The Aircraft
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The weather forecast appeared to be epic, so Adrian Lepard, Simon Herbert, Adrian Bishop, Dom Schetini and I went to Combe.
Adrian Lepard had a very nice flight very early before the rest of us turned up. Then the wind appeared to go west and it went almost dead with very few weak thermal cycles. Adrian Leppard who left at 2:15 was the skygod sacrifice as a boomer came through at about 2:30pm and every man and his dog got away.
I broke my endurance (3hrs 29mins), distance (78Km), height gain (4950ft) and UK altitude (6000ft) records today, cloudbase was over 5500ft and
I made Chichester but I saw several others go even further!
Chichester City
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Left the hill at only 600ft expecting to go only a few Km's, I had a low save at 200ft around Facombe where I climbed out to a couple of grand. Caught another thermal over Hastbourne Tarrent where a Tornado fighter aircraft decided to have a near miss with me and appeared to have to bank to avoid me and the dozen other Xc paragliders, it was going so fast I could not hear it until it had passed. Got to Whitechurch where it went ballistic, over 5m/s constant lift to about 6000ft ! Had to big ear out of cloud and was very worried with a sailplane thermalling close below me in zero viz.
I thermalled for about an hour in scratchy lift over the A303 and M3 to the Alresford Solent airspace corner. Then I headed towards Butser Hill where I picked up another thermal, then another over Waterloovile.
Hayling Island
Click Picture to Enlarge I decided to go for Hayling Island to get max distance but I seemed to catch the sea breeze convergence so I changed track and had a 20Km almost zero sink glide east to land at a Burger King south of Chichester.
Adrian Bishop made a very respectible 30Km south of Popham and Simon made 12 Km only to land because he was flying in Tshirt and Shorts after he decided there was no chance of going Xc. He was given a lift back to the hill by an X glider pilot who was about 85 who last flew a glider in the second world war. Dom (a new member to Wessex) completed his first ever Xc of 5 Km.
After landing up to my waist in wheat, Simon and Dom picked me up literally a minute after packing away as I had radio'd them over Butser. Best flying day ever.
Chichester Harbour with Bosham on the left
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