livin' & learnin'...

Two flights today - with very different excitement levels

The second flight was basically a sleddie - there was a light drift over the back (sometime a light breeze swinging NE or NW) and I waited for awhile before finally front launching with a light downhill tailwind drift. Lots of running, lost a fair bit of height before getting clear of the hill but once clear the air was very buoyant. I still haven't figured out the Aspen in microlift condition - but this flight was a good on for getting a bit closer. I managed to maintain a sink rate of around 0.2-0.7m/s most of the way to above the house (although dropping out of it to one side or the other several times) - so I am improving but there's still a long way to go before it's instinctive. Approaching the house the sink increased but there was a super light thermal rising above the house. Even with the flattest turns possible I was only able to reduce my sinkrate to 0.1m/s for a number of turns before it passed through and I landed.

The first flight was the exciting one - although not much longer. Launch conditions at 5pm were similar to the later flight but I the lift was better. I swooped in and out of a light bubble of lifting air near windsweeps before heading out over the key plantation. The air felt a bit funny and I kept looking up to check that the wing was ok. There was a climb over the key plantation, but it was really small and I couldn't get a full turn in it. Still, by getting half of each circle in the core and swooping around quickly I was at least climbing and I knew if I could just keep this up I'd soon be able to do a full circle in the core and then I'd be beepin' my way outa the paddock.

It was as I approached launch height that I got the collapse, and I wonder if it was caused by the thermal meeting the light prevailing wind blowing over the back. Anyway, it was a big collapse and I'm not wildly happy with my initial response to it. Sure I weightshifted, but not enough and I didn't maintain my heading. I'm guessing most of the wing was folded under because we were dropping out of the sky and pumping the other side didn't seem to be doing anything. When a rotation started to develop I pulled down both brakes (my first stall for real, I guess) and looking up at the wing it soon popped back into basically the right shape (although pulled back in the stall) so I released, controlled the surge and flew back towards the key plantation. I'd lost stacks of height though, and didn't find any lift strong enough to encourage me to circle in it so landed a minute later.

In retrospect (that wonderful thing!) I think the air felt funny because I was flying in the lee-side of the hill -even though the prevailing wind was quite light. I've re-evaluated my thoughts on the safety of launching in those conditions, and I also feel that if I were more experienced with collapses and in-touch with the wing I could have prevented or minimised the drasticity (nice word, that :-) of the situation.

We live and we learn.