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Day 274 - Long Mynd - Shropshire | |
| 26 08 2012 | ||
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With such a forecast, today was not to be missed, I actually woke up on aSunday morning with no alarm at 7:00am! Arriving at Long Mynd at 9:30 I saw one glider already flying, I grabbed my gear and set off for Launch. Flight #1 Pre flight checks done I took off into buoyant air, a little bumpier than expected for this time in the morning but absolutely fine. I flew for around 1.5 hours keeping to the North end of the ridge as there was a Glider Club competition taking place and they were tow launching gliders. The flying was fine, sometimes I felt like it was switching off, but then it picked up again. I landed after a while to have a drink and warm up (it was a bit colder than I expected also and hadn't talked quite the right clothing). Flight #2 It was surprisingly dead on the floor - in terms of wind so we waited until a thermalcame through to launch into, we launched and connected with the thermal, then it went a bit wild, quite a few glides in the air, quite a rough thermal but everyone behaved very well, I hit some quite alarming ascent rates and witnessed a few collapses, I decided to get stuck in and ride the thermal, not letting it push me around and suddenly I ended up approx 1800ft above take off in really not much time. I pushed out front to get away from the other gliders and set off into wind- very slow going... I was with three other higher performance gliders than myself and really noticed the difference in forwards speed with them leaving me behind quite quickly. I had planned a 20km out and return but I got a radio message saying the Air Ambulance was on the way to attend an accident at Launch so I couldn't return, then I started losing height so turned back a bit for the thermal I have just left. I ended up some 1000ft ATO so decided to fly back and land on the North end of Long Mynd away from the helicopter. I landed safely and sat for a while until the helicopter had left. Flight #3 I re-launched from the North end and flew once more in thermic air getting some good height gains and having a great fly about on and off the ridge for another hour and a quarter getting some very low saves and some very steep climbs, quite up and down was this flight. I landed vertically as the wind had picked up considerably. Flight #4 Once more - I took off into a great climb to nearly 2500ft ATO and had some comparatively chilled out flying for this session flying in the sun, this was such a good day for the UK in flying terms, just how it should be. By now everyone was getting a bit low so I headed in for landing - having to slope land. I flew some short hops later but nothing to write about but what a great day at Long Mynd.
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