Ajhayter

Hey everyone! It's going to be a few months/years before I can afford to actually partake this this sport, but since I've found out quite how cost effective it is (as far as flying goes anyway), I've decided to live on bread and water until I can afford to get going! I'll be buying the various media and starting to take more notice of weather reports and such, but there were a few questions that came to mind recently that I thought I'd ask out of the gate, so to speak. Firstly I'm not opposed to traveling a bit to get to a suitable site, especially for training, but does anyone know any in the Portsmouth area? Or would it be better to travel a little further afield for a better flight location? By my understanding the Class A airspace over the Portsmouth area gives me a flight ceiling (presuming I want to stay out of the class A) of between 6000ft and 10000ft (FL65 to FL105), depending on the specific area, while also having to maintain 1000ft above the tallest buildings (although safety says you would want more to allow easy landing in case of issues). From my look at the sport so far this seems like a perfectly reasonable operating area, but I can't help but think I may be better off travelling out to Haslemere/Godalming area, which seems to have no flight restrictions (or at least, only "Class X" on the Google Earth plugin downloads. Pretty sure class X doesn't mean anything from what I've read, but please correct me if not). Secondly - Cloud Soaring. Looks cool, being above the clouds must be awesome, but I can't help but think that other aircraft won't be able to get visual in the clouds, and you can't really tell how deep they are (and thus how long it would take to get through the cloud layer). Am I being rightly cautious or it this actually not that dangerous? Please understand that these are just some questions that came to mind. It's going to be a long time before I can actually get involved, so I'll have plenty of time to pick up some resources and proper air maps and read over these things so I have a proper understanding by the time I'm ready to head skyward. Regards, Adam Hayter