Well the plan was good, but as always the weather decided to change things a little, when Gerry, Jamie and myself rocked up at Dungavel. After a short walk up Dungavel we found in the light met wind that was around the thermals were tracking across the hill so a quick chat and we re-located to Tinto. Having got got ourselves up to launch we starting seeing some positive and some negative signs for the day. Positive being nice cumulus forms out in front, the negative was high cirrus was threating to move in and shut it all down.
We got all got in the air at various stages I think out of the day Jamie did well out of all of us getting some good height. Gerry seemed to enjoy his flight and a big whoop as he was lifted into his first thermal, then boated a round for a while to land at bottom of Greenhill. I made two attempts to drop onto Big Tinto, but for some reason it wasn't working as well as Greenhill. First: slope landing low down on the South face to relaunch afew minutes later and track back to Greenhill. The second wasn't much better, that was when Rob arrived and making his way up, along with a few others. Again I got loads of height made the jump across the gap easily, but it was all sink on big Tinto managed to stay flying and decided it wasn't the place to be, and came back to point of origin. It was then Greenhill switched off for a while, and whilst I was tracking back across I lost more height, managed to skim just over Jamie and Gerry on the lower slopes and hop over the forested section at bottom of slope and land in the big field.
Shortly afterwards Rob was up and sharing the air with a chap on an Advance Iota both maintaining quite well and using the afternoon lift kicking off from the forestry. However they did start to loose height and the sun was was being shut out by the cirrus, so I decided it won't be long before he was down and we would have a chat. No that turned out to be not the case, when the sun broke through a short while later and started cooking off lift, Rob was getting higher and higher, everyone in the air was enjoying the conditions. I even saw Graham Saunders track over to big Tinto and sit high out front, so the late starters seemed to get the best of the day.
Personal Notes: The day started with a SSW influence and moved later in the afternoon to SW when I think Dungavel might have been good, but everyone opted for the bigger hill. Cirrus had a big effect and for that it was probably not the best XC day, maybe Jamie might have had enough height to dive over the back of Greenhill, but I certainly didn't. I left when Rob was climbing so unsure how high people might have got, then it was probably too late in the day to XC anyway.
On another note I must admit I have watched two Iota's at different sites recently, and they have been impressive, food for thought!
Sean
Turned classic at Tinto, 15mph S with light thermals and convergence. People still specks at 6:30 when I left. Got about 4 hours. Slightly deaf now,
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