23rd aug

the top photo is of where we were staying for the week, the house was right oppisite the goal field. having flown 17 days out of 19 and completing a tough comp its time to go back to the rain / uk. i have two more comps to do before returning to Oz. Results and reports of the comp can be found via www.pgcomps.org.uk

23rd aug

I seem to alternating my good days and bad days but 2 bad tasks out of 5 is not too bad, lessons learnt is dont try to keep up with a dozon pwc pilots on comp wings and dont do 7k transitions between mountains when the area goes under shade, doh!

15th aug, comp time

The comp has begun, i have never been in a comp before with so many good pilots, there are 15 -20 pwc pilots here and we also have bruce goldsmith, russ ogden and charles cazuex as wind tech's, should be an intresting week.

12th aug

Am in st Jean for some pre comp flying, st Jean isnt a well known comp area but looks like it will be more popular in the future, its known for its lite winds and high bases and resonable sized mountains with lots of foot hills out front.

8th aug, st Andre

Am in st andre for a few days for some rough air training, st andre to me has always been a place i wouldnt go for recreational flying but i need to see what the m3 is like in rough air so here i am. and the answer is that the glider is good in rough air, doesnt move about as much as the m2. the photo is me escaping a growing cu nimb, about five minuets after this photo there was lightning striking the ground, i landed back at st andre and packed up shortly berfore the gust front and rain.

In France

Well after a month of rain in the uk i am pleased to see its not raining in France, its hot and sunny with lite wind, must be flyable. spent a few days flying Gourdon in the morning and Greoleier in the arvo, it intresting watching the ozone boys( Russ n Dav ) doing there testing,

i didnt know doing helicopters was part of the testing as they did lots of em.

RAIN,RAIN and more RAIN, not much paragliding going on here so i am off to the southern french alps next week, hooray.

Staying at my mates place in south Wales, my mate martin is a falconer and is looking after this perigrine for a while.

20?07/09

I won.

On Task

On Task it often helps to soar up the side of cloud, he he.

20/07/09 comp time

This is the british paragliding cup, a series of five comps around the uk held during the summer, most are 4 day cat 2 comps. this comp was the long mynd round, the long mynd is englands best long distance xc site, best distance is 190k ish. the weather of course was not playing ball and we sat around for 3 days before more promising weather turned up. up the hill we went , waited for the wind to drop a little then dialed in the task, an open launch was opened at 12,30 and most of the 50 + pilots launched, we flew the hill for an hour before we got away.

10/07/09 the first xc

took the M3 for its first xc today, it was a bit breezy and the site was a low hill called frocester, it is well known for long english xc's, a few local good xc pilots turned up and we all flew 30 -35 k except graham steel who flew 70k. i found the airspace a bit of a problem as there was a bit of dodging to do, at one point i was looking down the runway 0f an airbase that had 747's and stuff on the tarmac, i figuerd this might be the one to aviod which was a shame as i was climbing quite well, but towards it, a long glide downwind then land in the middle of nowhere. a bloke walked across the field who turned out to be a pg pilot who was on his way the the site i had just flown from, lift sorted = sweet.

Its here !!

Thank f*%~ my glider is finally here, it has come from Vietnam to sydney to canberra to yass, back to sydney then to london then coventry then wellwyn city and finally to me. it took it for its maiden flight today to the very high altitude launch of dunstable ( 90m ), managed to soar for 15 mins or so before some light rain came ( this is england afterall ) the glider flys sweet like a refined m2 so i look forward to flying it some more. ( note to self : must not let this blog be all about my new glider )

I'm here

4th july.
My transition to this other world known as the "northern hemispere" is now complete, i caught a plane i arrived, i tried to stay awake for the day then slept for 12 hours ( nice ). the flight ok with royal brunei trying to slug me for $210 for excess baggage as i was 4kg over, so i went round the corner, removed stuff from my glider bag into hand luggage, shoved stuff in to pockets and re-checked in at just under 21kg, after checkin in took my glider bag to oversize baggage as i insisted it was t big for there convyer belt anmd on the way put all my stuff back in to my bag ( fools haha ), with $210 saved meant a few drinkies to celibrate my cunning plan on the plane, damm its an islamic airline, no booze, curse you royal brunei.