A Quick Top to Bottom

Had I chosen a good day to take a half day off work? Well arriving early at the Devil's Dyke and seeing a few paragliders scratching around in the available lift was a good sign that the wind was on. After unloading my glider and rigging it I was ready to go. By now more paragliders had arrived and the sky was starting to look busy. The wind had a good proportion of west in it, so everyone was floating on the pub part of the ridge.

The lift was on and off but mainly fairly weak. After chatting with Tefal I decided now would be a good time to launch as I couldn't be sure if more paragliders were going to launch boxing me in. I waited for a hole in the paraglider traffic and launched when one became available. As I was the only hang glider present I opted to keep away from the majority of the paraglider traffic and flew a bit further out. The result of this was a few whiffs of a thermal that I managed to scratch around in with minimal success. Ultimately I was destined for the bottom landing field (still in crop).

I was now scratching around just above the tree line and observed most of the paragliders going for slope landings (I wish I could do that!). I was now low and opted to set-up my landing approach for the bottom landing spot. After a couple of s-turns I judged that I was now low enough to glide to the landing clearing. Like my previous flights I stuffed the bar and the glider came down nicely. Easing out I started gliding across the crop with the glider slowing. My toes started clipping the top of the crop which made an interesting noise but as soon as I entered the landing clearing I climbed further up the uprights eased the bar out further then flared. A perfect spot landing once again!

A short while later I was joined by a paraglider pilot in the bottom landing (Franko). After packing my glider I suggested we both walk back to the top together; of course, that was too much to expect some company during my ascent back to takeoff! Still, after collecting my car, I returned to collect my glider and return the paraglider pilot back to takeoff!

Back on takeoff the wind had increased significantly grounding all of the paragliders. A couple of hangies had now arrived and were preparing to fly, but alas, I had to go as I'd only had the morning off work!