Highland charges and thermal surges

September 6, 2005

"I must be Scottish, because everytime I see an Englishman, my blood boils", said Doug, as we descended from the truck. "My granddaddy was pure Scottish", said Wally, "not sure what clan he was but they were feuding about something". "Well you should find out; we need to figure out if you and I can be friends or not!", remarked Doug as he grabbed his gear.

We started the 15 minute hike to launch for the fourth time as the sun beat down. I was in Potato hill, to get my first experience at thermal soaring. I had set off at 5am on Sunday to be here and met up with Wally, Ron, and Mihir in the LZ at 8:30 . Doug had lost his way and wouldn't show up for 2 more hours, but those 2 hours that he and Ron spent on the ground watching me reach 6000 feet were torture for them. "We weren't saying nice thing about you", they said, after I landed with a sh**-eating grin as wide as the valleys I had soared over. What an epic thermal flight this was: launch at 3500 feet, thermal up to what Mihir said must have been 7000 feet (later we downgraded that optimistic assesment; I think I was at close to 6000). More impressive for me was that I climed up after losing hundreds of feet after launch, perhaps as much as 600-700 feet. Man this is what this sport is all about! And anyone who tells you that you can't make yourself dizzy turning a paraglider hasn't banked a turn at 45 degrees while falling out of a thermal; a definite "pucker moment" for me (that's when your arse tightens up so much that you think your bowels must have diamonds now). "Turn tighter, tighter, TIGHTER" Wally was yelling on the radio, and I did to get my vertigo inducing moment. Mihir said later that Tom and Greg, grizzled veterans of the sport who were also waiting to launch (I had gone second), told Wally to take it easy on me. Anyway, I didn't need much coaching after that; I found the lift, stayed in it, figured out how tightly or broadly I needed to turn, and relished the opportunity to finally see what it's like to soar way about your launch. I learned to feel the surges and stalls and dampen the motion accordingly, although seeing up at the wing swing back and forth was a bit disconcerting. I started loving that sound of the "whump!" the wing makes as it enters a thermal. I sang loudly, paraphrasing David Bowie's Space Oddity:

For here Am I sitting in a canopy
Far above the world
Planet earth is green
And I can do anything...
chhung-a-chhung-a-chhung-chhung clap-clap
ch-chhung-a-chhung-a-chhung-chhung clap-clap

At 2000-2500 feet above launch, I could finally muster up the courage to let go of the controls, reach for the camera, and take the mandatory shot every pilot takes:

Got Legroom?

I saw Mihir way down there; it almost seemed like he was skimming the trees, but he was merely a few hundred below launch. While flying better than most was exhilerating, blowing a launch late in the day and ending up in the bushes with the wing draped over a stout tree that required half-an-hour of Wally's help to retrieve took away whatever cockiness the flying bestowed. Even without the bush-eating launch, blowing several *other* launches created my main hurdle: to concentrate and get the kiting right. Luckily for me, I would get 3 flights this memorial day weekend, two of them being high-altitude epics, and I could launch the next day without problems. Hmm, bush-eating, can't get it up properly; this calls for fly-agra!

View from above

"Schwing!"

We camped at Dixie Glade, a primitive camp with pit toilets and no running water. In the evening we went to Stonyford, 9 miles away, and a town so small that if you were fiddling with the radio to get better reception, you would have missed it. It has one restaurant, and they make surprisingly good cheese enchiladas. Doug talked about his 15 years of sky-diving experience, and the types of stunts he used to perform (80 man formations, stacking canopies,...). Dougy was disappointed that he couldn't soar today, and had only sled rides. Doug is a recent graduate (2 months ago), but is already close to a P3. The guy flies almost everyday, and has superb skills. Ballsy and fearless, Wally worries about him. On our way to launch on Monday, Doug waxed lyrical about the banjo ("if you have no money, you can't have a banjo, but if you got a banjo, you can always make money" proclaimed his T-shirt), talked about the Scottish highland charges, and how some English bastard finally figured out the way to defeat it. Doug, while not skydiving, is also part of an ensemble that re-enacts Scottish warfare with real, although blunted, metal claymores (swords), while wearing kilts. Doug is an interesting guy, the rest of us are basically wimps.

It was another great day on Monday, we reached launch, and I soon forgot about Doug's red beard and brutal warfare of the 18th century, and started focusing on my launch technique. I went first after a couple of unsuccessful attempts, finally had a good launch and set off. I found some little thermals here and there, but nothing big enough to stay in. I landed after 15 minutes, and had my best landing ever, with a graceful roundout (where you arrest the vertical descent, and just glide parallel to the ground - convert your kinetic energy to all horizontal since that's better than vertical), and most gentle of touchdowns. However, Dougy got 47 minutes after he launched. The next flight for me however was another epic. I think I got even higher than the day before. Not only that I ventured out behind launch and soared over that ridgeline, taking my cue from Doug, who was cheerfully cruising back and forth as if he owned the entire place now. He was higher than me, but after a while, way behind launch, I saw that I was higher than him, and he was way below. From my vantage, he looked like he was in a dangerous area, in a valley to the left of launch, an area we had been told to avoid at all costs. He's crazy I thought. But on the other hand, appearances from the air are deceiving; perhaps he wasn't as low there it looked. At any rate, after a while he had found something and had zoomed to almost 600-700 feet above me. I kept myself reasonably close to launch, as I was a bit terrified of suddenly losing altitude and having an even bigger glide to the LZ. I would lose altitude, and gain it back, and developed quite a bit of confidence in finding and staying in thermals.

Ron soaring above launch

Dougy trying to get up

My other dream of finding a "local" also came true; below me to the right, I saw a red-tailed hawk circling an area and rising. I went over to that area, and sho' enuff, I was rising and much above launch again! It felt like I was only maybe 1000 feet below the puffy cumulus clouds, but that's probably inaccurate.

Anyway, my arms were getting tired, I knew that the LZ would become rowdy after 2, so decided to head on over, land, and drive back. Dougy, on the other hand, was up even when I left at 3:20; he had been up for more than 3 hours. "Every Doug has its day", I told the others, as I drove back energetically through the twisties in the Z3, still fired up on the adrenaline. Later I would find that Doug had stayed up for 5 hours straight that day. What an exhilerating weekend again, and many thanks to Jo who lets this paragliding boy have his fun.

A soul in tension that’s learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit, I

-- Pink Floyd, Learning To Fly