To be honest I feel much safer in my hang glider than in a cable car...
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Back in the air
After a phone call from Jas to say that it was looking on for tomorrow we headed up yet another mountain, this time using little cable cars to get to the top....
Bern
Then it was off to Bern for me for the evening of Aug 1 and some impressive fireworks, the next day I caught up with my cousin in Basle and spent a couple of days there as the weather was no good for flying.
Back again
The next day there were no clouds in the usual places and perhaps because there were more pilots and more pressure we made the mistake of lobbing off to early. Jas and I both found ourselves in the bombout down below. Its a tight little field with every imaginable hazard on all sides, roads, buildings, a railway, high tension power lines, paraglider pilots.... With the Perfex its easy, pull the bar in to waste energy so I had no trouble. Jas had to flare hard to stop his glider in the limited space. The whole time Jas flew his huge topless aeros like a champ and made every one of his basebar landings look easy. Go Jas!
Allrichtung
or Allrecht or something like that anyway. It was down the end of the valley and where we landed. An idilic green meadow to pack up in and it was 25'C in the sun and warm. It is hard on the perfex rigging it on concrete as at this T/O you can already see marks on the undersurface...
Otherwise I am getting along just fine with it, its great to fly..
That shot!
Yes, its the obligatory head shot with the show covered mountains in the background. It was cold, really really cold. I am still suffering from freezing myself solid during this flight...
I got up!
On a day when there were hundreds of paragliders and perhaps 15 Hang Gliders and around 20 sailplanes all sharing the same sky. The guy in the sailplane with the red wingtips was just having fun....
The view the other way
When it works, photostich really can make some nice panorama images. If you have a big monitor and a fast internet connection check out the originals on my Flikr site, some are 20,000 by 2000 pixels!
Eggishorn
After getting up way to early for me and then catching the cable car to the top of the Eggishorn together with all the extra work required to get the gliders brought up too... We made it. Jason admires the view!
Fiesche
The next day we drove to Fiesche, we spent the night with a cool local pilot called Stefan and the next day we went mountain flying...
Woo Hoo
Of course here is the obligatory shot of me at cloud base with Lake Lausanne in the background!
Cloudbase is cold
Very cold here in CH. Nice to get up level with the tops for the first time though.
Evening Fly
The wind was all over the place on T/O and we played a game of chasey moving our gliders from one side of the hill to the other trying to get a breeze in our faces for T/O. Thomas went and then the wind switched and we waited for ages before getting off. We both got hammered in the bown and then found a nice thermal over the power lines and were at cloudbase together before long. A nice view of the lake from cloudbase!
Club Bus
Here is the bus that took us to the T/O. You can't see it but my Perfex is already in the back of the bus... I think maybe it is going to need a new diff soon, interesting noises on the way up...
Villneuve
I caught up with Jason and Thomas and we headed to the Landing field at Villneuve. Its surrounded by trees and very wet in places but big enough to land a hang glider in. There we got a lift to the T/O in the club bus. Here is Jas next to a glider that was just being set up IN the landing field..
Thomas
I met Thomas in WA a couple of years ago when we flew together at the comp. He remembers me as I mistook cunderdin for Mekkering and flew an extra 50kms on a task after I had some GPS problems.... Jason has been staying with him and flying the local sites on his old topless. This is the view from his house, you can see lake lausanne in the background.
Vufflens Le Chateau
After getting in touch with Jason I drove straight to the french speaking part of Switzerland near Lausanne to a small hamlet called Vufflens and everywhere were beautiful fields of sunflowers. The weather was lovely.
Soaring Birds
On arrival in Vufflens I was delighted to see hawky sort of soaring birds everywhere. Sadly they don't know how to thermal, they just use the ridge lift and stay close to the ground. Bad eyesight and a fear of heights perhaps....
Design
I was planning to take photos of these in every country I visited just for the amusement value of comparing the different designs. Luckily for me I found better things to do, but hey here is the Dutch one that could have started it all...
Amsterdam
The first stop on my trip was Amsterdam. I was only there for one night, 45Euros to park the car in town for a day saw to that! 24Hrs is plenty long enough to see the sights though and I am sure I could get myself into trouble if I hung around too long ;-)
Into Europe
Yeah, I know technically the UK is supposed to be part of europe, but I never actually feel like I am there until I cross the channel. Here I am heading for my ferry at midnight. If you travel off peak it is much cheaper and I love night driving.... The weather improved by the minute as we left Dover behind...
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