All too soon it's over for another year

The option was there to fly for the day but it looked like a replay of Friday so we instead packed up and headed for the ferry, taking 14 hours from Serres to home.

That was another year of very interesting and fun flying. 56 hours in 9 days and something like 3,200kms XC. Wave to FL195, 11kt therm riding , ridge bashing, public entertaining, alfresco dining, poker playing, scenery rubber necking etc etc. It's a fabulous place, a privilege to fly from there with great mates and to learn from the true master of the skies: Klaus Ohlmann. The guy is unbelievably knowledgable, shares all his learning openly and retains boundless enthusiasm and energy. He's unique.

Yes, you need to stay in your limits, always have a series of options to choose from if/when things don't work out as planned, constantly stay on your game with focus and consciously manage the stress to make good decisions. But if it appeals and you get the chance: go.

Final cake of the day: Sue's Kiwi Cake (looks yummy to me)

Diamonds in the sky

So it's congratulations to Mike Collett on his diamond height. He started the day with a high speed run over the field to get a low point of 2,900' and finished off with 19,500' over Gap.

We launched as a compact team of T6, KV, JTU and HA at 1100 and started with a reconnaisance of last night's tragic dual fatality 10kms East of site. Very, very sad as the two brothers were good old boys.

We ran St genis/Chabre/Gache and out to Authon where there was a tetchy little debate about whether we'd started too early. We did howeverget away and ran down to Aiguines on the Verdon gorge and then to the airfield at Fayence where we got a hazy view of the Med. Then it was a scrabble to get back up and on to Briancon where cloudbase was 13,000'. We ran back towards Serres over the Ecrins (always fun running the spines at high level) and tracked for Serres and photo opportunities. By accident we ran into wave at 9,500' and after a little perseverence climbed all the way up to the airspace ceiling at 19,500' .

Cake of the day: JTC it's Eccles Cake

A cautionary tale

Rule number one is don't hit the hill.

The pictures here are very instructive - thanks to John Herman for permission to share them. John's tale is roughly as follows...

"I was soaring Les Monges with one other glider. On the third beat I moved out from the hill to make way for the oncoming other machine. As I did there appeared a hole in the air and the glider simply dropped with no response to controls, even though I pushed forward and applied full aileron away from the hill."

That really is John standing on the hill just above the glider straight after the impact. Thank the Lord he's alright. Let's be careful out there.