Newcastle Hang Gliding Club

I sent a text last night which, as it turns out had a little bit of mis-information. Thomas did win the day on his C4, but he was not flying in the Open class, but the "Lite" class similar to a Floater class, but you can fly any glider in it. Second in Lite class was an Atos. The Open class was won by Primoz.

I also said that I didn't have internet access, but apparently I do!

Thursday morning, I woke in my tent, lent to me by Roman. It was about 6:30am and I saw no reason not to get up. There were a couple of other pilots awake already, and a construction crew, complete with crane erecting a new hangar not 20 metres from where we are camped.

After breakfast, I started helping load the gliders onto the trailers and trucks to be taken up the mountain later in the day. This went on for a few hours as more and more pilots turned up, until the breifing was held and we all jumped into the busses to head up the hill.

As we started climbing the mountain, I could see across the Swiss "Flat Lands" to the Pre-Alps on the other side, steep, rugged mountains still white very late in spring from their blanket of snow. The views soon dissapeared as the motorway dove into a tunnel under the mountains. About 45 minutes later we all got out of the busses and walked the last 500m to Launch. The trucks and trailers took the gliders, but I suppose they want to limit the wear and tear on the dirt road to their launch. We walked past swiss cows,
Watch this video on Youtube
complete with cowbells right at the peak of the mountain. The fields are a lush green and dotted many colourful flowers, mostly yellow and white. I can't believe I'm acutally here. walked through a small forest of pine trees, and then around a corner and out to an view of a windsock blowing back at us from launch not a hundred metres away now.

Gliders were quickly carried up and with amazing Swiss efficiency, Roman, Nicole, Bernie Elizabet and Jo had everyone laying their gliders out in the correct numbered setup spaces. The Task comittee came up with a task for the day and the safety committee clearly did everything they needed to do because everyone stayed safe.

As a Wind Dummy, sorry Wind Technician, I was able to set up in the marked launch area, as did one other Wind Tech, Juerg a local Swiss pilot. When I decided to do the "Lite" task, I entered the waypoints into my GPS and noticed that my battery was almost flat, so as both the main and backup batteries in my Vario were almost fully charged, I swapped two batteries out of the Vario into the GPS, so now with two flat and two full batteries, the GPS showed a better charge. Alas, this was not to last.

The Glider I have been loaned is an Enterprise Wings Foil Combat. The wires all look to be just about new, and everything was in good condition. Bernie, who has loaned me the glider warned me that it was a good glider, but that the colours are a little bit Gay. I'm not sure what Neil will think of this statement though, because I'm pretty sure he once had a glider with exactly the same light blue and pink colour scheme.

Juerg launched, then I was away. a good, strong run quckly got the old girl in the air. As I got out in front of the ridge, and turned to follow it up the valley. As soon as I did this, I started wing walking. I had it in mind to keep an eye out for PIO on this glider, and so quickly realised that I was flying very fast, so I let the bar out, leveled off and started to climb. After a couple of passes in front of the ridge immediately in front of launch, I was a few hundred feet up, and locked in a nice gentle thermal. Before I knew what was happening I was at cloud base and flying fast to get down out of the wispies.

I noticed that Juerg was going North East along the ridge, so figured I may as well follow him. After about a Kilometer, we found lift and circled back up to cloud base, we did this three or four times over the next few kilometers, each time with Juerg just topping out as I got into the lift, then circling up to cloudbase and off on glide after him.

We got to the point where the valley narrows and landing areas were few and far between. He was about a kilometer ahead of me and quite low. I continued following after him, taking a line more over the top of the ridge than he had, hoping to bump into something. He eventually turned tail and raced back low above the trees until he found lift a couple of kilometers back. I eventually got too low for comfort, and with no sunlit areas ahead, turned out to a sunny patc in the middle of the valley. I got there about half way down from ridge height before I found lift over a new Motorway bridge under construction. I managed to stay with this lift back up to the ridge and eventually found cloud base again. I turned to have another go towards the turnpoint, now about 3km away, but when I went to check the distance, I saw that the GPS was turned off. I turned it back on again, and confirmed the 3km, but when it turned off again, I figured I didn't really need the turnpoint, and as there was no-one to play with yet, i thought I may as well head back along the ridge to find where everyone was at. Lift back to cloudbase each time was easy to find on the way back. Once I was within about 2km of the launch point, I could see one huge gaggle circling together near launch. I thought I'd go join them and wait for the start clock to open then follow them so that the thermals were marked for me. I glided off, towards them losing a few hundred feet, so when I found light lift, I figured it best to get back up to the clouds, so started turning. As I came around from a turn, I looked towards the gaggle. It had changed. No longer was it a communal gathering of moths all helping each other to mark the lift and stay high together, now every single one of the hundred or so gliders were pointed straight at me, and coming fast! They had spread out into an infantry style line with their nose plates all pointed straight at my eyes. It was at first a quite scary, awe inspiring sight, but then the exhilaration of the site overcame my fear and I raced on to meet them.

I was already a bit lower than most of them, and they were mostly flying modern topless gliders or rigid wings, so I was confident that we'd not get too close to each other. I found some light lift to circle in as they passed overhead. As I slowly climbed back up to base, I saw them all gliding straight off past all my weak thermals and past where I had been afraid to go without slowing down.

I spent a while then trying to stay at base until someone else glided off towards the airport so I had someone to go with. I spent a lot of time circling wide around thremals to stay in the weak lift that wouldn't pull me up into the cloud, but then I ended up low and a little bit too far over the back. I saw a glider low in the valley behind, and lots of large paddocks, so figured I could try the other side of the valley about a km away. I found lift before the ridge and followed the lift up above the ridge, then lost it. I tried to find some on the sunlit ridge top, but ran along it until I had to peel off into the valley. Back up the valley I went, checking the landing options. The other guy had landed in a long straight paddock, so I was prepared to join him. Eventually, down to about 400' i unzipped and prepared to turn around ahd go to the landing paddock, then beep, beeep, beepbeep beepbeepbeepbeepbeep. I dropped my wingtip into the lift and circled up. An Atos piloted by Thomas eventually joined me in the thermal and we rode it up high. He left before cloud base, but I followed it all the way up to base. It took about twenty minutes, and I bet the guy down in the paddock was wishing he'd found my thermal. I tried to drift with the lift back over Biel, so that I could slowly make it over town with sufficient height to make the Airport.

I lost the lift, but saw that I had glide at least for the landing paddock at the end of the speed section. Straight across the city and the lake. Not the biggest landing paddock, but a good safe option, so off I went. As I came across town, I could see that I would very very easily make the paddock, so I turned my eye to the hill on the way to the airport. I could see roads behind the hill moving further and further into view, so had glide over the hill. There were ample large paddocks just before the hill should I find sink on the way, so I went. As I went, I keept my eye on the Airport, thinking I didn't really have any chance of making it all the way there, but hoping beyond hope add to what had been an almost three hour spectacular flight, with a glorius no step landing right in front of my tent at the airport.

Also high in my thoughts was the fact that I've never landed this glider before, so couldn't be sure of it's glide capabilities. A nice long taxiway is ideal for figuring this out. I went wide around the ariport and lost height off the end of the taxiway, then came in for a long, final glide along the taxiway, past the hangars and press with their video camera not interseted in me. I was concentrating on not coming in too fast, but still with speed enough to pull off a good landing. I think I overdid the not too fast bit, and ended up flaring about a second too late, so didn't get my no-step landing, but you still can't wipe the grin from my face for such an amazing flight in such a beautiful country.