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Spean Bridge We have not always been successful in finding good slope sites, but we were rewarded in other ways. In 1998 Geoff and I went back to Stronenaba, only to find the wind had shifted direction from the previous day. A quick look at the map, and we headed off towards Spean Bridge, and then along a narrow road to a viewpoint / carpark. The sun was out, the clouds seemed to be racing across the sky at a reasonable rate, and just to our right a seagull thermalled up from a level below us way up to a speck in the sky. With huge grins we set off up the hill. I had put together my Eliminator 100, my Phase six, and my foamie…ridiculous! As we climbed I could not shake the feeling that I should have just taken my E-100 and my new bungee. It was steep going, when we stopped for a breather, Geoff captured me on video saying that we must be at least halfway up….what an idiot, it turned out that we could barely have been even a quarter of the way up ! We struggled on, spurred on by the breeze that seemed to be coming over the hill, chatting excitedly about how strong the wind was going to be on the windward side. About halfway up we met a family of Swedes coming down the hill, when we asked them how far it was to the top they told us that they had given up as it had gone on and on and on…..and indeed it did go on and on and on. However, determined to get some slope soaring in we doggedly continued on up. Finally we got to the top, and the view was spectacular with snow still clinging to parts of upper reaches of Ben Nevis as you can see in this video clip. |
Ben Nevis Spectacular view of Flying Zone and Ben Nevis 419kb MPG file with sound, 6 secs duration. |
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And the wind? Hmmm! Well it appeared we had misjudged the direction, our slope was blocked by another hill on the windward side that we couldn't see from the foot of the hill, we could hardly feel a breath. But wait what was this, suddenly the wind picked up, surely there must be enough wind to slope soar in this. I tried lobbing the E-100 off, and sure enough there was some lift and up it went, after a few minutes though, the wind died away to nothing and the E-100 came down, down, down. I tried desperately to keep her in the air, but inevitably I had to land. What was going on? 10 minutes later it picked up again, another attempt ended in exactly the same way. This was getting to be a bit frustrating…I looked up to see a long column of fluffy white clouds neatly marching down wind……it all suddenly became clear. When the wind was flat calm, we were actually sitting right on the front edge of a thermal. Then as it began to pass over us it would get stifflingly hot and as the back edge of the thermal came towards us sucking in the surrounding air, slowly the wind increased in speed until it was strong enough to slope soar in. So it was action stations and get launched as the back edge of the thermal passed overhead and if we were clever enough, we could get enough height to start thermal turning in it and gain some terrific height. Geoff was more successful than me and got the E-100 so high he had to hand the controls back to me. Thinking about it now, I wonder if Geoff had in fact managed to take the model into wave lift. It certainly didn't seem to want to come down from up there……All I could think about at time was my bungee sitting in the car way down below! Why had I lugged these other two models all the way up here. What an idiot! Still, we had a good laugh at ourselves, tucked that bit of knowledge/experience into our brains, prided ourselves on making the huge trek up the hill, marvelled at the terrific view, and finally set off back to the car. On the way down, we had the bright idea of gliding our foamies down to the car. Remember that we were on the lee side of the hill, and there was hardly a breath of wind, but surely, we thought, they must be able to glide down the hill…. Wrong! I had modicum of success, but most of our efforts ended up like Geoffs in this video clip. |
 Non-Launch of a Glider 208kb MPG file 4 secs duration. What a couple of drongos! Geoff is quite seriously saying "Nah, I don't think it's going to work !!!" well Duh! This was his third attempt too! |
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