[Flyers] Flying in Spain - day two

[Ross Golder]

I woke up to an overcast and miserable looking sky, and went down to 
breakfast. Tony was hoping to take me to a coastal site, but reports 
were that wind was going to be too light. So we headed back to El Bosque 
in the afternoon. This time, Frans came too. Frans is 71 years old Dutch 
guy living here in Algodonales, and a very keen and experienced 
hang-glider pilot.

The first flight of the day was with the Aeros Target again, launching 
from the paraglider take-off again. There was a lot more rising air 
today, and I quickly found myself slightly above the peak of the 
mountain soaring back and forth along, doing nice shallow turns in any 
rising air I could find. The conditions were described as 'marginal', 
but despite this I managed to maintain height for what seemed like quite 
a long time before I decided to head out to landing.

This time, I arrived nice and early and did a few S turns to burn off a 
little excess height just before the landing field. I picked a point 
quite about a hundred metres into the field that I wanted to get to and 
pulled the bar in to head towards it. Unfortunately, I wasn't 
considering that the Target has nowhere near the same amount of 
penetration as my Rumour II, which I've gotten used to landing with, so 
I started to come down towards a large tree on the corner of the field 
instead. I had to make a very quick plan B, and saw a short stretch of 
grass in a field just to the side of the one I landed in on day one. I 
came in quite fast and flared off the speed as quickly as I could. Just 
as I had dug my feet in to slow the glider, the left leading edge hit a 
small tree and span the glider 90 degrees to the left. Luckily, I'd 
slowed right down already, so it wasn't a hard impact. I checked the 
leading edge and there was no damage. I de-rigged and waited for y 
pick-up, kicking myself for not planning the landing better and having 
to make a potentially hazardous emergency landing. Total airtime was 45 
mins.

We grabbed a quick sandwich on the way back up the hill, stopping at the 
official hang-glider lauch point, which is about 200ft lower than the 
paraglider takeoff, and has parking so doesn't involve carrying anything 
up from the road. By now, it was around 5pm and the last of the larger 
black clouds was passing over the mountain leaving a few smaller clouds 
out in front. Tony and Rona has a quick siesta, while I eat my sandwich 
and kept an eye on the conditions. I was feeling quite nervous, 
especially after my dodgy landing and seeing that the wind was a touch 
gusty, going from 10kph to 16kph. I had half a mind not to fly this 
time. I was chatting with Frans as he rigged his Icaro 2000, and he 
didn't seem at all perturbed. Just as Frans was edging over to takeoff, 
Tony came over and we watched Frans launch. He shot up like a fart in a 
bathtub, and before long he disappeared into cloud. Also a gaggle of 
paragliders seemed to be comfortably rising up over the far end of the 
mountain. Conditions must be good, and it didn't look as rough as I 
thought it would be. After a little encouragement from Tony, I decided 
there was no real reason for me not to fly, except nerves, so we began 
rigging our gliders

This time, I flew the Solar Wings Scandal XK, which is a bit more of a 
higher performance wing than my Rumour II. It was a little bit harder to 
rig than my Rumour, but it had a much more familiar feel to it than the 
Target when I lifted it up and ground-handled it. I edged over to 
take-off, and was caught unawares a strong thermal that passed off to 
the right, which span me round 180 degrees. I lowered the tail and Rona 
steadied the wing and helped me turn it back to face the horizon again.

With Tony's help I found the right time and build up a run for a nice 
strong launch. Once away from the hill, I lowered my hands and tucked my 
feet into the harness as the glider began a gentle turn onto the hill. 
It took me no more than a few seconds to get used to the more precise 
and responsive handling of the Scandal, and I was much comfortable 
flying it than the Target. My vario was singing a beautiful song and I 
found nothing but rising air whether I was looking for it or not. Before 
long, I found myself at least 1500ft above launch, looking down at the 
mountain and at all the beautiful scenery that was previously hidden 
behind it. The curvature of the earth became more noticable, as it does 
when you start to reach cloudbase. I didn't reach cloudbase, as I wasn't 
wearing a flying suite and found myself shivering as the thermometer on 
the vario read 8 degrees celsius. I did a few steep 360s and burned off 
a few hundred feet to get warmer again, and spent a while just playing 
ahead of the top of the ridge.

Tony radioed up and pointed out an alternative landing field, which 
Frans had come down in a bit further away than the designated one, but 
which appeared to be low grass rather than high crops. I watched Tony 
take off below me and scratch around. He came up to within a few hundred 
feet of me, but further down the other side of the ridge. I got carried 
away playing around, maintaining height and watching the paragliders 
around me, and the vultures and other birds soaring the ridge below and 
alongside me. I then spotted Tony heading out to land, and decided that 
I has had enough too and began to head out too.

I reached the field with around a thousand feet to spare and had fun 
doing some more steep 360s to get me down to a more reasonable level. I 
knew this wing was a lot faster than I was used to and that I would need 
to come in fast for landing, but that I wouldn't have a problem with 
penetration. A few long S turns later to set up for landing and I was 
ready for final approach. Legs out, hands on uprights, I came in fast 
and skimmed along a metre above the ground, running as fast as I could. 
However, no matter how hard I pushed out, it didn't seem to flare very 
well or bleed off much speed and I finally came down on the wheels and 
my belly! Rona quickly pointed out that I hadn't grabbed the uprights 
high enough, so the flare was too weak. Another lesson learned, and 
luckily no broken equipment or bones. I left the hill at 7pm and touched 
down at 8pm, so total flight time was an hour.

We headed into El Bosque town, where Frans had once lived, and he took 
us to a lovely Pizzeria where we has a lovely meal and some wine. We 
were all exhausted, but we'd had a fantastic day.