Monarca 2010 – Task 5 - 53Km

The weather started out looking very similar to yesterday – gray and overcast with high cirrus.They called a small task and an early race start of 12:40pm. The route was from Launch to start at Espina then to Divisa that had a 2km cylinder around it, back to launch, then Espina and then to the lake.

I decided to launch early and see what would happen. Dave Byrne had sent me a note to just enjoy myself and forget the comp and have a fun flight. That was my intent today. So I took off amongst the first few and circled with a few gliders. However, we started gaining height and quickly the small gaggle grew in size as those below on launch followed suit to take off and join us. Not an enormous gaggle by any means but certainly I now know for sure that I have succumbed to the fact that I hate flying in gaggles and thus through inference competitions are not for me. This will be the last for a while until I feel comfortable flying in groups larger than 15 or so gliders.

I left the gaggle at around 8200 and headed to the Penon again with a few other gliders hoping to be able to soar the rock a little and get to the wall and some decent height before the rest of them caught up to me. At the wall it was soarable and I did my merry little dance of 8 again. Basically we were now flying ridge rules. Some people obeyed some didn’t. With the rock on my right Wheelie Bob was coming towards me about 10 feet below me. He wanted me to give way as I heard him on the radio saying lower glider has right of way. Not for 10 ft  lower you don’t  :-) He wasn’t too amused but I later led him up the wall so he can’t complain!

I headed off from the Penon about 3/4 of the way up and made my way to the wall. I finally figured out how to get up this sucker now. The clouds were still a bit overcast but it did look to be clearing. There was more lift today and I soared up the second spine to the top of the ridge and onto the Mesa. There were only about 15-20 gliders at this point. The rest were seen over launch or scratching the Penon or coming up the wall. It was nice to just have lift and be boating about up there. However, my fun times were short lived. A small gaggle started coming to join me. First there were a few then there were more. I moved out of the thermal I was in and flew out into the valley a little to have a bit more space. More lift and I started to go up. I could see them come to join me. I left again. I think they got the message as they started their own little thermalling circle and I was on my own again.

I was higher than yesterday so decided to see if I could get over to the front wall again of crazy thermal. If all failed I would head back to the Penon and scratch again. There was another 25 minutes before the start of the race. By this time a lot of folks were now on the Mesa and getting higher. In fact as the day went on the weather just got better. However, for me, off I went in my own little route. Folks below must have thought I was mad flying away from lift but I do like to find my own rather than follow some one else’s. Not a good strategy at all for a comp pilot so another reason for me not to be one!

There was one other glider bellow me heading in the same direction obviously with the same thought. He hadn’t managed to get up the wall so I guess as trying some other place. Major sink again as I headed across to the crazy thermal wall. I guessed the wind was splitting at the the rock face and wrapping around and over. It as quite turbulent around there. I could see that this wasn’t going to work so I headed back to the Penon arriving about halfway up . I was surprised by the number of people still scratching at the rock face. I flew a few circuits with them but decided to leave them to their race and I headed out and landed at the Piano.

It was nice down there relaxing in the sun, having a beer and waiting for the pilots to come back from Divisa. And they came back fast. Josh Cohn arrived back over launch 50minutes from the start at Espina and completed the course in 1hr 16min! Good news on the NW front as Mer, Arun, Dave, Frank, Stefan, Chris all made goal. Congrats to them!

Well that’s this years blog folks. I have arranged with my landlord to take me to the airport on Sunday morning. All that is left is to enjoy the rest of my stay. I had intended to fly back on Saturday but there were no flights out of Toluca free. So it looks like some shopping in town tomorrow and the End of Comp party tomorrow night.

Cheers

Iain

Monarca 2010 – Task 4 55.6Km – Nice to Scratch

On the road up to the launch today there were high cirrus clouds and the sun was scare. I expected it would be a long time before we started. I wasn’t feeling too great this morning, not because of my flying, but the trots caught up with me after a week eating here. Not sure if it was a bad beer or a bad sandwich but we will find out tonight as I am testing the beer once more! By the time they called the task it was gray sky everywhere. I couldn’t imagine anybody going far today, never mind making goal. Since it was a right hand day I thought I would launch early and fly around and practice my right hand turns. To help me, I put a couple of liters of water in my right hand side pocket of my harness. That sure did help as when flying straight I had to compensate with a little left brake so it was working.

They opened the launch at 11:20 for the yoyo’s like me and I took off at 11:35 and joined a small gaggle circling in front of launch. Nobody was high at all, probably around 500-750ft over launch. Keeping my head on a swivel stick and focusing on the pilots around you makes you loose sense of how high you have climbed. I thought I was just boating around launch height but in a few minutes I had gained about 750ft and joined the circling gaggle. It split into two after a while and that became a little fun because when you completed a circle you were now facing the folks in the other gaggle. It took me a few seconds to realize the gliders in front were actually coming at me! Just a small movement to the right and we were fine.

I saw a glider get some lift a little further out in the valley and pushed out. I climbed a few circles with him and then I headed off to the Penon leaving launch at about 8200ft. I got to the Penon quite low down and headed for the rock face. With little sun on the face I expected it to be more of a bluff soar like Whidbey and that’s exactly how it turned out. The wind was coming from the South and hitting the rock face almost square on. I flew about a wings length from the rock face. Gentle beeps proceeded to fill my ears and I started my figures of 8 flying in front of the rock. Just like being back at Tiger!. I headed out past the Penon and got a  lot of sink so I headed back and started the merry little figure of 8 dance again. By this time quite a few gliders had also given up getting high at launch and started making their way over. I gave Mer a wave as she passed me by on the inside. I started to climb in the slot that took me quite high up the face. I hate doing full circles near that rock so continued my soaring technique. 

Almost at the top I headed off to the spines that lead up to the wall. Steve and Arun told me they had been getting up on the first spine that takes you to the wall face below the little hut on top of the wall. I had been using the second spine further out on previous days so took their advice. It worked a little but not a great deal so I headed off to my spine. That was working and I started my figures of 8 again. The little gaggle that had joined me at the Penon had continued to soar all the way up to the top and were now circling right around the top of the Penon. That was certainly not for me, no matter how mild the lift.

By now I had reached the top of the wall and was just boating along the top edge. Goal! Well at least my personal goal of getting up over that sucker.I felt pretty good as I did have a few very lows save on the way up. Looking down on most of the field brought a wry smile to my face as for the past few days they have been looking down on me. I looked at my watch. 25 minutes to go before the start. Now what to do. I flew back and forth along the ridge and got a little higher, flying half on to the mesa and half off into the valley. I did this for a few lengths then got bored. Some of the others gliders had crossed across to Crazy Thermal but weren’t getting high. I decided to go the front of the Crazy Thermal wall and ridge soar there. I had done that last year and its was quite fun. So I left the lift I was in while other folks tried to scratch their way up the wall! By this time the sky was even a darker gray. No chance of going anywhere far today so just have some fun and see what happens.

Crossing to the Crazy Thermal wall I got big sink. Bummer. Almost reaching the wall I had to turn away as there were no bail out landing sites. I headed back towards the bottom of the Penon thinking I could scratch my way up again. but it wasn’t to be. On the way back I saw two gliders scratching low below me then they hit each other and reserves were pulled. Both were ok but I thought to myself who wasn’t looking where they were going? That seemed to be needless.

I landed at the field next to the school where I had been quite a few times last year and got the professional wing packer school kids to pack my wing. These little boys are good!

By this time, I counted only 70 wings in the air and the race was just about to start. So half the pilots had already landed. Not bad Iain I thought to myself.

When I arrived back in Valle only 20 pilots were still in the air although everyone was doubting whether anyone would make goal today. In fact it turned out they flew 30Km. Quite a feet considering it was all overcast.

Hopefully the weather will be a little better tomorrow and I get to fly like I did on Monday.

Monarca 2010 – Task 3 – 68.5Km – I hate Piano’s!

Results are posted at http://www.monarcaparaglidingopen.com (Note they are still trying to get the titles right!. However the overall scores for task 2 actually include today’s results)

Today there were clouds!!!! It looked to be real nice when I arrived at launch and I was feeling very confident about today’s flight after yesterday’s uncomfortable right turn day. Today the wind was mainly from the South and with the clouds setting up early I thought they would set either a long task or a task with a long upwind leg to test the comp pilots. They choose the later making pilots fly most of the Mesa in both directions. The start was at Maguey again with a 2Km enter cylinder so having got there before (Jump starting the race!) I didn't anticipate too many problems. Today I would wait for the main gaggle to head off first. My simple strategy for today was to stay high and pimp. Couldn’t be that hard right. Look at all the clouds forming over launch.I would bite my tongue on that thought later.

The launch window opened at 11:40 and at that time anybody could get in line to launch for 15min. That would be my time. After the pilots briefing and entering the coords in my gps I would get ready and head off first to launch rather than wait. Well that seemed to be simple but alas no. By the time I entered my coords and the clock hit 11:25 the line was longer than the previous day where I waited for 30 minutes!. Oh crap. Being the lowest of low in this comp so far, it meant I would certainly be at the back of the line. No point getting ready for launch now. In fact the line just grew and grew. it seemed everybody wanted off of launch quickly today.

I decided to take some video of the launches and see what happened. The thermals were already beginning to get a little strong on launch and there were a lot of blown launches and wings with knots and cravats that took to the air while  other pilots careered down the hill. Yikes!. The clouds were about 1500 over launch, nice and white and they just started to grow and grow then  after a time would dissipate and then start the cycle again.  Today keeping out of them would be problematic I thought. Cloud flying is NOT allowed as it’s dangerous so if you did get  high you would had to go around them. Being only a little over launch it would turn out that you had to fly around them like avoiding obstacles in an arcade video game! Quite fun really.

I watched Chris, Mer, Dave, Stefan, Arun, Frank and Bill Hughes all get off the hill safely. The launch line finally started to dissipate and I pulled on my gear and went to launch to start with the 1 last remaining competitor. By this time  the thermals were strong and the other chap had some problems bringing up his wing. I pulled  my wing up controlling with A’s and C’s and I was off!. Like a rocket I shot up vertically about 100 feet before I could get into my harness. But all was good. Oh yeah…this is going to be a good day baby! Within a few minutes I was at around 9000ft where the clouds were and had to start veering away so as not to enter them. I flew past a nice fluffy one to my right and headed towards the Penon. Today I flew right past the top shoulder and could see over the top for once. Woo Hoo…at last no scratching at the bottom. Feeling good I flew around the rock to see a bunch of gliders struggling at the wall. I should have hung back, but I pressed on. Big mistake. My sink alarm came on which is set at 800 ft/min down. My glider lost pressure and I sunk like a stone towards the spines at the bottom of the Wall. Oh for frick’s sake not scratching again surely. I arrived higher on the spines than before but decided to head back to the Penon and tank up again. Mistake number 2. Sink all the way. I flew past the bottom of the front of that Rock and made it to the other side where I got lift again and started climbing. Woo Hoo. Up again I went. Ok lets try that again. Headed towards the Penon for the 2nd time and the big hand from above came down hard for the 2nd time and said where are you going mate! I saw 6 gliders below me sinking fast and heading out to the Piano. Surely not again for Pete’s sake. But alas yes. For the second time this week I landed at the Piano during a task. As it turned out there were 30 pilots who made minimal distance today so I didn’t feel too bad. In fact A lot of pilots sunk out after the 2nd waypoint and landed near Jovan’s on the way to Saucos. All reported big lift and big sink. Tell me about it!

Kudos for the day goes to Arun Moorthy who made goal. Only NW pilot to do so. He has been flying like a demon and even Frank refers to him as the Master now! Awesome Arun. Steve Theibult sunk out on way to Saucas along with Frank, and Mer  and Chris on the way back. Wheelie Bob got all the way back to the Wall from Saucas heading for Divisa but landed out there. Not sure where Stefan landed as he was making his way back to the Lake LZ when I left.

So 3 tasks down and 3 to go and still no start. I need to back to flying school. So goal for me tomorrow is to officially start! :-)

Monarca 2010 – Task 2 55.8Km

Today’s task was going to be a little difficult for a lot of people and most of all for me. Feeling confident flying yesterday today I crumbled! Launching wasn’t a problem as I have always been confident in that area even in strong winds. However turning right is my big weakness and I will need to get that sorted out pronto if I have any hope of getting off the bottom of the ladder down here. For some mental reason I just don’t feel comfortable in strong lift turning right or with a lot of people in a gaggle. Today the wind had also picked up and it was pretty strong in places low down around the Penon, where I normally find myself.

Anyway, for today’s task the start was a hefty 10Km from launch and that made even the comp pilots leave early and get in line to launch. They have priority order which means the yoyo’s like me have to wait in line. It took me 30minutes to get to the start of launch. I wasn’t too bothered by this other than having to wait fully suited up in the heat for what seemed a long long time!

Getting to the start, the thermals had started to come up the hill quite strong and it still amazes me how really good pilots in the air have some terrible ground handling skills. I think all that Whidbey practice has paid off for me. It was still a high pressure day but the launch gaggle seemed to spread out quite quickly and made a move towards the Penon and the wall as soon as they could. They wanted to get onto the mesa and wait above Espina about 1  Km from the start cylinder. I took off and joined a few gliders in front to get up. I certainly didn’t like the air around launch,. There were thermals coming up but it was also windy and quite rough in places. Having to turn right just made it worse. I headed out to the Penon and beyond as soon as I could. Getting towards the Penon the wind had picked up and it was slow going. I took my first little asymmetric close to the Penon on the inside wing half nearest to the rock which did not make me feel too happy. Other folks had some frontal action going on too so I gave it a wide berth and continued to the wall. That was another struggle. On the radio there was also chatter about 2 pilots who had gone into the trees above the wall on the mesa. That didn’t make me happy at all to hear! I was  low down again and didn’t want to struggle climbing up the wall so I headed all the way back to the other side of the Penon. However I went a little too far back as the wind had picked up even more and I was now only making around 7mph progress moving forwards. Another rocking and rolling low down and I had had it. I decided to just go and land out at the Piano,

Having a beer in the Piano and watching the gliders head off was actually quite relaxing. It was also great to see the convergence setting up about an hour later and soon there were clouds developing everywhere. It was really good to see first hand the clouds forming and coming in from different directions and then forming one solid line.

At this point the local transport bus picked us up just as we saw the lead gaggle of pilots fly back to the Wall on their way to Jovan. It would now be a race between the bus and the paragliders to see who made it to the LZ first. It was close but the bus got back about 5 minutes before the leader landed at the LZ.

From the NW Paragliding perspective, I saw Bill Hughes and Meredyth make goal with great performances by Dave Wheeler and Arun. Frank had landed out between LaPila and Aguilera.

Tomorrow is a left hand day and there are supposed to be clouds about so I am looking forward to that. Maybe I might even officially start a task for once!

Results are posted at http://www.monarcaparaglidingopen.com/

Monarca 2010 – Task 1 65Km – Maguey, Divisa, Santa Maria, Quintella, Inglesi, Lake

 

Update: Looks like I jumped the start after all as they only gave me minimal distance. Ah Well.

My Flight is posted on Leonardo if you want to see it in Google earth or have a look at the video of today’s flight below.

So on to today’s task!

Not a bad day for flying for me. Again another high pressure day with the height capped around 9500ft so a lot of scratching to be had. At least by me! It was a bit of a shambles at the start today though for everyone. We hadn’t been given our ID cards last night so we got them today, or should I say, we had to find them today! They dropped the entire 135 or so ID cards under a tent and you had to look for yours – a Mexican Scramble. Then they wanted us to stick numbers on our wings so that took a bit of time too. They had no PA system to announce any changes to tasks being made so you had to be on your toes. I actually missed the change that the start was moved to 1:20. As it turned out I was lucky this year since it took me some time to get on top of the Mesa and I made the start gate which was a 3km entry cylinder around Maguey.

I had programmed my Garmin and the Digifly and once again the Digifly became the Dodgifly as it lost all the comp waypoints as I stood in line. However, this year rather than get stressed about it I just decided to use the Garmin. Since I have flown here before its reasonably easy now to fly the route (or as much as I can) since I know where the waypoints are.

I got reasonable high over launch and made for the Penon but I got a lot of sink on the way out so I came back to launch and tanked up. Went back out again and same thing happened. On the 3rd attempt I just kept pushing and got to the wall really low down on the spines, like 75 feet or so. I worked the ridge lift on the spines and eventually made it up to the side of the wall. There were a few other gliders not making much gain so I took a different path and was lucky to find a thermal that took me to the top of the wall for the first time since I got here. By this time the main gaggle was already established over crazy thermal and waiting for the start. I managed to get up on to Mesa and then got boosted enough to take me over to the crazy thermal too. The main gaggle still hadn’t gained much and I quickly joined them at the top. It was well after 1:00pm (what I thought was the start time!) so I headed straight off to Maguey wondering why they were waiting. I assumed that it was because they were waiting to get more height. It was because the start was pushed out to 1:20 and with a 3km entry cylinder, the were probably waiting until 1:20. With ignorant bliss I set off across the valley and arrived at Maguey low as expected.  I remember surfing the ridge line last year and started to do the same again. I caught a very light thermal and started gaining more height. By this time the rest of the main gaggle had transitioned across the valley and were coming in my direction. Thinking they would see me climbing slowly I expected them to move to the side and let me continue climbing. Nope! Some dumbass comes straight at me and never flinched and I had to move out the way for him during the turn that took me out of the lift. With the main gaggle now surfing the ridge too I joined them. However they managed to keep a better line and got a little higher by staying on the mesa. I surfed my way as far as I could and started looking for thermals to take my up. There were some but not that strong. I pushed out into the spines below and managed to catch one that took me back up to the edge of the mesa. By this time the 2nd gaggle were arriving and once again another yoyo pushed me out of my climb and I sank back below the ridge level. By this time I was close to Divisa but I knew I wouldn’t make it. So I ventured back down to the spines where I got lift before but this time it was all sink so I decided that I would just fly down to Santa Maria and land and get a retrieval from there. And that all went well. I did have a problem getting down though! it was very buoyant and very windy down there and I heard someone landed hard and had to get some medical attention. As it turned out. A lot of pilots who tagged Divisa sunk out at Santa Maria too. So all in all I was pretty happy with my flying today. The Dodgifly is another story!

Rest Day – Registration and a “funny” story

Well not a great deal to report at all in the way of flying today since I didn’t do any! I woke up at 9:30 and quickly looked at the weather forecast. Seemed to be another high pressure day but lower than normal and a lot of scratching would be involved. I decided to sleep in a little longer, then get up and check my wing after the kids packed it yesterday and adjust my speed bar a little shorter. So that’s what I did! Sure enough the kids had got a few lines crossed over so I untangled them. Glad I did that rather than tomorrow on launch.

I went downtown and registered for the comp. I was glad that they had updated their facebook info to let you know where to register. I hadn’t remembered seeing any info about that being sent out which was strange. However it got a little stranger. The map they had issued with the location of the mandatory pilots briefing was not in the right location so a lot folks later in the evening were wondering around. Eventually we all found the place. They did the safety briefing but hadn’t the id badges available and said they would be handing them out at launch. All a little unorganized but what the heck.

Anyway, now to a weird little story not about paragliding but about a guy who started talking to me in a coffee shop in town. he had heard my accent and introduced himself as Scott to get the conversation going. He then said I looked at bit bored and wanted to know if I wanted to hear a funny story. As it turned out it wasn’t funny in the humorous sense but in the weird sense. At least it was for me. You be the judge.

This guy drove down from LA in a car with the son of an 83 year Mexican whom he was going to setup in business with to run an art gallery in town. The 83 years old that is. This was 3 weeks ago. The deal was the 83 year would put him up and give him $500 to get things rolling. He went about getting things going in town and attended  a party at the end of the first week with the 83 year old who proceeded to get trashed and then threw Scott out of the house saying the deal was off. Scott hadn’t gotten his $500 yet so was annoyed at that and thought the guys was a little crazy, However, he had met a woman who was interested in doing business with him and she took him in under her wing. She lived with her boyfriend and son. They put the basic workings of a deal together and Scott continued to get artists lined up and get the gallery building painted. I wasn’t too sure who the building belonged and neither was Scott when asked but he continued his story. So now he was living in the house of the woman with the boyfriend. The boyfriend got a little jealous and told Scott that he had to leave. This eventually led to the Police being called and Scott forcibly removed from the house.  Scott now had no place to go and ended up going to the local church for refuge. At this point Scott felt that the contract he had with the woman he met was in breach and was now seeking a local lawyer to sue this woman. I asked to see the contract and he took out 1 sheet of paper with rough costings scribbled on it alongside a picture that her daughter had drawn on it. I laughed and Scott looked at me and asked why was I laughing. I started to tell him that I didn’t think this was a contract but he defended his situation. At this point I was waiting for him to ask me for money so I said I had to go to the pilots meeting and asked for my bill. He simply wished me well at the competition and asked me to stop by his gallery which he hoped to open later in the week!

As I walked up the street I couldn’t but help think about the surreal story I had just heard. Well at least it passed the time!

Ok the comp starts tomorrow so will keep you posted task by task.

Cheer Iain.

23rd January – Short but Sweet

Today the inversion kept gliders pretty low over launch for a long long time. About 500ft over launch until at least 11:45am. A lot of pilots left the launch area and headed over to the wall for better luck. Quite a few got up and away that took that route and others sunk out. I really wanted to get high over launch and head directly over the back. The last couple of days I went the wall route and it was a scratch and a half for most folks and I always ended up dirting out. So today, the tactic was to wait until the gliders above started getting a little higher or spreading out and wait until the thermals got stronger. I really wanted to get high and hit the lake run from behind launch. I am still a very impatient man and I know that this type of flying is not to my liking. I hate boating around for hours just waiting with others until something happens. Of course, needless to say that is generally a really bad strategy to choose as the gaggle shows you where the lift is but then you are at the mercy of everyone else.

So today I helped a lot of folk off of launch and I took off at 12:40pm.  It was starting to get strong on launch and there were a few blown launches by some pilots but there were idle cycles too that made it easier. Wow oh wow. While everyone else had been flying around in front of launch for well over an hour until they started to get high, it took me probably 5 minutes from launch if that to get to over 9000 feet. My vario never got below 800 ft/min and at times was in excess for short bursts of over 1400ft/min. A real screamer. With only Woodrat conditions to test the Nova Triton it had behave well. I wondered how it would behave in Valle. Very impressive I do have to say. Its a dynamic wing that needs very little brake movement to make corrections (like a couple of inches). I was pretty well cranked over for a lot of the time using the outside brake to control my ascent with minimal inside movement. it was great for once to get a view over the Penon and also towards the lake.

So the route folks told me to go was to head for Sacamente, a knob of a hill a few miles behind launch. From there head towards St. Augustine and Cerro Gorodo and then to the lake. Typically you would go past Penon to the Wall and onto the Mesa there and head to St. Augustine. But what the heck. I saw a few gliders in the distance near the Pinitas and knew that wasn’t the place to go. So off I went on glide.

Oh My Oh My. I got drilled on the way big time. Going over the back was major sink for a while. On went the speed bar and I wondered if I could make it to the roads with the roundabouts just at the base of the hill. The wind was still behind my back which was good but now I was entering a bowl with cliffs to the right, hill in front and the mesa to the left. The wind had also picked up. I got over the roundabout about 300 ft and started to scratch, There were bullet thermals coming off the cliff side and I tried for a while to engage but it was not to be. I ended up landing in the field next to the roundabouts. I could have flown over the cliff side and down to the main rd but I had landed there before and wanted to try some place new. It sure was windy in there and when I landed I was going 5 mph.

A family of 4 kids came to meet me and helped me pack my wing. I then hiked down the rd which was beautiful, had lunch at Jovans and headed home.

Entire length of flight from start to landing – 20 minutes! As I said Short but Sweet! You can see the flight unfold below. I had set my gopro camera to take picture every 60secs. I then pulled the best ones together into this little video along with some initial camera footage of folks launching. Enjoy!

22nd January - Headaches

I awoke this morning to the sound of Marimba playing too loud on my Iphone alarm! 8:00am. I had planned to get a taxi rider at 9:00 so thought I would snooze for a while as I had a bit of a headache. Couldn't be the drink since I only had 2 glasses of wine and 1 beer all day! Makes a change. :-) 55 minutes later I wake up. oh Crap. As it turned out it was easy to get a ride up to the launch site by taxi. At least they are all charging the same cost – 100 pesos, about $8.

My headache wouldn't go away and my throat glands were a little swollen. Looks like I had picked up something. A lot of the folks here had a head cold and cough so looks Like I had it too. Also felt a little lightheaded. Oh well, we shall see what happens today I thought.

Conditions were light and by 11:00am not a lot of gliders were in the air and those that were were barely more than 750 ft over launch. The makings of another high pressure day.Bummer. By 11:30 gliders floated around the sky like confetti en mass. Hmm, this could be troublesome. I don't like turning right as I don't feel too comfortable that way and it’s something I should practice more. The thought of having to fly in a gaggle that size did make me  a little uneasy. Ah well better get off the hill before it gets to strong. Mer left, wheeler left, Arun left Chris left then me. As predicted it was a bit of a madhouse up there with lots of folks not really looking where they were going. When you fly in a gaggle and you don’t see a lot of head movement from other pilots that is not a good sign!. Thermals are strong in this neck of the woods and it’s quite easy to come up quickly from below to people above you. My worry was that nobody was looking down. A few gliders had already left at around 8200 to head towards the Penon and were getting real low as they reached it. However they were soaring the face. TIme for me to go too! This gaggle was not to my liking. I headed off and got to the Penon about at the bottom of the rock. There was some lift there and I scratched a bit to get a little more height and then dove past i into the fingers at the bottom of the wall just like yesterday. Not a great deal of lift here and I was real low. Like 300 over the ridges. I went back to the Penon and I could see Wheelie Bob (Dave Wheeler) there too. He was also low. We headed back to the bottom of the spine that runs up to launch and we started to get some lift but also big sink. My headache hadn’t gone away and I didn’t feel like scratching anymore so decided to call it a day. Dave continued on and eventually got back up and headed out.

I took the bus right back to the lakeside landing zone and watched the gliders come in to land. Quite impressive sitting by the lake watching them come in. Dave and Arun had managed to get up and away from the Penon area and once on the Mesa they got high. Stefan was one of the first to land at Lakeside and I had a chat and a beer with him while waiting for the rest to fly in, Steve Theibult from Cashmere was on his new Mantra, his first real flight and he also made lakeside. All in all not a bad day for them. Best part for me was watching Dave Prentice fly in the prone position and come into land. I had heard about that but never seen it. Pretty cool!.

Yu can check out the video of Dave landing on my facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1356246064539

Tomorrow is a left hand day, so I will try and stick this one out if I am feeling better and set a goal to get to the lake. I will wear my helmet cam tomorrow and see if I can at least get some aerial pictures.

21st January – First Flying Day

 

What a great little day it turned out for me. I have to admit, I was pretty nervous on launch today. I haven’t flown in 6 or 7 weeks and arriving at the launch site today to see about 60 Norwegians already there at 9:45am was quite worriesome. By 10:45 there were over 150 folks on launch easily. How will we all get off I wondered? As the morning hours passed away and 11:00am was soon arriving there were only a handful of wings in the air. Oh crap!.In another hour it is going to be nuking through here and it may not be possible to launch. That was what was going though my head.

On the bright side it was great to see a lot of people I have met in the past through paragliding at this site. Dave Prentice we there minus a pigtail! He had to get the left side of his head shaved off during a recent operation. Quite funny to see actually. Then there was Joe Hartley with one arm. Joe learned to fly at Seattle Paragliding and moved to the east coast shortly after. He is one hell of a guy. Flying in Valle with one arm! Holy smoke. However, he has managed to drop the wooden bar he used to use and he now has a prosthetic that at the end has a quicklink that he attaches to the risers. Pretty cool!. That made my day i have to say. He leaves Saturday but today he took a tandem with Brad G. and had a great time. Rock on Joe.

I decided to get off the hill sooner than later and followed Wheelie Bob, Steafan and Mer. Right off of launch I hooked a thermal and it took me to the top of the stack within 7 minutes to about 2000ft over launch. Sweet. The wing was performing great but it was weird to feel pressure in the wing after such a long time. At the top of the stack I decided not to hang about and headed towards the Penon. Only a few others were beyond near the wall but all very low. Hmm I thought. Maybe I should have just gone over the back onto the mesa with the rest of the gaggle. The glide to the Penon was pretty easy and for once I passed it parallel to the top with Mer following behind me. We went to the wall but I sunk pretty quickly and rather than scratch decided to head back to the Penon. I got to the other side and tried to hook a couple of thermals but it wasn’t to be. I headed out towards the Piano and got a few bubbles I tried to stay in but nothing came of it. Eventually I decided to just go land and have a beer.

The landing zone there was pretty thermic to say the least but all turned out well. I got a lift back to Jovan with eagle paragliding had lunch and went back up for glass off. All in all a good first day over here. Tomorrow weather permitting I will try and fly back to the lake which I haven;t done yet so looking forward to that. Mer, Norwood and Wheelie all put in pretty good flights today as will see if you check out Leonardo. But then, they are premier league and I’m fourth division so no surprise there!.

Tuesday/Wednesday 19th/20th Travel days

Well everything went as planned and I am now blogging from my bed in the apartment thanks to the free wireless internet from my temporary landlord! I had a nice dinner with LeAnn in Redmond before catching the 11:45pn flight on Tuesday. I had the option to upgrade to first class for $99 so I jumped at that chance since there was no baggage charges in first class and the booze was free. Some of you may not know this fact but it turns out that Scotland is a nation of hard drinkers where the average person seems to be drinking the equivalent of 40 bottles of vodka a year. So of course I had to keep up the tradition. As it turned out a Double G&T was enough to get me to sleep and 3 hours later I awoke to the sounds of the Captain saying Houston was 100 nautical miles away. Very happy.

Had breakfast at Houston and had to wait 3 hours until the next flight but the time passed pretty quickly as I took free trips on the terminal shuttle train transport to pass the time. The next flight was on a small Brazilian ERJ jet that had only 50 seats with the left hand side only have 1 seat in each row and the right side having 2. It was pretty cozy in there. But the flight was only half full so again no problem and 2 hours later I was in Toluca. 30Min later I was out of the plane and on my way to Valle after having spent $59 on the taxi. The Taxi driver took me on the auto route which only meant that 1hr 10 min later I was in Valle, getting here around 1:00pm. Pretty good.

Now comes the funny part.  Claudia had given me a google map with the location and picture of the apartment so I didn’t think there would be any problem finding it. Wrong!. The taxi driver took me to the Rancho San Bernadino rd which was well marked and at the end was a locked gate to the ranch. 2 ranch hands came over and started speaking to the Taxi driver. Basically they said there was no apartment on the ranch and asked for the location we were trying to find. The look on their faces as they tried to figure out the location of the building from an ariel view on google was pretty funny. Meanwhile in the background the ranch hands dogs (3 of them ) were getting growled and barked at by 3 other dogs in a neighbors back yard and a dog fight soon ensued! After breaking that up I also in the interm period failed to find the pictures of the apartment on my computer so things were looking grim and the taxi driver was getting a little frustrated too. However, to my amazement, a car pulls up and in it is an English woman called Sharma who speaks Spanish, knows Claudia and gets things sorted out pretty quick. I had earlier tried to contact Claudia but to no avail. Turns out her cell phone was stolen 2 weeks earlier so if it wasn't for Sharma I may have still been wandering around Mesa de Jaimes looking for the apartment. Claudia drove up from town to me me and get into the apartment,

 

The apartment is pretty basic but large and for the deal I got it is great. Sorry John! ;-) I dropped off my gear and headed down to town to meet her husband. Turns out Miguel is the owner of Alas des Hombres, one of the local flying schools but by far the longest one around. We went for lunch and I heard some good stories about the earlier days of NW Paragliders like Dixon White and Marc Chirico coming down here to fly. In the early days it was mainly hang gliders but paragliders eventually took over in mass.

After lunch I went back to the apartment, showered , shaved and went to town for dinner and met briefly up with the boys ( Arun, Dave, Frank, Stefan and Greg Baboosh was there for a short time too). Looks like best bet for me tomorrow is just to get a taxi ride up the El Penon and launch rather than go to town and get the shuttle. Will just be as cheap. So tomorrow at 10:00am I plan to be on launch getting ready for first flight this year! Tomorrow I will take the head cam and try and get some HD video footage to post.

Stay Tuned!

Getting ready for Monarca 2010

Here we go again!. Hard to believe a year has passed since  I was there last. Still very vivid in my memory. Seems that happens as you get older..long term memory is much better than short term. That could be to my advantage as I can still visualize the routes I flew last year, but then again with around 160 folks flying this year it’s a case of follow the leader.

I leave on the red eye tomorrow night (Tues 19th) at 11:45pm and get to Toluca around lunchtime Wednesday. There I will pick up a taxi and get dropped off at my apartment. Yes Apartment! This year I had planned on going with John Mann, but he decided that getting married was a better option so dumped me in favor of his new bride. Thanks John!I guess my face isn’t that good looking these days! However the price was right for the apartment and although outside of town is en route to launch. I got the bottom floor which is a little studio.

Downtown Valle is quite quaint, but very very busy and at around 3:00pm all the cars in the surrounding area descend upon Valle like crows. Car after car jam the streets and the smell is pretty bad. So this time I talked to my friend Claudia whom I met at Saint Marcos a couple of year’s back and whose boyfriend lives in Valle. Turns out she moved there last year so she helped me get setup with an apartment. Pretty sweet!

It’s only about 2 miles out of town so a short taxi ride away but is in the country side and I am looking forward to that. However not being able to speak Spanish could be a problem, but then again  do have an Iphone! So I have a number of phrases already on the phone that I can play to the folks I meet, like, where is Valle de Bravo?, can you take me there?, how much for a taxi?, no way dude!, etc. This of course is all due to the Spanish app I downloaded from the app store but it is pretty basic. So thinking ahead, I shot down to  the Duvall Ixtapa restaurant and asked the bar tender to repeat a number of phrases I think would be pertinent when I land out and recorded them on my Iphone. A cheap translator! We shall see how that works out.

I finally managed to fix my pod harness speed bar that I have been having problems with about 6 weeks ago, the last time I flew. Wheelie Bob (Dave Wheeler) told me to just cut off the bottom step. So I did and I think it will work just fine. Just need to remember how to fly now. i also added two lead pulleys to the bottom of the seat plate to act as guides so the speed bar line stopped getting caught at the corner of the seat. I drilled two holes in the wooden seat plate at the corners and attached the pulleys with nylon plastic tie straps. We shall see how that holds out.

Finally a few of the Seattle folks arrived home late last night including Ralph, Paul, Kevin, Stephanie and Matt Cone among others. For first timers they said it was great fun having a lot of the Seattle crew down there and they flew every day bar 2 so not too bad. No real bad stories other than one day where at the top of the lift the air was real trashy and folks were taking collapses left right and center. however they all got back safely.

So now I made a list of all the things to take down and have 95% of it packed. So all in all all set.

Now I just need to be able to do better in the comp than last year. Had a couple of good days flying but didn’t  manage to hit the start cylinders on those days so basically came in almost last in the field at the end of the comp. This year I just plan to fly high, stay high and follow and see how far I get. Has to be better than last year right! :-)