Learning to Fly

Top Landing

Jussara and I got up the hill around 4pm. Despite the changing forecast and the gales early in the morning it had apparently turned good around 2pm and Márcio, Andre, and Xuxa had all flown. They said it was turbulent but good. I was disappointed to have missed it, as the wind was at that moment almost too little to fly along the ridge, but I was going to give it a shot.

I did 3 flights along the ridge. The first died after about 15 minutes and I ended up having to land at the northern landing spot with Guto and Daniel. The second and third however the wind kept up a little more. It was pretty soft and never enough to get near the back of the ramp to land the way I had been taught. I spent the whole time struggling to get enough height and when I did finally get far enough back I had to spin round quickly and ended up coming down with a thump. The third flight I flew for around 45 minutes swooping in close over the ramp and almost touching the surrounding trees, and trying different approach lines. I tried doing a few wingovers too but with so little height and so close to the ramp I couldn’t relax properly and they never came out well. The lower wing tip closed in on me a couple of times too which was a little unnerving so close to the hillside so I decided tomorrow would be better and went back to trying different landing approaches. I never got anything I really liked though as the wind was never strong enough to get back there to where I was used to landing. I started to get a little more used to the idea of landing at the front of the ramp though and ended up landing a little better the last time.

It was pretty cold by that time and we packed up and headed down to the bach to have a few beers to celebrate Guto’s birthday.

Total flight time: 1h15mins