Learning to Fly

Low Pressure

Jussara and I got up the hill a little before 2pm after having watched the end of the All Whites world cup match at the Baiana. It had been really windy yesterday and I had waited all afternoon for it do drop without luck, so even though it was blowing northwesterly today I had to give it a shot.

The wind was light and some pilots had flown in the morning with varying degrees of success. I saw Fabinho as I arrived and he told me the pressure had just dropped and the thermals were finally starting to take effect.

The ramp was almost deserted but I saw 2 pilots taking off from the southwestern ramp and they went straight into a thermal. I raced to get ready and inflated my glider low on the southwestern ramp. It came up normally and I spun round expecting to be lifted by the wind. It came a little slower than I had expected, but as soon as I was flying I started into the thermal activity. It was stronger than I had thought and I was soon rising at 1.5-2.3m/s.

The air was pretty turbulent and I kept popping in and out of the thermal but in a couple of minutes I was 400m above the ramp. With the conditions dodgy as they were I didn’t feel much like hanging around, and I also wanted to make the flight quick so I could watch the brazilian world cup game, so I headed out over the southern landing spot.

I had only passed through descending pockets on my way out there, which was a little downputting, but I was still at the level of the ramp when I got there, so I decided to play around a bit instead of trying to get somewhere else.

I had watched several instructional videos on wingovers yesterday and thought I should give it a good go to see if I could get it right after last weeks failed effort. I started a progressive turn to the right with plenty of weight shift. I then shifted my weight to the high side and waited for the glider to swing down before braking up the other side. I tried 3 times, and 1 of them I pulled harder on the brakes and felt the glider dive with a lot more energy into the turn. It was a good feeling but I worried a bit about how I would come out the other side, and slowed down a bit which threw me off.

I had then lost plenty of height and turned into the wind to land. The wind at ground level was stronger than I expected and I inched forward and dropped down quite quickly to land in the valley.

I packed up and waited for Jussara to arrive before racing off to Swisstool to see the game with Fernando and Gina.

Total flight time 15mins