Learning to Fly

False Hopes

Daniel had gone up the hill early and it continued blowing a strong northeasterly all morning as had been predicted. He decided it was a little too strong after having trouble in strong winds the day before and came back down to the bach to prepare a birthday barbeque for Lu.

I was a little more hopeful however and sure that the wind wasn’t as strong as he had said, and that it would be possible to fly. On the road up I met several pilots who had managed to fly and said the conditions were terrible. When I got up the hill with Jussara around 1pm however the wind had almost died completely. Kurt and Márcio were waiting for it to come up enough to fly in the lift, but it just wasn’t strong enough.

I waited for an hour or so and when Kurt pointed out a buzzard circling in a coming thermal I went for it. Kurt warned it may be strong, but that was what I was after. I wanted to get up high where I could stay up for a while without any problems.

I hit it and went up a little for a while and flew over to the right of the ramp. It didn’t last more than 5 minutes though and I was soon on my way down straight to the northern landing spot.

I packed up and went to the bach for a few beers to forget about how I had been fooled.

Total flight time: 10mins