Learning to Fly

Road Rules

Jussara and I got up the ramp around 1pm and there was a light northeasterly just like the day before. I took off quickly and flew back and forth along the front of the ramp for nearly an hour. It was pretty tedious as the wind wasn’t strong enough to ever get any height and I had to struggle the whole time to not lose any. The only other people flying were Xuxa and Cesar, who were both flying tandems. I tried squeezing between them and the hillside to not lose any height but ended up having to pass through their wakes which wasn’t helping. Cesar spoke to me afterward saying that even though there was room to sneak through, according to the regulations I should have opened out when the hill was on my left and let the tandems pass between me and the hillside. I was glad he came and spoke to me as it’s good to abide by these rules/guidelines as it’s easy to annoy someone in the air and not know about it, and with the local flying community being so small it’s easy to get a reputation.

I struggled for ages trying to line up a good landing, but after a while I realised that it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t want to land down the bottom either, so I decided I was going to have to throw myself at the front edge of the ramp. There are a few rocks just below it, so it took me a while to work up the courage, but when I finally did a small gust came and took me a little higher. I landed very well in front of some other guys who were prepping to fly.

Jussara did a quick flight with Xuxa and then I flew again. After about 10 minutes it started to rain and everyone landed and hid their gear undercover. I came in to land but as I did the wind came up strongly and it suddenly became good to play. I did a few small wingovers and low flybys over the ramp before lining up and coming in to land near the front of the ramp. It was good fun, but my wing got quite wet.

We packed up and headed down for some lunch and I spread my wing out at the bach to dry in the sun.

Total flight time: 1h15mins