Troisieme

8 and a bit knots abeam good ol' Serres

The Mistral had cleared the humid air away and today we had a 25-30 knot Northwesterly on the ground. The 15M task was North to Col de Cabre, down to Dignes and back North east to Savines then home.We launched at 1300hrs and were required to stay below 2000m until the start opened. There was wave pretty much right over the site so when the start line opened it was easy to pop up to the airspace limit of 11,500', but tricky to work out who was 15M and who was starting (there are no start announcements made on the radio either). I started at the airspace limit and ran up to the Lure and into 7 knots of wave in the Jabron valley. From there I reckoned to jump up to the Chabre and wave hotspot at Rosans, but failed to get a really good wave climb and instead dropped down out of the wave to turn Col de Cabre and run the ridges past Serres and across to Sisteron. At least today I was with a few other gliders for some of the time and that helped mark the good climbs which made for a good run round. At 106kph I thought I might have done OK, but the winning speed of 126kph put paid to that hope and I finished up 21st for the day out of the 29 competitors. 



The view from GA looking up towards Mt Blanc

 

Geoff had  a storming run round and came 7th in his 18M class but Russell and Mike had less luck and indeed Mike landed out at les Crots 85 miles North of Vinon. The retrieve was 170 miles there and back but we did it, including derig, in 3 hours. I love French motorways!



57 a trouve un bonne champ. Bon Travail M. Jeune

 

 Hunk of the day: Phil Jeffreys

Phil, 107, from Cambridge enjoyed several years as the TV face of a popular fishfingers brand and still vigorously denies those salacious press rumours. He now enjoys lawnmowing and shaving as his pastimes. 

La Suite

The day dawned humid and pretty grey so there weren't many hopes riding anyway. However, at briefing the 15M class was asked to grid and duly did, sat around for a while in the hope of a weather window and then scrubbed at 1400hrs. That gave plenty of time to put things away, potter round the lake on boats or mountain bike or snatch a siesta and then congregate for a BBQ at Chez Jon/Geoff. A few games of table tennis, boules and drink the local Rose and consume vast quantities of burnt meat made for a very pleasant evening. Tomorrow threatens to be a bit of a wave day which sounds rather good fun.

Hunk of the day: Mike Young

Mike, 23, whose hobbies include trampolining and pole dancing is always easy to spot with his flourescent tips.

La Premiere Jour

The task: 300kms set going North to Roche Ram ( near St Crepin)/Col de Cabre (near Serres) and home.

Jay Rebbeck had sage words for me before the start: it looks tricky getting to the high stuff so it might be best to go with other gliders for the first 50kms. That sounded like excellent advice so I hung around in the start until 3 pm and set off when I thought a couple of others were starting.

Cloudbase was not great at c5000amsl near Dignes and running the start of the Par Cours was interesting but worked. The really exciting bit was pushing on to Seynes and nipping over a saddle to find the next climb. After that things perked up and the run past Dormillouse, Morgon and Guillaume all felt like familiar territory but man I was SLOW compared to the guys that know what they're doing. I also made life harder than it needed to be by flopping onto a ridge next to Sisteron at 2500' amsl or 800' above the town which is a tad low, but the valley breeze was working well as evidenced by the flags flying on the citadel battlements . 78kph is pathetic really when compared to the winning speeds of 115kph but I got more for my money from the day.
Geoff struggled manfully round but had to fire his turbo 19kms short of the field: a heroic effort nonetheless. By the time we'd put covers on and tided up it was 9.30 so Pork chops and Frites at the onsite restaurant and a couple of pressions seemed in order. All in all a fun day out!

Hunk of the day: Russell

Russell, 21, from Nottingham enjoys long walks and flower arranging. He's never short of a well arranged bunch.

2012 Edition

Now I hate to be called a creature of habit, but looking back at my logbook that's 12 years in a row at Serres, and 20 years of flying in the Southern French Alps in total. So I figure it might just about be time to try a competition in the area, and that's the plan for 2012. Hence it's off to Vinon for the "Provence Glide" competition which coincides with the pre-european Championships and a right good kicking at the hands (or should that be feet?) of some of the World's best pilots. My original goal was to avoid coming last, but looking at the entry list I think that's far too ambitious, so I've revised that to having just one day where I don't come last. Too much to ask? We'll see...

Sadly that does mean not flying at Serres this year which is a real shame, but I suspect we'll be going overhead it a few times and I'm sure I'll be back there in 2013, so I can't see the point in changing the title of the blog.

Forward to the ferry, and let the kicking commence!

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.