I arrived at Devil's Dyke on Saturday 17/9/22 and by the time we got parked and on launch, all paragliders were landed and only hangliders were flying.
After watching the day for a while, the wind dropped and some paragliders took to the skies.
I remember watching some of them flying around and thinking, this looks a little strong and bumpy, but nothing I can't handle (I thought).
One of the pilots said that others were flying, so it was flyable. I think I took that as confirmation to get into the air. After all, if others are flying, it must be fine, right?
I took off and realised that the thermals were punchy and the wind was failry strong. I had penetration and decided to keep flying for a bit. I connected with a thermal in the valley which I took all the way up to 1200m (3600ft).
Everything was fine and I was handling the height just fine until my glider started to get pushed around. It was a lot more twitchy that I expected it to be. After getting sufficiently freaked out, I decided I wanted to land and used big ears to decend. I was still going up.
Questions:
How did the good pilots know not to take off? Did they get that information from weather predictions or from watching other pilots?
Why did my glider get so twitchy at 1200m? Was this because of the wind, that dark cloud or was it because I was flying behind a thermal and picking up turbulance from its wake?
Would this kind of turbulance be able to collapse my glider?
what would you do in a situation where you were finding it rough at height?
Негізгі бет Devil's Dyke - 17 September - a new record height which got very turbulent and scary
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