Archive for June, 2008

 

The spirit of the few.

June 27th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

A visit to RAF Cosford yesterday. A fantastic range of aircraft and things to read while the rain beat down outside the exhibit hangars. After Cosford, I dragged Paul and Nigel Prior around Shrewsbury to see all the sights proudly advertised in the local guidebook. Today, we actually started flying a short 30km ridge running […]

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A bleak outlook for the British Championships.

June 25th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

After a short XC from Bache Hill yesterday, with most of the BPC pilots landing at around 6km (Only John Ellison made the 40km or so to their goal at Montgomery), the expected poor weather has

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Monday in Shropshire and 96k

June 23rd, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

My first flying day in the UK and high expectations for all the pilots attending the Long Mynd event who have been suffering 2 days of bad weather. Lucky me once again and my arrival in the UK coincides with

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SW and high base.

June 21st, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

Today the trace looked good, with a base in the upper 3000metres, and a light to moderate SW wind. Some upper level instability, causing largish build ups before noon, and forming shadow on the hill. The wind never came onto Peña Negra, much to the regret of ourselves and the 50 or so pilots of […]

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Colin the hero as Classic conditions return

June 20th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

Epic conditions today, but although the Avila valley was booming with the convergence set up from early on, the Piedrahita valley took a while to get going, taking most of our group down at the quarry, even though we waited almost an hour on the ridge for things to improve. While hords of pilots (french […]

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+120KM, But not for us.

June 19th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

A 20km SW wind, with quite stable conditions in El Valle de Corneja, though in Amble (Avila Valley) there were good Cu from early on. A bit crossed and strong for the likes of my group, so we returned for the evening flight. Some spaniards who took off around 3pm were reported to have passed […]

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Light SW and 2800m and convergence..but

June 18th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

The group decided to forgo the early flight and concentrate on the XC. Unfortunately, they all landed without hooking into the climb at the Quarry. So, with an epic cloud street towards Avila, all my guest were down, with only me high at the pass. Ah well! For the evening flight we took off at […]

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Post frontal day

June 17th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

After Monday’s front, today was an excellent flying day with amazing visibility and a very pretty Cu filled sky. the early flight had the base less than 100m above the hill, but the thermals were good enough to range well out into the middle of the valley. For the XC flight, Colin was the first […]

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A grand (flying) day out.

June 15th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

for our final day, after a week of stealing a flight here and there amongst generally poor conditions, the Saturday came up with some very pleasant thermic and light wind conditions allowing us 4 flights during the day, with small XC excursions along the valley towards the pass, and a classic evening restitution flight, ridge […]

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Walking day

June 14th, 2008 - Posted by Steve Ham

On thursday the wind was too strong, but it was warm and sunny, so a walk in the mountains was the suggested activity for the day. I decided to take the guys to the lagoon called Laguna del Duque See the description in the routes section. It is one of my favorite walks because it […]

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