Learning to Fly

Collapse

Daniel, Lu, Thiago, Jussara, and I got up the hill a little after midday. It was blowing a northwesterly and only Xuxa and Cesar were flying tandems. There were plenty of people there but they were all waiting for things to improve and nobody wanted to take off.

Daniel and I were not planning on sitting on the ramp for a long period of time as it didn’t look like things were going to change much for the better and too many people asking if you’re going to take off in these conditions always makes you second guess yourself.

We opened our gliders up on the southwestern ramp carefully as it was already starting to rain further out to the west and the wind was picking up. We waited about 15 minutes for a low spot to take off and Daniel swung hard round to the left but dropped quickly out of sight in the leeside rotor.

I thought with the wind picking up I would be able to get a bit of height from the lift in front of the ramp quickly before turning and flying down the leeside of the hill. I waited for the wind to drop well before trying to take off. It was so low however that I struggled to lift off the ground and had to run way down the hill past the front of the ramp and into the long grass and rocks. I gave a good bit of brake and took off at the last second and then did a few laps back and forth to try and get some height back but the lift wasn’t strong enough for me to get any higher than the top of the ramp.

I had wasted plenty of time and I knew the rain was getting closer and the wind was getting stronger so I had to make a turn for the southern landing spot before things got too dangerous. I tried to go wide around the valley to avoid the stronger channeled rotor but I got too low too quickly and had to go into the middle of it. I extended the speed bar out fully to try and pass over it as quickly as possible before I got into trouble. I got to about the middle of it when my wing started to tremble the way it had when I crossed through the rotor back in December. I had forgotten however that when using the speed bar in these situations it only makes the wing more instable and the slight use of brakes is recommended to compensate. I was woken up to this fact however by a sudden whap as my wing collapsed entirely and I started to fall.

I released the speed bar and glanced quickly beneath me to check how far I was above the valley floor. I lifted the brakes and looked up to check the wing was opening evenly knowing that if it didn’t and I entered a spin I would have to pull the reserve chute immediately. It opened well though with almost no correction needed and I continued flying down the centre of the valley to give me a little height above the valley floor incase it happened again.

I managed to make my way out of the valley and over the farmland near the southern landing spot. There were some strong thermals around but mixed with the continued downdraft from the tail of the rotor and due to my already low altitude I wasn’t able to find much more than anything that would just maintain my height. It was all really turbulent too, and I decided I should call it quits and went in to land.

The wind was pretty strong on the landing spot, around 25km/h, and I was surprised at how much it had come up with the rain approaching. Although I could see him a long way up and further along the route it was not a good time to be flying and Daniel landed a couple of minutes later.

Total flight time: 10mins