Freesteel Blog » Nothing Serious Went Wrong

Nothing Serious Went Wrong

Friday, May 29th, 2015 at 3:53 pm Written by:

Five days of a hang-gliding competition in rainy Yorkshire, and nothing went amazingly right either. Where was that easy XC soaring conditions that we were promised? Even so, the proper champions managed to fly 60, 70, 80kms on days when I got too low and had to land.

windbanktoolow

In this instance, I packed up, carried the glider back up to the top of the hill for a back-breaking two hours of frustration, rigged alone, did a dodgy self-launch into late in the day filthy conditions and only then noticed that the base-bar was sticky. I was bleeding all over it from a slashed flap of skin on my forefinger with no recollection of how it got that way. No one can fault me for lack of effort.

Becka joined me for the last few days, including one where competition was canceled and there was some free-flying. I missed the one chance in a decade to persuade her to take a tandem flight that was available. Bugger.

wethercrowd

Then there was another day of competition, where I spent 3 hours in the air among a wheeling massing gliders, failing the get anywhere, though quite surprised I didn’t hit anything. The crop thinned out towards the end when I was forced to land by the strengthening wind.

haweslanding

And then, on the final day, when the wind was completely off and the clouds were dark and low, three of us club-class competitors realized we had to do at least something, and all came off the end of the hill (seen on the horizon on the right) and bee-lined right across the valley to a field by a road.

Turned out not to be scary at all. Should have done it earlier.

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