Happy New Year, Bring it on!

Chinese (and Korean!) New Year, on the second new moon after winter solstice, is a more fitting date to mark a new year than the Western alternative. The days are lengthening, and—for frustrated soaring pilots like me—the first breaths of spring thermals are just around the corner.

This time last year, I was psyched up for an assault on the UK XC league. But “life” got in the way—work, family and plain bad luck. My season was epitomized by a 2 week holiday at the end of July—the only flyable day turned out to be the only day that I was not free to go flying on. Desperation set in. Not achieving my goal was driving me mad.

My luck eventually turned in August, on our family holiday in Slovenia. I had some of the best flying in my life, my first proper mountain flying for years. I rediscovered my love of big air and big mountain scenery. There’s no substitute for the feeling of sheer energy you get when you’re banked round in a thermal flying at 25mph and climbing at over 10mph vertically. Rock faces rush past, then fade into insignificance as you hit the white fluffy stuff.

Another source of inspiration towards the end of 2009 was the series of articles on pilotage in Parapente Mag by David Eyraud. I realized that there’s so much to more to learn—and so much fun to be had—even on “boring soaring” days, even on my local grey UK hills. XC flying does not have to be the be-all-and-end-all.



So for 2010, I plan to build on these sources of inspiration. I don’t know when I’ll have chance to fly. But whenever I do, I’ll forget my goals and simply enjoy each day to the max.

As the great Slovenian Himalayan climber Nejc Zaplotnik wrote, we all should live and appreciate every single day:

Kdor isce cilj, bo ostal prazen, ko ga bo nasel.
Kdor najde pot, bo cilj vedno nosil v sebi.

Literally in English: He who is looking just for the goal, will stay empty when he finds it.
But the one who finds the way, will always carry his goal inside.

To me, these words are a nice reminder that the journey is more important than the destination. It’s a philosophy that’s nothing new to many of us, but it’s easy to keep forgetting it within the confines of our everyday modern existence.

My 2009 season in brief

10 Classic soaring articles for XC paragliding available online

Glider pilots discovered thermals in the 1930’s, and much of the current theory of soaring flight has been well understood since the 1950’s. A vast body of “skylore” languishes in out-of-print books, back issues of flying magazines, and the minds of old timers.

I’ve spent countless (unflyable!) hours digging out scraps of this knowledge on the internet. The articles linked here are the best I’ve found.

Skywatch - Tom Bradbury (pt1)(pt 2)

Bradbury is known in paragliding circles for his book ‘Meterology and Flight’, but his articles published in Sailplane & Gliding are the real gems. Skywatch describes thermals and cumulus clouds, suggests where to find the best lift, and notes unhelpful clouds and areas to avoid.

Skywatch was serialized in Cross Country Magazine (10 parts from issue 49), and the version linked here was published by the Soaring Association of Canada in their magazine, Free Flight.

Free Flight re-published numerous Bradbury articles; highly recommended are: Finding lift, Evolution and decay of cumulus, Cumulus spreadout, All about thermals, and Thermalling in the blue. All these and more are also accessible from the search page of Free Flight, and there’s a good summary article here.

Getting to the core of clouds - John Coutts

Techniques for searching under cumulus differ according to the size of the cloud. (First published in Sailplane and Gliding Jun/Jul 2000).

Cross country basics - Jay Rebbeck

4 part series first published in Sailplane & Gliding Dec 2000 / Jan 2001, pieced together from various sources:

1. Reading the sky ahead Overview of where to find lift, and long-, medium- and short term decisions
2. How to thermal better Clarifies the apparent contradiction of “tighten on the surge” and “widen out in the strongest lift”
3. Searching the sky Further notes on searching for lift
4. Getting your soaring up to speed Choosing the best gliding speed

Lowdown on the Alps - William Malpas (pt1)(pt2)

Introducing the main micro-climates of the Alps and the concept of thermodynamic lift—how to find it, and how to fly in it. Written as a primer for glider pilots inexperienced in Alpine conditions.

Flying in the lee - Bruce Goldsmith

Factors to consider when assessing the safety of a lee-side. Vital information for Alpine flying.

Low loss flying - George Moffatt

Double World Champion Moffatt has written at length on the tactics and psychology of competition. This article on how to go faster by minimizing small errors also features in his book, Winning II.

How to fly faster - Dave Masson

How to increase your average climb rate—and speed/distance—by thinking ahead.

Flying further and faster - Maurice Bradney

An 84 page collection of lecture notes. Standout chapter on thermal structure and the daily thermal cycle based on material by double world champion Ingo Renner.

Fundamentals of Convection - Robert Dorning (pt1)(pt2)(pt3)

An Australian meteorologist takes a more technical look at soundings. Notes on the nocturnal inversion and daily thermal cycle, the superadiabatic layer, and (pre-RASP!) thermal and cloudbase forecasting.

Thermals - Will Gadd

3 part thermalling series dealing with ground sources, cloud reading and thermalling technique. If you took aside the ex-holder of the paragliding world record in the pub and pumped him for tips, you’d get this.

In Gadd’s words: “Finally, all of the above writing is just my own theory based off sailplane books, conversations with other pilots and personal experience. What really matters is your own theory; question it and refine it continuously for best results.”.

Further information

Forget the net! Think books and mags (best value: out-of-print sailplane books and back issues of mags on eBay), or better still—just fly, fly, fly.

Epic spring flying

XC flying conditions in northern England this spring have been unusually good; what’s more—the best days have fallen on the weekends, which—after a poor 2007 and 2008—proves the adage: “Be it fair or be it wet, the weather always pays its debt”.

My season started auspiciously. Sunday 29th March—the first day of British Summer Time—dawned with a crystal-clear blue sky. The day also marked the first opening of the negotiated corridor of airspace around Robin Hood airport, and I was delighted to fly through it on the way to Eggborough for 63km.

The highlight of that flight was the thermal I hooked near Grimethorpe. Often on XC, I end up groping my way to the next scraggy slab of lift without ever discovering its provenance, but this time it was textbook. I had spotted a cloud shadow passing over a big slag heap next to a town and with a slope facing the sun and wind. I bumbled around a wide area of glassy zero sink, eagerly waiting for the thermal to rise up to me, and within a minute my faith was rewarded by the best climb of the day. I discovered that, like loaves of bread, thermals are best enjoyed fresh!

Looking more closely, it appears that the heat source was the industrial area and the town, and the trigger was the cloud shadow and the slope downwind of the town.

The following Sunday there were some magnificent flights. Andy Wallis, John Stevenson and Jean-Luc Boudin flew from Eyam to Whitby, around 150km straight line and a new site record. Steve Etherington also made a superb site record from Parlick of 110km.

Amazingly, the weather again came good the next weekend in the North and West. No doubt fuming at missing the previous Sunday’s big prize by going to the wrong site, John Ellison went to the right site—Staggs Fell in the Dales—and flew a gobsmacking 150km on a day that many pilots managed only top-to-bottoms. The next day, people were boating around the Lake District skies at 7000ft, a day that Steve E. dubbed “the best day in the Lakes in 10 years”.

On a personal note, I’ve been tied up with family and work since that first day of the season, so here’s hoping that the recent epic weather is an omen of good things to come. The weather has not yet repaid its debt in full!

Pule: my first spring thermals

AWESOME. Full-on spring thermals and wind today at Pule. Straight-lining it and going up at over 5m/s on the averager, I ended up over Standedge—2Km upwind—on full bar, desperately trying to stay below the 3000ft base of Manchester CTA.

2008: my summer of (para-)love

Autumn leaves are falling and I've got the blues. Flying-wise, 2008 was my best summer of the past 17. I achieved my long-term goal of 50 miles with a 100K flight. The success was due to my work shift finishing at lunchtime on a significant proportion of the few good XC days.

Nonts and Hawkswick: summer should have been like this

August 2008 was the [dullest since 1929](http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/2008/august.html "Met Office UK climate pages"). An improvement finally came in the second half of September. I enjoyed the dog ends of the summer thermals at Nont Sarahs on Thursday 18th and at Hawkswick on Saturday 20th.

Glide ratio: how much does it matter?

Stepping up to a higher performance glider or switching to a race harness could earn you a better [glide ratio][1] by 0.5 point. But what does this actually mean in terms of flying cross-country in the UK? I decided to investigate the theoretical answer with a few "back of the envelope" calculations. And I discovered that—on the average glide in the UK—*a 0.5 pt inferior glide ratio will cost you only one circle in the next thermal*.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glide_ratio "Wikipedia entry"