Spain SGP

Well that all seemed to go well. The contest was held at Santa Cilia on the West end of the Pyrenees - a place I haven't flown at before. Beautiful scenery in the air, loads of really big birds: vultures, buzzards, eagle, a big easy airfield and locally good outlanding fields. The only downside is the building of a new motorway along the valley, like much of Spain it will be really nice if they ever finish it.

Over the top of the Pyrenees with no spare tyre

It all started a bit shakily - I popped a trailer tyre in a service station and had a tough time changing it. I was then stupid enough to do well in the practice day so the omens weren't great. Midway through the competition the glider main wheel went flat and I spent a morning chasing round like a looney trying to find a replacement inner tube, with no success. It was therefore a case of patching the old pone and praying. Fortunately it all worked out...

Santa Cilia Airfield

Day 1 I flew pretty well and entered the last TP convinced I was going to win the day. Annoyingly the route I took out, North to the ridge I'd just left, wasn't as good as the route to the South taken by Thomas Gostner and Aldo Rodriguez. Third for the day at 114kph then.

The following days I finished 4th, 4th and 2nd: consistent but not good enough. All the throwing tyres around had me with searing back pain so I was walking like a Centenarian and only really comfortable once I was sat in the glider.

Going into the last day and in third place I felt strangely confident: I knew I was going to do OK. That delusion evaporated within 5 minutes of going through the start when I was 1000' below the pack. Dammit! A bit of persistence paid of though, and once back in the game I was able to keep pushing while staying high. 80kms out from home GT and OS stopped just behind me for a 2 knot climb - I carried on to where I reckoned the ridge had sun on it and was rewarded with a nice 5 knot average. Up onto a 3 maccready glide I set off for home, getting a bit of a shock when OS popped up on Flarm below on my left with 20 kms to run. This time I had the right route and was able to come home 20 seconds ahead of him. That was good enough to win the day, win the contest and qualify for the World Final in Vitacura, Santiago in Chile in January 2018. It was even my birthday - life does not get better!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL69N-UnL_0

The ticket to Chile....

Serres 17.1

Most of the guys from the Cerdanya trip went home but there was still left me, Mike and Neil McLaughlin. The weather forecast suggested Serres would have better weather, and it was on the way home for Mike and Neil so we decamped to Serres.

We had a couple of duff days to wait before a nice strong Northerly set up. Mike launched first and got into wave very quickly. I launched half an hour later and had a bit more of a struggle in rotor over Aspres before connecting. Moving up to Pic de Bure the wave was varying in form but for a few minutes I could watch the altimeter wind up in an average 14 knots of silky smooth lift.

Pic be Bure wave

The three of us got together, I contacted Salon to check the airspace was deactivated and we then rode the bar down South West to overhead Mt Ventoux and back. Neil went in to land leaving Mike and I to move East out of the wind into weak therms out to Jouerre and back.

Cruisin' in the wave bar down to Mt Ventoux

Day 2 was a bit blue but worked pretty well with therms to 12,000' in the hot spots. We flew South West on to the Luberon then East over to Siguret near Barcellonette, with the opportunity to pick out most of the airfields in the Southern French Alps. 6.5 hours of this and at least one of us was feeling a little tired!

Overhead Siguret in the Barcelonnette valley

Day 3 was 8/8 overcast and a 15kt Southerly - rubbish. However, we launched anyway and ended up having a really great flight. The Aportres ridge was working very well so Mike could practice dropping down to the foot of it and working his way back up: good exercises to get used to looking up at 2000' of rock as you scrape up it. After a while we trickled over to the Cretes des Selles and ridge ran across past Malaup on to Jouerre and climbed up to the 8000' cloudbase in wave enhanced thermals. From there we nipped over Sisteron to the West and found a wave gap over the Meouge gorge and climbed up to 10,000' between the overcast. A neat 5 hour flight that was great mountain flying training for Mike.

Departure day - leaving at the right time?

So ended a fabulous three weeks training with my son. I really enjoyed flying with him and was pleased with how he flew - always having a landout option in mind, thinking about Plan B if the next climb didn't work and keeping a clear picture of the topography and what valley went where.

I then set off back to the Pyrenees and the SGP at Santa Cilia, Jaca. Mike went back to the UK to train with his Juniors team mate ready for competitions in Germany, France and Lithuania. Vot haf I created???!!