After speaking to Martin Bates who was heading to Mayobridge to join a couple of others there, I took Keith McGeown out with me to Dungiven W just after lunchtime. Wind looked strong and a bit gusty at home but we decided to take a chance. We were glad we did. Coming within sight of the hill we saw three paragliders up high. They turned out to be Ian Cross, Maurice McBride and Mark Piggott all jockeying for position in the hope of an XC flight although conditions were completely overcast and remained like that all day.
Colin Lown was at takeoff practicing his Mitsos launch technique (using A and C risers), Simon Finlay and Davy Boyd also got airborne. Wind was 10-12mph, occasionally 14mph. Gerry Johnston (CPN student) was getting ready to fly, so to check out conditions for him I took off on the Skyman Heartbeat M using a Cobra launch and quickly got into a good climb in a large smooth thermal marked by Maurice - Donal at this stage was high downwind and looked to be off on an XC (turned out later that he didn't get far, having to fly in and out of lift at cloudbase in decreasing visibility he turned back and landed within walking distance over the back road). I left the thermal at 800ft above takeoff and flew out into the valley to lose height before turning to top land in the usual spot.
Gerry had five soaring flights with attempts at slope landing on four of them and practice Big Ears when he got height. Keith, who had finished all his EP tasks last September felt confident enough to go for a soaring flight. He ended up having four excellent soaring flights following detailed flight planning and minimal radio guidance, achieving 3 good standup slope landings and one at the bottom landing area. Keith topped it all by passing his EP exam. Now ready for the rest of his CP Novice tasks.
It seems that there was good flying at Mayobridge and also at Magilligan today too.
No comments:
Post a Comment