Back from France, and Jamie did the early groundwork with a message that Tues & Thurs might be flyable. Best of all, forecast was westerly and possibly Sundhope, a site I love flying, so rearranged work and life to head down for early evening on the Thurs. Many times the initial promise fails to materialise, but on this occasion it was way better than expected and gave a fantastic introduction to the Borders and Scottish flying to our Korean visitor, Woo Hee Lee and his wife Mi Sun.
Woo is a maintenance engineer for Delta airlines on temporary placement at Edinburgh airport (to make sure BA do the job properly!) He desperately wanted to fly in Scotland so contacted Jamie, and we arranged a pick up at the Steading. Interesting chat on the way down about flying in Korea - seems that all the councils promote the sport by building access roads to the top of the hills. Mmmm, methinks Woo is in for a bit of shock in our patch.
After checking the wind direction just before the Gordon Arms, we arrived at Sundhope around 6pm and started heading up. Although wind was blowing nicely onto the hill, I was a little concerned that the wind may pick up and/or the sea breeze could kick in and spoil the evening, so I pushed on up the hill. We set up about 100ft below the summit, as it was obviously soarable, and sure enough no sooner had I launched and I was getting up very easy. As I pushed forward, the lift just continued and so I carried on way out getting up to 1700 feet at one point without really trying. Not sure if it was convergence, restitution or whatever but it was (mostly) very smooth and reliable, even way out front.
There was a bit of a headwind, especially on the shoulder, as I watched Woo's Gin take off, do a quick beat and then make a dash down the ridge. He had good height but there was no way he would get back to the bowl....or so I thought, as he reappeared five minutes later, only to dive back down the ridge again and repeat. Hmmm, maybe I was misreading the headwind? So I gave it a shot down the ridge, less than halfway and then really, really struggled to get back to the bowl even with full bar. That was a reminder to think and not just follow - I found out later he was flying a Boomerang!
After about an hour, Jamie and Stephen arrived after a few car troubles, and quickly set up - Jamie taking off, while Stephen practiced his acro launches. When he was happy, he too got into the air and we all boated around in the constant lift for a while longer. I headed down after about 90 minutes as I was cold, and the others carried on for another 20-30 minutes. I literally made an arse of my landing as I misread the windsock and tried a downwind touchdown, and came in incredibly fast so reverted to the feet up, arse down approach and slid to a stop. Well, it worked.
As usual, we all headed to Gordon Arms for a 'debrief' and found there was a very lively, big music jam in the back room so we all got tapping our toes and clapping along. Woo and Mi Sun were most impressed and filmed it all so the band will likely be a big hit in South Korea very soon. It was one of those truly wonderful days where everything turned out nicely - I just hope Woo and Mi Sun don't think it is like that every day in Scotland.
