There has been debate in Scotland for several years about the possibility of organising a winch operation and a couple of years ago Sean took the bull by the horns at the SHPF AGM and agreed to lead this.....little did he know how much time it would take!!!  Obviously the first thing required is for a group of pilots to be capable of being winch into the air on a line..and since Scotland has many many hills it is not one of the main requirements to fly here, in fact some would say why winching!!

The weather this year has left a lot to be desired from a paragliding point of view. Especially for weekend pilots. It was great to hear that Tommy, Barry and Dave had flown this week but When would it be MY TURN?

Saturday was starting to look like it might be the first opportunity to fly in 2016! FFS it's the end of February!! Light (maybe too light) NE or ENE  so Bridgend was the place to go.

Well my new flying season got off to an unexpectedly excellent start at Dungavel yesterday. I have been following forecasts over the past weeks with frustration as each promising forecast seems to fade as the day arrives, but I took the plunge, booked a half day off and planned to get out on the Thursday. Expectations were very low - after a six month rest period all I really wanted was to get some easy groundhandling practice, an easy top-to-bottom and if conditions were right (ie not too strong) get the new Gradient Nevada out for some easy landing field G/H.

I decided to have a day away from the house today and as I was getting ready to head out Barry phoned so we agreed to meet up in Innerleithen and see what happened.

  We decided to go to Tinto and found ourselves walking up to the top take off on the North side, we arrived about 1pm.