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| The Website of the Avon Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club - Firefly's Flying Diary | Saturday, 20th April, 2024 |
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| The Website of the Avon Hang Gliding and Paragliding Club - Firefly's Flying Diary | Saturday, 20th April, 2024 |
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July 6th - All over the bloody shop! |
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What's this place? Ah, yes, it's my house. Haven't seen it much since the end of April, hence the absence of Firefly from the October Nova. Mind you, there have been various contributions to The Avon XC Pages, the Club Challenge Reports and the Spot The Glider Competition to keep you (hopefully) amused - I've only had one correct answer to that one, btw - congrats to Hamish Atkinson for spotting Marcus at x = 245, y = 154 - took me ages to find him in the first place! A pint for you at the next meeting (got off lightly there then!).
As most of you will have gathered, since the beginning of the year Firefly has basically become Fireflyingbum (or something......). Fortunately a partial rehabilitation program is now underway (including finding out what Choccie Digestive has been up to) and, if the ensuing retrospective leaves you hungry for more, there'll soon be an Annecy Special, chock full of photos and written with non-fliers interested in the sport in mind. Anyway, enough rambling, what have we here then?
On the subject of which, much of the summer has been spent in the company of Mr X-Ray Specks, a new character in the Firefly Hall of Fame. Fortunate really, not least for the loan of his spare vario, given that Digifly still have mine over four months after Steve Milsom sent it to them for repair! I MISS MY AVERAGER ! It would also be quite nice not to have to look down all the time to find out how fast you're sinking.........
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Fed up with the increasing flow of XC submissions into his Inbox, Ginger Spice decided it was high time he caught up the young whippersnappers and took a Friday off, also persuading MacSplittie to use up his final holiday of the year, his having already booked four weeks in a row for our Annecy trip and the ensuing British Open. Evidently eager, the duo actually beat Firefly to the hill and were round in the massive, SE combe by the time I arrived. X-Ray Specks (probably detained by Helen's Bakery's Highly-Recommended Flap-Jacks at the shop in Raglan) was a little way behind, with Petr Smirnoff. Anyway, a quick (yeah - right!) yomp up and the Flame was rigged and swiftly in the air above the car park, soon making its way round the corner as the early birds looked as though they weren't going to hang around for long. |
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Eventually Ginger Spice crabs forward a mile to the smaller bowl near the reservoir and eeks out a ludicrously slow climb back over our heads and away. Right then! Who's for a glide angle comp? We all take off to fly across to the small bowl. The wind wins. Hmmm. Walk round the corner into the bowl and launch from low down; works for everyone but me. Hmmm. Wind dies completely. %$@! |
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Now, this is only the second time I've flown Talybont and, at this point, I'm not too impressed :-) I run down the bowl backwards to launch (!) and fly off, across the river to the track back to the car park. As I pack up, MacSplittie flies down to The Tree Surgeon, chats for a couple of minutes and leaves a message on my mobile to say he's flying down to me. As he relights, a huge gust lifts him up and drops him on his backside; undeterred, his glider reinflates and drags him all the way up the bowl and over the back. I then watch X-Ray Specks fly back over from the small bowl, into MacSplittie's thermal and also escape. I am not pleased! |
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July 6th - All over the bloody shop!
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Mad. The usual early-morning call from my partner in sideways humour and we're at The Bluff at half eleven. Slight problem. They're helicoptering huge blocks of stone up onto Offa's Dyke Path and won't finish until at least half past one. Whoops. Well, we'll have to go to Merthyr then - it'll be quite quick if we go back down the valley. A brief chat with the Joint Services Hang Gliding Competition in the pass ("Yes, we know there's a helicopter. We're flying anyway.") does nothing to dispel the impression caused by the second heat of the Club Challenge. Having said that, how much did the bloody chopper cost? There's a tractor track all the way along the top!
I digress. We're making good time down the valley, following a white van whose driver obviously knows the road, until we get almost to the bottom, where we happen upon a tractor, with Vauxhall Cavalier behind. All three of us pass the tractor. Just past the single-track Crick turning the Cavalier sees another delivery van coming the other way and they both slam on the anchors. Now, the Cavalier has ABS and stops twenty feet from the approaching van; unfortunately the van in front of us is evidently unladen and piles into the back of the Cavalier, pushing it all the way forward into the other van, totalling both ends of the car and completely blocking the road. Oops. Glass everywhere. Cue crying children. Etc.
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| What to do? Well, leave contact details with each of the parties (the police have rung twice but still haven't come round to interview me!) and slink off along the lane to Crick. Great! We leave Bristol before ten and finally make Merthyr at gone one o'clock! And it's rough as hell! Mindful of an earlier experience here I've landed down on the shoulder when X-Ray Specks out (runs over the back?). The two hangies who were here when we arrived but still haven't flown (!) have somehow been so engrossed that they don't know whether Alex went down or not. I fly again and almost get rotored in behind the hill, land, stuff the glider in the back of the hire car (oh, yeah - did I tell you the one about the Cinquecento and the bus?!) and drive off to find somewhere dry to pack up on the way to retrieving Mr C. |
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Obviously, the last thing I expected was to be ambushed by a dozen wild horses while trying to pack up the glider, so it goes back in the boot and I drive somewhere more secluded. Then the call comes through from Alex that he's in Cwmbran. Bastard! I spend the best part of two hours finding my way to him. We have a pint and head back across the bridge. Being suckers for punishment we then go for an evening float at Westbury, where it's Westerly and crap but the sunset is pretty! On the way home we get caught in a traffic jam at Pennsylvania and ............ yeah, it was one of those days alright! |
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July 10th - Heol Senni - Club Challenge Semi-Final
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The Club Challenge, sponsored by Andersen Consulting, for that authentic 'couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery' flavour, moved back to SW Wales for the first of what should have been two semi-finals (traditionally at least, one would have thought). As it was, seven of the twelve qualifying teams turned up for this one and the other five never flew. Fair enough.
The Piper was back and raring for action and an easterly saw the throng assemble on Heol Senni. The rest of the team were Firefly, MacSplittie, X-Ray Specks, Petr Smirnoff and The Mayne Man. The first decent thermal saw half the field get away, The Mayne Man booting it off downwind and earning first place with 52km. Firefly ended up on Fan Gihirych with Pete, who went down, and MacSplittie, who climbed out before trying to cross to the high ground to the north of Cray Reservoir. As I got a raggedy save from a quarry, Marcus went down and back to the hill for a relight (multi-attempts being the order of the day). After landing at 23km and seeing The Piper on his way to 28km during my retrieve, I missed a second climb out with Nick The Postman and had to be content with a trip to the burger bar in the lay-by near Fan G. Rumours that I landed on the centre line of the A4067 are ........ well, true, actually. Returning for a third go, the thermal activity had disappeared, although I still ended up leaving the hill again, reaching the Fan G car park. At the end of the day though, we didn't think it was enough - we were in fourth place. |
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With Sunday canned, due to high winds, we thought that was it. Then The Piper got a message from postie to say that Chris Short of SE Wales had landed in Swansea Airspace. We were third! Then the other semi-final didn't happen and it didn't matter anyway! Then Joint Services (assisted by Andersen Consulting) organised the final in the winter ..................... |
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Over to Wales again, arriving on Merthyr at 12.15, where Jamie Messenger, his brother Warren and Steve, Donna's Friend :-), were just about to move round to the WSW face. X-Ray Specked out with them as I was launching, reached 1200ato then pulled out and landed, to his own accompaniment of self-critical profanities! About eight Joint Services pilots then arrived and some sharp coring took me above the gaggle for the next, slow but reasonably consistent climb out. Approaching 4000asl (just below cloud) there were four of us - Firefly, X-Ray, Colin Hermon and a yellow Flame, so I let them past so I could take some photos! Our paths diverged slightly, X-Ray getting a ludicrous save from 100ft above an industrial estate before racing off across the Crick valley with Colin. |
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Crickhowell from the air - looking towards Sugar Loaf |
I watched them try the Talgarth valley and got a climb from the end of the Bwlch all the way back to base. Unfortunately the Black Mountains had overdeveloped, with perhaps 75% cloud cover, and we all ended up a couple of ridges in. Steve and yours truly didn't see X-Ray come back over the ridge to land a little way up our valley as we were looking for his misplaced radio in the middle of a huge, bracken-strewn hillside! Neither did we see him walk back up, for some reason, to fly to Longtown! Further still, we had no idea that MacSplittie had flown from Nant Y Moel to Merthyr and could have rescued us all with the Cinque! Well, one of us, anyway ... |
Winter Flying - Captain Fantastic tests the top makes of balaclava
Winter Flying - Um, someone buy me some balaclavas and I'll test them
How to wangle cheap wings out of importers (I hope)
The Good Flying Beer & Food Guide - Garnished with all the usual silliness !!! Bye!
Oh, Yeah - Parting Thought
If all the world's a stage, where's the audience sitting?
Sorry - what did you say, Ed? He's gone where?
