the A27.
Out of the climb I was loosing height quickly again, in sink at about 3m/s, spotted a good looking cloud (see picture) and headed for it slightly into wind, going very slowly trod on the bar and was still slow and the vario making really unhappy noises now. Arrived below the cloud just as it was decaying again and only 200m over the deck, oh well at least I was over a |
