After over a month without flying I was keen to get out and get my feet of the ground. Gerald felt the same so we arranged to meet up at bridgend about 6.30pm and take a look.
The forecast hinted at a bit of a see breeze and charterhall (via xc weather semi confirmed it was happening) so we thought that bridgend would be worth a look. In my case I would have been happy with a fly down.
I got to the hill a bit later than planned (slow cars on the road!) to see Geralds car parked up and no sign of him. I spotted a figure high on the hill so made my way up to join him. It was a tad warm. Light breeze coming down the loch from the NE end but not particularly strong.
We chatted on TO for a while then thought we had better try flying.
I took of first. Not to strong but quite lifty. I was soon a couple of hundred feet above the Hill and it was really nice and smooth. Gerald launched and was flying about quite nicely.
I lost sight of him at one point (he seemed to be heading to the megget dam!) but had top landed to set up his camera.
I continued to boat around for a bit sticking with the lift but slowly expanding and exploring the surrounds. After about an hour of very pleasant flying I checked the vario and noted that I had reached 2100ft or thereabouts.
So to give myself a challenge I thought I would head down to the TibbieSheils Inn but to do so I set myself the goal of getting to 2300ft. Then revised that to 2600ft. When I got to 3300ft (all in gentle lift) I thought it would be rude not to go.
It was strange but as I headed out and along the loch I was going into a bit of a head wind. so speed bar on and only dropped about 400ft. Gerald had tried to keep up but couldn't :-). I pondered briefly spiraling down to the pub but decided to fly back. Much easier with the wind behind you. then over the landing field I still had a lot of hight and everything was going up.
It took a while but I think it was a "classic" Bridgend convergence flying. It was smooth and silky and going up everywhere. No cloud in the sky (some orographic on the hills).
The sun was however getting lower. So Big ears.. Bigger Big ears, Big ears + speed bar and also spiral dives all resulted in maintaining height!
I started heading to the northern end of the loch (also into wind) but still maintaining height so back to above the landing field and more decent technique practice. Eventually got down at 21.38.
It was a lovely evening fly marred only by the excessive lift when trying to get down!
Gerald had similar fun getting down and eventually landed at just past 10! Very big grin on his face.
That was probably my best ever flight in the borders. And I'm sure it'll be a hard one to beat for Gerald too.
No pics unfortunately but track is up on dorama here: http://www.doarama.com/view/7849
Jamie
Geralds video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg7ubmbFo64
