More parawaiting Tues 19 July 2016

Approaching Big Collin around lunchtime I could see a paraglider airborne. It turned out to be Ian Cross on his Sky wing but conditions looked a bit 'lumpy'.  David Tomás Carpeño was just climbing the hill and stopped for a quick chat. Expecting two CP students, I decided to have a flight myself to check out conditions. As expected from the wind that was gusting 9-19mph half way up the hill, it was a bit of a roller coaster with pockets of lift everywhere including out to the farm in front. Having decided I'd had enough bouncing around I landed at the bottom just after David. Ian had already landed.

Gusty conditions continued for the rest of the day but Ian manfully provided the entertainment on his new Ozone Swift wing - on one occasion ascending rapidly vertically with no forward groundspeed at all. But he never reached the 5,000ft that he had been cleared to by Aldergrove ATC!

Dermot Lagan had turned up by then but wisely decided to stay on the ground - as did my two students, Gerry Johnston and Keith McGeown. When Ian had to leave, after getting an extension to sunset from ATC, conditions still did not improve so we passed the time with some paragliding theory discussion on various aspects such as site assessment and meteorology, trying to work out what was going on with the weather. 

The wind was still gusting and switching rapidly from ESE to SSE and back to SE at times. Overhead and approaching scattered Cumulus clouds appeared to be shredded and never got fully formed. Meanwhile in the distance upwind was a large wave cloud with some Cumulus and Stratocumulus mixed in. The hot sun was certainly cooking up lots of thermals  and the whole mix seemed to be contributing to the strong and gusty conditions. Eventually we decided that the gustiness was there to stay and we called it a day around 6:30pm after 'phoning ATC to let them know. Yet another day for the parawaiting logbook!!