Gordon Rigg, nine times British hang gliding champion, kick off our new hang gliding column with a look at flying wave.
Alpine pilots turn away from the launch site when they see those smooth lenticular clouds standing up against the wind, and they are right to do so. Steep and jagged mountains don’t mix well with wind if you want to fly slow lightweight aircraft.
However, there are places famed for allowing our slow aircraft to access this magic lift, and those of us who have flown a few seasons in the UK are likely to have ridden this variety of lift – for our island produces every kind of flying condition you can imagine.
Usually the classic smooth lenticulars are well above our reach, and the wave we can fly looks far more like cumulus from below, but on the top it is that classic smooth shape.
How much fun can be had, he asks?
I climbed so high once north of Laragne in France, in a south wind, I could see right across the Adriatic. From my home site in England I once flew 180km – nearly half of it was in wave above cloud base. You never have a camera on such flights!
The full article is in Cross Country 157, Jan/Feb 2015.
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