Learning to Fly

All Talk

Daniel, Lu, and I headed up the hill after midday. The sky was looking marvelous with light cumulous forming everywhere, and we kept talking the whole way about how we were going to fly all the way back to Pinhal.

When we got up the ramp eveyone was taking off, and by the time we had prepped most of them were already way above us. I was concious of the 11mm of rain that had fallen yesterday and didn’t want to illusion myself that today would be easy flying so just before taking off I looked around at who was gaining altitude and who wasn’t and then watched Xuxa take off in front of me. As soon as I saw that he was rising I took off and went over to the right where I was sure there would be some thermals. Sure enough I gained a bit of height and flew around for a few minutes trying to get high enough to start the trek to Pinhal.

I watched Daniel taking off from up above, and was expecting him to be joining me, but he went straight forward away from the ramp and didn’t find any thermals. He was soon on the ground, and I knew he would be fuming, and I didn’t want to fly toward Pinhal by myself again, so I went over above where he had landed. I was about 400m above him and thought it a good opportunity to practice some tricks as the air was not at all turbulent and I hadn’t done so in a long time.

I started with some Wingovers which went a little quietly at first as I was feeling a little aprehensive after the collapses I had suffered last week, but after a few my confidence came back and I started pushing them til the wing tip came well beneath me. It felt good and although I lost the rhythm and had to stop, I was keen to get some more height and do some more. I opted for a spiral though, as I wanted to get down and help Daniel fold up his glider. It was a good one, and although I felt the urge to push it closer to the ground I stopped reasonably high, about 100m above the ground, and flew in nicely to touch down next to Daniel and another guy from Goiânia who had also gotten stuck there.

Daniel was pretty angry at himself so we packed up our gliders quickly and walked out through the farmland to where Lu was waiting to take us back up for another shot at it.

The wind switched round to the south and although it wasn’t well lined up, we took off and headed along the ridgeline to the left. I had seen a few buzzards circling way up into the clouds, and knew there were some strong thermals around and it didn’t take long to find one. It was tucked into a valley though and as the wind changed direction it would get really messy. When it was strong I would gain height quickly but when it was in the rotor it got turbulent and I would lose height just as fast. My wing also got soft in the turbulent air and the tips started to close up at times. I wasn’t enjoying it much and didn’t want to have any trouble, especially after I had had to excuse myself on the ramp to take off first as there had been others waiting.

Daniel was a bit further along the ridge toward the stud farm but wasn’t doing so well either, so I decided to head out over the farmland near the southern landing spot. My vario hardly blipped in the time it took me to get out there, and I was soon on the ground folding my glider.

As we were folding our gliders I had heard some of the other pilots on the radio saying that they were approaching Pinhal. Daniel turned off his radio and shook his head.

Total flight time: 40 mins