Easter weekend brought a bumper 4 day BCC round in SE Wales. True to form Friday was rained off, but then Carolyn and I were visiting my parents. Saturday saw the Malvern team head to Tal-y-bont where they travelled many kms... by foot! Apparently they got some airtime in but not much as they chased what wind there was around the hill. I got some gardening done :o). Sunday I joined our intrepid team. To everyone's relief the site chosen was not Tal-y-bont, but Blorenge on the hope that the wind wouldn't go southerly too early.
A leisurly stroll across the top and then a wait for the comp director to find someone to open the gate so those not-so-fit could get to take-off without walking, got us to mid-day. Tall clouds only a few hundred foot above us and murk in the valley, plus precious little cycles of wind meant we were not in a hurry anyway. The task called was "an open triangle"! In other words open distance with up to two turn points. Much debate was had over routes etc., but I reckoned it'd be turn from the hill, turn into landing field. Not far from the truth in the end.
A few intrepid pilots launched, and re-launched, from the SE face, and a few managed to get up a bit and get away. The Malvern team, true to form, sat about waiting for things to get better. Parawaiting is what we do best! Eventually Bryan got away. I'd laid out next to Bryan and was ready to go when the cycle finished, so I waited for the next... and waited... The sun left the face, the cloud cover increased and pilots including myself, started lobbing off in the slightest puff of wind and headed out to Abergavenny Town where at least the sun was still shining.
After a lee side thermal kicked me I found small amounts of lift over a shoulder of the hill coming off the edge of town, but not enough to go anywhere, so headed out to the graveyard hoping to pick something up. If I didn't then I'd be there to land at Castle Meadows across the river. I did find a thermal - rough as blazes! Probably why I watched gliders fly right past me to land. Really hard to keep the glider in any consistent shape, but it was good enough to get me back up to about launch height. Good practice for low saves! But I soon lost it all heading for the slopes of Sugar-loaf and had to settle for landing out a mere 1km on - not quite enough to score minimum distance.
Chris, Ian and Stuart had to resort to nill-wind launches apparently. I watched Chris and others drift in a light thermal from the landing area towards my landing spot, but most turned and settled for Castle Meadows - only a couple tried to go further.
Eventually we all met up at the LZ and found Bryan had let the side down having gone over 8km and thus scored!
Monday's round cancelled. Apparently no-one wanted to walk up Tal-y-bont again for the strong southerlies forecast... More gardening for me!
Posts
