Reviewing forecast in the morning showed that there was a possibility of ridge soaring in the afternoon. No sun; overcast, but wind velocity around 10mph and pretty much straight in at Henson's ramp.
Meanwhile, the morning looked pretty gloomy, with wind blowing from the south.
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| Grey day - route 111 |
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| Grey day - Sequatchie Valley |
Cloudbase never got high, but by 3pm there was enough sun peeking out occasionally that we could see weak thermals rolling through. Wind was cycling between 45 degrees cross, and straight in. Velocity was nowhere close enough to soar, though.
A couple of hangliders launched, and we all watched them taking long glides into the valley without losing much altitude. Eventually, one of them lost the lift and landed, but the other one found a weak climb and went back to ridge height. Not long after that he had to land as well. Not very inspiring. I decided to wait until I saw something more substantial.
Around 4pm, paragliders started launching. They maintained at the ridge level for a while, and then started to climb toward grey looking cloud.
My initial thought was to wait until that grey cloud rolled passed us, but it looked like the cloud was generating enough lift, so maybe even a hang glider could stay up. Decisions, decisions. I was getting a bit anxious, worrying about my soaring performance, about decision i had to make, asking myself why the hell i needed all this stress.
That convinced me it was time to launch. Anxiety is not that unusual, especially at a new site, in unfamiliar environment. I can work through this.
I put my harness on, hooked in, got the hang check, and walked to the ramp.
The launch went without an issue. I turned south and immediately started to climb, not very fast, but I was going consistently up. After a couple of passes, I established comfortably above the ridge. This was a nice feeling, my anxiety was gone. It was replaced by joy of flying. Amazing how it works...
In the next thirty minutes the ridge was full of paragliders and hang gliders. I was 600' above the ridge and traffic wasn't an issue at that point.
North of the launch, I made it to 3100' MSL, and was touching the cloud. I tried to use that altitude to go down the ridge to the south and attempt to cross the gap. By the time I got there, I lost most of what I gained, and didn't risk the crossing. The day was working, but it was pretty light.
I spent more than an hour flying along the ridge, with occasional glides into the valley and back. When I was losing altitude, the traffic became dense, and I had to dodge gliders a few times. Soon, I got bored with all that and went out to land. It took me another 10 minutes to decent. The air was still going up.
My approach was good, but flare timing was off again. This time, I flared too early. I made sure I was flying at trim, light touch and all that, but when I started to flare, the glider came up quite a bit. Anyway, no whack, nothing is broken, so I guess it was a good landing.
Overall, awesome day. I got 1 hour 18 minutes in the air. After three days of no flying - it was great. I'll take it.
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| In the main LZ |
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| Captain America |
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| Paragliders over the ridge |
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