Well the Ochils turned out OK but not epic.
We arrived on little myreton to find light and variable thermic wind, met wind being SW which is a good direction for the ridge run. After a period of checking my glider, as I had not got it out of the bag since Algo last year, a little bit of ground handling followed.
Andy ward took off first noticing that the oncoming wall of cloud was going to shut the sky down. He took off and made good height and drifted off down the ridge.
Stuart Duchart took off as the gust front from the cloud got to the hill and again made good height floating about about 100 ft above takeoff.
So I got my backside in gear and took off into good lift. Made my way onto big myreton and gained height. The wind by now had changed to WSW and the oncoming cloud was shutting the sky down from the west. So I made my way East to the steep face of Craig Leith and worked the house thermal on the corner to get above the hill. I then played in the abundant lift on the scree face getting about 1000ft above the hill. It crossed my mind to go further along so made an attempt to cross to wood hill but encountered only sink.
At this point the ridge goes more out of wind so I abandoned my attempt and made my way back to Craig Leith arriving just at rock scree height making slow progress into the westerly wind. With no decent lift being found I made my way back to myreton with the plan of landing in the football pitch in the centre of the village, but the Saturday football was still being played.
Looking out into the valley I caught sight of Andy making his way, towards Tullibody, seems he might have been trying to fly home. Anyway I picked a large field between Menstrie and Alva which had the least amount of sheep and lambs and bled off the height to land in nil wind.
A good way to break my year long duck.
I also got the first opportunity to use my skytraxx2 proper. I like it but need to get rid of the depressing sink tone.
After a 1.5km walk back to Menstrie I caught sight of Pierre flying into the Dumyat centre football pitch, so the football had obviously finished. A quick trip to the shop to get a couple of ice lollys for myself an Pierre rounded the day off nicely.
Craig Ross and Stuart had landed back on the hill and picked up the land rover and drove back down, but had gone by the time I got back to the bongo.
video - only ground shots as I forgot to switch it on before takeoff.
http://vimeo.com/97864532
Logan
