Good-looking skies belie tricky flying at the South East Wales round of the British Paragliding Cup
Mal Grace reports on the South East Wales round of the British Paragliding Cup (30 July – 1 August), which was not blessed with ideal weather conditions. Malcolm Davis made the best of the tricky conditions to win the round.
Once again the Cup descended on South East Wales, returning to its Park Farm base at Llangattock near Crickhowell. Everyone prayed for better conditions than had been seen so far this year. Met reports were conflicting, and you really just had to be there to know what was going on.
Day 1 – Friday saw an early (just for Cris) 8.30 briefing with immediate departure for Nant-Y-Moel on the other side of the Rhondda valley. Early task due to the threat of showers late afternoon.
Cloudbase was low and threatening, so it was a case of defiantly getting as close as possible to base to remotely stand a chance of getting away. The wind was fairly brisk but bang on the hill.
The task was set by 10:45 and window open by 11:15, an elapsed time race to goal back at the campsite. With pilots chomping at the bit to get off, the conditions and simplicity of the task allowed for a rescheduling of the window open time. Calvo decided it was open with immediate effect, and gliders were soon in the air.
Pilots scratched around and climbed, then scratched around and climbed for an hour or so waiting for that elusive thermal and the cloudbase to lift. Some stayed religiously on the hill, others out in the valley, trying to get the thermal jump on the others.
It was the pilots on the hill that eventually caught the main thermal and slowly but surely they climbed away from the others, just keeping an eye on cloudbase which had only lifted to about 900ft above the hill.
It wasn’t long before they could be seen through the murk on the next ridge, but by now the pilots that had been out in the valley were getting wet in the rain. Still they persevered a bit longer, but they were struggling to see and getting very wet, so most top landed – just as the rain decided to stop!
Calvo had been on the radio to the pilots on the next ridge who reported no rain as yet. Pilots on the hill were getting ready to launch again, but the sight of obvious rain coming in only about 10 minutes out front, which looked as if it was here to stay, meant the decision was made to stop the task. Good call. Within 10 minutes – just enough time to panic pack – the rain hit and stayed until early evening.
The organisers and meet director did a good job of getting us to the right hill early, with a quickly-decided task which looked to make the most of the day, but there was nothing they could do when the rain showed up about 5 hours before it was supposed to.
Day 2 – Saturday – Again a day for strong wind. Early briefing again with the prospect of a similar task to Friday, but from Merthyr this time. However, local reports that Merthyr was blown out meant a decision was taken to head off to Fochrhiw, which is behind and sheltered by Merthyr. After some shuttling to and fro from the local supermarket car park to the bottom of Fochrhiw, everyone assembled for the organisers to decide whether to go for it.
Half hour later, meet director Calvo tucked up nicely from the wind in his 4×4 that had driven to the top of the hill, returned to tell us what we already knew from the locals – that it was blown out blowing 25mph +, so with some more shuttling everyone eventually got back to the campsite.
Saturday evening it was a BBQ for everyone with food and drink, disposable BBQs, with it splitting into 2-3 groups. Some may have had more drink than they were used to, and the gathering deteriorated into a group-to-group food fight.
Day 3 – Sunday – Today was definitely a Merthyr day. Skies looked promising when we arrived and the free-fliers were at base.
Task was set and Calvo did the briefing.
A race to goal at Castle Meadows in Abergavenny, via a turnpoint on the roundabout out in front of Merthyr.
Strong winds on takeoff were on the limits of their comfort zone for many, but the brave (or plain daft) launched in race mode, though everyone got off OK in the end.
As usual (as all the top pilots always say) those who took off early got the best climbs getting high enough to push forward for the turnpoint.
After the turnpoint things got tricky. The decent lift that had been there before the task started to shut down – there were still the odd thermals, but they were small and weak, and it was difficult to gain any decent height.
The weak conditions meant everyone ended up on the ridge, some looking for a climb to head off to goal with and everyone else still looking for enough height to push forward to the turnpoint, which a few more did but ended up landing short of the ridge (game over).
One more thermal – and you really had to be in the right place at exactly the right time – was enough for a few pilots to scrape over the back, though they still did not manage to get past minimum distance of 5km.
Malcolm Davis won the task and the round as he managed to scrape out a massive 8km for a total of 14 points, followed closely by Dave Thomson (13 points) and Graham Cummins (12 points). It may not be much, but it could make all the difference at the series end.
Results
1 – Malcolm Davies (Gin Boomerang GTO)
2 – Dave Thomson (Gradient Avax XC2)
3 – Graham Cummins (Sky Ares)
