Due to change in family arrangements I managed to get away to Dungiven yesterday afternoon. Arrived on the hill to join Ian F, Danny Y, Dave T, Colin D and Mark W in a light but flyable wind. Got my wing and harness inspected and ready for flight, then noticed that the wind had dropped sending Ian to the bottom landing field.

Danny was busy chatting up some spectators and the others were attached to their wings so I drove down and retrieved Ian. Taking off in a slightly increased breeze I found fairly consistent pockets of light lift  to the north of takeoff and eventually made my way on to Benbradagh headland where I reached 500ft above takeoff.

Flying across to the headland to the south resulted in the loss of some 300ft but there was more lift there. On the way back I decided to apply full speedbar, having never done so on the Medium Firebird Raven. I was most surprised to find that even with significant increase in airspeed there was no change in sink rate and I must have flown into some rising air as I crossed the road as the wing started climbing. Removal of speedbar input resulted in a climb back up higher than when I first applied it!

During the later part of my 45 minute flight the wind got lighter but I noticed that it had backed slightly towards the SW so that best lift was to be found to the north of takeoff where the ridge was more into wind. I easily got back for a top landing. My vario showed the temperature at height was 2 degrees C which explained my numb fingers even with gloves on.

Colin went up on the Raven for a flight after waiting for wind to take off in. Surprisingly he managed to soar for around 5 minutes before coming in for a slope landing at his takeoff point. 

A good day in a bad weather week.