Freesteel Blog » 2019 » August

Saturday, August 31st, 2019 at 3:13 pm - - Canyon, Hang-glide

The dates were set by Becka planning to spend one night in Interlaken on Friday 2 August between four weeks on the CUCC caving expedition in Austria and a one week caving expedition up a hill called the Sagistal to the east of the city, followed by a weekend at Sinterlaken the Swiss Caving Congress. This was then intended to lead into two separate week-long caving expeditions back in Austria (Plankamira and Datchstein), capped by a caving holiday down in the Ardeche in early September. However, I said: “Could we do something together that’s fun for me, because you ought to have got enough caving done by then?” and so, at great sacrifice, a canyoning holiday was scheduled.

I drove out to Interlaken on my own with my hang-glider on the 30 July, booked into Manor Farm 1 at £28/night for a narrow slot, and showed up the next morning at the Landplatz Lehn where I knew there was an english professional tandem pilot employed by hang-gliding interlaken to fly tourists off the hill at the rate of up to six flights a day, which is a heck of a lot of work.

Their van took me up to their favourite Amisbuhl takeoff between the trees (the taxi rate is 7Fr), helped me over the tedious 15 minute carry up a private road, and took three complete rounds of passengers airborn in the time it took me to set up and stand on the edge gibbering about doing a nil-wind takeoff. I have an experience of completely screwing these up with two crashes on take-off at Ager last year.

They say they have 300 flyable days at Interlaken, which is true because there’s enough shelter that they can fly in almost any condition, between bands of rain and cloud. They’re not all good flyable days.

(more…)

Monday, August 12th, 2019 at 3:58 pm - - Flightlogger, Hang-glide

I thought I had published this long form article in the blog until I looked for it. Turned out I’d accidentally left it on github here. Text is below the fold.

(more…)

Monday, August 12th, 2019 at 3:32 pm - - Hang-glide

After many days at Interlaken, generally flying down from various takeoffs and ramps, I got the opportunity and nerve to finally fly at Fiesch, where I got to see over the glaciers.

Flight 1 was easy; up and across the ridge into the Goms valley, thus saving me from the landing field at the bottom of takeoff. At the end of the flight I was caught in the convergence in the middle of the valley that took me back to 2800m. The only way down was to go to the edge of the valley and circle down.

Flight 2 was harder as I had to get really high first and then there was no lift for miles along the side of the valley until I was saved by a very slow climb on a particular ground collapse. There were some moments of zero-G on that flight. No matter how high I got, there were still always rocks above me.