Flight Log - Lijak, mini-cross-country

click here or on the picture to enlarge

The second flight of the day was looking good. The sun was out and there was a good breeze in the windsock above the launch area. My flightplan was a) to stay up, b) to get as far as possible along the cliffs to the left and c) to get back again if possible, or land out if not. If I landed out, this would be my first real "Cross Country" flight without assistance...

I started off by going close over the trees and off to the right of launch. That got me into the 'house thermal' on that side, which comes up the big cliff, and then drifts back over the trees around the launch. I was careful not to go too far over the trees, because it was coming and going a bit, and the tree area was rather flat.
Having achieved some hundreds of feet above launch, I flew back across the top of it, wondering if any of our group were about to come and join me. Not recognising anyone, I carried on across to where the main group of gliders were, stacking along the cliffs and jockeying for position in the rather erratic thermals. It was quite heavy traffic, but now I've got a bit more experience, I wasn't put off by this, and succeeded in almost getting to the top of the stack, pretty much over the cave on the cliff edge.

I got as high as it looked like I was going to be able to go, well above takeoff, but not more than a hundred feet or so above the clifftop, since the land rises quite rapidly in this direction, I set off further along, with about 3 or four other flyers. Typically, we would glide for 400 yards, then find a spot where we could top up the height again with a few beats, then go a bit further and repeat.
One guy had a real feet-first harness that he was sort of zipped up into, and seemed to be going a lot faster than anyone else. I guess this was a race glider and probably a very experienced pilot. I got about a mile past the point where there was a monastery on top of a hill and another church further out from the cliff, pretty much hugging the highest part of the wall where the lift was the best.
All went well until I came to a rocky spur on the wall where it went back to the north quite sharply at a corner. Around the corner there was big sink and it seemed a long way over rather flat forest to the next bit of exposed rock where there was likely to be some more lift. Nobody else seemed to have made it past this point out of the group I had been with. The trouble seemed to be that the weather was keeping a lid on the valley at about 890m above sealevel, so I could get up this high but no higher. The ground, however, rose up above the inversion, so I wasn't able to fly above the edge of the cliff, where the lift had been significantly better.

I hung around this area quite a while to see if this was just a temporary thing, but not only did it fail to improve, it started to get worse, and I was gradually losing height, even in the good bits. The heat of the day had gone, and it was time to go home. I set off back in the direction I had come, leaving one other glider beating back and fore around the cliff face. He wasn't gaining anything, so I hope he had a good "plan B". I couldn't get back up to the cliff line and began to feel the jitters as it looked an awful long way to anywhere landable. At this point I radioed Brett, who was in the air with Karen on the tandem, and I told him that I thought I had "bitten off more than I could chew" and was going to have to land out - possibly in the forest if I couldn't make it back to habitation and fields. He wished me luck and said he and Karen were going to try to soar the ridge towards me. I turned away from the cliff and started to fly at right angles away from it. Fortunately, the ground was falling away more than I had estimated, and the sink was not too bad. I tried one very flat circle over a clearing, but lost height doing so. I thought the monastery's southern side might have some rising air on it, (I was too low to fly over the top of it), but although there was a little, I didn't gain any height. By now I was past most of the forest and was pretty certain I wouldn't have to land in the trees after all. Whew! That was a relief! There was a sewage works below me, and then the lower of the two churches and fields beyond, with houses, roads and powerlines everywhere! I thought it was time to take a few photos before making a final landing field decision, so did a 360 with the camera in hand.

Getting a bit low now - better make a decision about where to land! I spotted a tapering strip of grass verge at the roadside that looked long enough to get into, so started an approach. To the left was the road, with power lines to the left of that, to the right was a vineyard and more powerlines, so I flew in slow S's to try to lose height and get down in the middle of the 'runway'. I nearly got it right, but overflew by a few yards, and then failed to keep control on landing, resulting in the paraglider overflying me and draping itself gently over a small and very dead apple tree - which was just too high to reach and too dead to climb. A cyclist in lycra went past, with a grin like a cheshire cat. I called Brett on the radio and told him I was down safely; he also was down, having run out of lift soon after I had spoken to him before. Then it was a question of looking for either a ladder or a long pole to lift the glider off the tree. A house on the other side of the road was inhabited by an old Slovenian lady with no english, but she was quite happy for me to borrow a long wooden plank that was on a heap of rubbish. Perhaps she had lent it out before! I soon had most of the canopy off the tree, and another pensioner who was walking along the road with a little girl came and lent a hand, pulling on the lines as I lifted the glider. Pretty soon I was all packed up and had returned the plank. A hundred yards along the road was a grocery shop with a fridge, so soon I was sitting by the roadside supping a cold Union. Just then Brett called up and asked where I was, and within a couple of minutes I was in the minibus. I hadn't realised it at the time, but the road was the main one (apart from the motorway) running up and down the valley, so, while I had landed in just the right spot, it was a good job I didn't actually land in the road, as I had thought I might have to if I ran out of grass.

Click here to return to "Alpine flying" summary or Close window to finish.