Malcs

Weather looking very good tomorrow from 10 right through to 7, was right to cancel today, overcast and a bit gusty! Will catch any of you that want to join us up there tomorrow! Cheers Malc

Looking too cold and windy now on Monday so I'm probably gonna go Tuesday instead although that may be too cloudy! Damn this sport sucks sometimes but at least I can be flexible with my days off!

Oh bugger, anybody else? Don't fancy being a billy no mates up there on my birthday!!

Come on then, who else qualified or is that a sore point?

Queer F***ing Idiot? Quick Fart Inducer? Questionable Fanny Inspector?? Sure, will give a call matey!

Hopefully Simon will be about as I have a friend from Swindon who is interested in training and wants to have a look on Monday. Simon where are ya matey? Also, anyone got any idea how boggy it will be up that slope?

Great Mike, the more the merrier, am sure it will be fine with SW but of course we'll wait for his permission, not sure when they are all back from France?

Just checked the weather for Monday and it looks superb. It's my birthday too so I'll take the damn day off and sod it, see if I can get my best flight to date! Anybody wanna join me, might get up there Tuesday as well as that looks good too!

Of course competition is a great thing especially where skill and safety techniques are concerned. Without it a single organisation would stagnate and leave us vulnerable, hopefully PMC will cause BHPA to look at their own syllabus and make them up their game and vice versa. Nobody was shouting about it when BMAA were invloved so why are they complaining now apart from the obvious fact that someone might actually be making an effort to do something better than them. Personally I would rather go with an organisation that specialises purely in the sport I'm doing, I have no interest whatsoever in floating over a hill or flying a fixed wing glider! I look forward to see the outcome of this current excercise and wish you Norman and co evey success with it, I'll happily be fodder another time, not sure if I'm cut out to be an instructor but nice to have the skills to be! Malc PS: Where's the bloody weather gone?

Well said Norman, it does get rather irritating when you are doing your very best and people try to prevent you from reaching your goals! I've not met Paul but I met Piers, he flew over as I was attempting a take off and then landed and gave me some great advice. I can't imagine for one second that the chap I met would put his name to anything unless it was tip top and professional. There do seem to be 2 very divided camps in this sport in the UK, what a damn shame that is!

Hi Woody Skydragons sell this by the metre. http://www.skydragons.co.uk/index.php?p ... Itemid=161 Cheers Malc

Funds permitting I should have this in the next couple of weeks. The new Panasonic Lumix TZ7, awesome piece of kit for a compact with 12 x Optical Zoom and HD Video too, also has an Aerial setting on it along with burst mode plus bracketed shots so no real possibility of getting a bunch of blurred pics whilst flying. Perfect for our sport me thinks! http://www.dpreview.com/news/0901/09012 ... nictz7.asp [/url]

Neil, don't push it, force it or get flustered about it, when I did my course I was the last one to get airborne and it seemed that just as everything went right it would all go wrong again and sometimes I just could not get the wing in the air at all. Then I went through an entire summer (as many on here witnessed) of just not being able to take off, partly through ability and partly through fear that I didn't have something right, approx 50 launches. Then one day last September everything suddenly felt right and I haven't failed a launch or takeoff since and you can't keep me on the floor. We are all different animals, we all have different ways of learning different things and our different mental state copes with it in different ways. A good instructor will allow for all those differences and guide you through, then after training all the other experienced pilots will continue helping you without forcing you against your natural pace. I've yet to meet an unhelpful pilot in this sport yet. Chill out, take your time, no rush! Malc

Yes, the more I look at those pics the more I realise I made a bad judgement and wonder what I was thinking, complacency kicked in I guess which is dangerous. I'm not put off though, far from it I just wish the weather would clear again so I can get another in, only 2 more to fill my first page in my pilots log! If I found I wasn't able to analyse this and understand what I did wrong then I'd give up for sure but we DO all learn from mistakes and errors of judgement providing they don't kill us! Cheers Malc

I was thinking about that exact quote whilst I was up there! Here's me taking off and heading for that gap just before I hit sink and got pulled towards that tree on my right!

I forgot to add one other part of this too, at one stage within the first couple of minutes I was about 30ft up and directly over a hedge on full power and not moving at all, it was like I was caught on a sky hook and just felt like I was going to suddenly drop out of the sky, most bizarre seeing your legs dangling with a hedge staying still. To get out of that I had to drop power to go backwards and lower and then try again when I found some cleaner air. I feel highly embarassed about the whole incident and am really mad at myself, I should have accepted the weather forecast even if I believed it to be wrong (which it clearly wasn't). Its not something I want to show off or laugh about but important for beginners and other newbies a bit further behind me to see what can happen from just a simple bad decision. I guess even experienced folk who have been lucky so far can benefit too. I'm going back to my 6mph maximum rule (I set myself that for my first 10 flights in order to gain experience, this was my 11th) and won't be taking off anywhere that I couldn't land safely within 30 seconds of airborne, no trees, pylons, just small hedges! Cheers Malc

I'll try not to dramatise this too much as I'm absolutely fine. Yesterday I made one of my worst decisions of my life, to go flying. I'd checked the net for conditions and to be honest they looked unflyable but my windsock and general feeling told me it was fine. I set up in a field a the end of the camp site I was staying at. There were a few trees in a v shape dead in front of me with a gap in the middle through which a breeze was blwing nicely for a simple take off, figured I'd have plenty of room to be well clear of the trees even if I went a bit of course on take off. I grabbed my ground handling harness for a quick dummy run to check stability and tangles. Popped up a treat and I ran the length of the field perfectly straight with no issues at all. So, chucked the motor on my back and went for a forward launch (could have done reverse but I keep catching my helmet in lines and bringing the wing down, I have enough grunt to keep a wing from pulling me over on a forward). Wing popped up perfectly and after a single bounce I was airborne and got a very quick lift which was just what I wanted to clear those trees and in any case I was facing directly through the gap. Then I hit sink and got dragged sideways towards the bigger trees and the canal directly behind them and pulling a huge amount of left brake made no difference so i figured I'd let hands up and go where it was taking me but on full power hoping I'd clear the tree. Vital lesson here is that had I gotten an engine failure I would most certainly have crashed into the trees! Bad choice of Takeoff site! Cleared the tree by a couple of feet and then I was a complete passenger for about 20 seconds getting thrown all over the place but mostly dragged to the right which was exactly where I didn't want to go due to the canal and then the huge River Severn behind that. I was applying left brake but found myself facing left with the wing facing right so worried I'd get fully turned 180 degrees in the risers I again let it take me where it wanted and kept full power on to try to get some height and get above the turbulence but the higher I got the worse it became so I let power down to get really low instead and found I was then able to steer better to the left but was only about 30ft off the ground and getting regular lift and sink, eventually I got myself over a huge open field and felt a bit more in control but knew I was a long way from takeoff field and no vehicular access possible and didn't fancy the walk back. So I turned round for some low level hedge hopping and tried to get back nearer to my van (what a pillock, I had a chance to land safely and didn't take it) as I turned again and back into wind I attempted a quick landing and got hit by a crosswind so hit the power again and took myself straight back into the same turbulence I'd suffered a few minutes before (DOH!) and had to make the same decisions to get back to that big field where I made a perfect landing (my best yet) on both feet only to be dragged over by the wing a second or 2 later, I actually landed on about half power to save myself from going backwards, instinct had taken over by this time. My fiancee's entire family had watched me take off, struggle, then disappear and the engine go quiet. I of course phoned them straight away, bagged up the wing and started the long haul back about 1.5 miles in sunshine across boggy fields, got charged by a bull who backed off when I attempted to ram him with the prop. So, naturally I feel quite stupid, analysing it since I reckon those few trees were masking what the wind was really doing up there and they were causing quite a bit of rotor too hence my sink on take off, plus the cold air from the canal meeting the warm air from the land was causing further lift and sink which I hadn't considered. Possibly a small part of me was determined to show my extended family that I could fly this contraption, maybe that clouded my judgement slightly. In some respects that was the most terrifying 10 minutes of my life but at the same time I felt myself dealing with it in a very matter of fact way without panicking and I was able to bring it to a safe end, but I'm aware that a little more rotor or a stronger gust or two could easily have taken me off the planet for good! Hope others can learn from my experience this weekend, I certainly have, if ever again I have any slight doubts about anything at all, I'll be staying on the ground thanks! Malc

I'm not far away from you in Chipping Sodbury, there are quite a lot of pilots in your area but hardly any of them use the internet, there's a flying site (albeit a not very good one) at Standish just North of Stonehouse! I don't personally know of anyone around here that does tandem flights. Personally I don't think a tandem flight would really tell you whether you'd enjoy it or not. There's something about having complete control of where you want to go and being on your own. Cheers Malc

No, thought about it, felt very guilty as I locked him in the van and took to the sky myself, how bloody selfish of me!

Had my first real XC last night, went off and followed a huge triangle and covered 30 miles. My tenth flight (7 hours 45min total) and 3rd one this year, hard to believe all the problems I had last year, my wing generally only inflates once when I get to the field now and thats the inflation I take off with. Went to get my camera out to take some pics of the other chap I was flying with and as I went for the zip on my flight suit I killed the engine on my visor which threw me into a blind panic and heavy breathing trying to find the pull start, then relaxed and figured from my height it would be 3 - 5 minutes before hitting the ground, found the handle, attached to foot strap and started no probs. Then we turned to the sun and had a huge haze so I didn't bother with the cam at all. Felt a bit weird being so far away from the T/O field and I never quite got used to it or relaxed fully, still feels very surreal to me as if I'm looking at the ground through someone elses eyes or on a computer screen, never seems real that I'm actually up there! Anybody else have that sensation? Am well chuffed with my Pap, always seems so start by the 3rd kick and never misses a beat, wing too feels solid and safe! Just got to fix my landings now, can't seem to do it, only landed on feet once and that was the time I couldn't get in my seat so just did one circuit. Everyone tells me I look like I come in to land as if I'm leaning back on a deck chair so gotta figure a way of throwing myself forward somehow! Happy days and a lovely looking weekend ahead too! Cheers Malc

Wish I'd joined you lot now, had a poxy half hour in the morning from a field north of Weston whilst we waiting for tide to go out and then headed down the beach and parawaited for the wind to drop below 12mph but it never did, apparently just a few miles in land it was completely still, oh well, ya live and learn, at least I managed to get one in and do another bloody awful landing straight on to my arse!!

The mind boggles why anyone would choose to fly without a reserve for the sake of £300 and a couple of kg. Haven't we already lost one pilot who might still be here had he taken a reserve up with him?

Dave, my pap has the reserve behind the head and on my last flight of last year I imagined myself falling to the earth and figured it would not be easy or natural to grab it in a hurry, I actually found it difficult and awkward to locate while just floating in a still breeze. One of my purchases this year will be a front mounted container with cockpit. After I've splashed out on the latest Lumix camera of course!

Already commited to Weston Beach with my mate that lives there so if anyone wants to join us then shout and we'll arrage a meeting point! Wind down there should be a smooth 3-4mph all day and miles of take off and landing space!

Smoking?? I've not seen you smoking Pete. No need for hypnotics, just do what I did 4 weeks ago, told myself I hated cigarettes and they disgusted me and that I wanted to live a longer and more enjoyable life without chest pains. Not touched one since, no patches, no gum, total cold turkey and though I've put on a few pounds I feel much better for it!