Hi I'm Greg, come and join me on a cross country flight, and I'll show you
how it works. Ooh, what's that? Everybody's landing. I wonder why that's happening?
I'm out in front of the hill here, out over the fields and I've committed to landing somewhere
out and walking back up that's an important stage of cross country
flying, the first step, you've got to free yourself from the hill.
There's my friend, Tefal ... we call him that because he's really hard to stick to.
So I'm just working light lift out here in front out over the fields and we're searching
upwind, as soon as I find lift I'm just drifting, pushing upwind, slowly on that source, just
trying to find a stronger thermal releasing from the same point. A big part of what's
happening here is that I'm flying a really simple glider, it's taking absolutely none
of my attention away from extending my senses out and looking for lift, and that's a big
deal in cross country flying, you don't want to be flying something that you're hanging
onto and having to focus on all the time, you need your awareness to be able to be free,
looking outwards, and sensing where the lift is. So much of it is done on sensitivity and
intuition, the performance of the wing is not that important. OK this is a 2 metre per
second thermal, I'm just using a little bit of brake on the inside and it's coming around
really quickly, you really don't need to crank the brake on the Epsilon 8, it will really
come round quite fast enough with a little bit of a dab on the inside brake, and I'm
not using the outside brake at all, there's no need, glider swings around quite quickly.
It feels fairly efficient, I've maybe got to be a bit careful that I don't drop
the inside wingtip in. He's climbing slightly better than me over there but I don't really
want to lose the core. OK, I'm about to do something that I use a lot in cross country
flying, a little trick, I'm just going to push into wind a bit, while I'm thermaling,
I'm just pushing upwind, right out to the front of the thermal, just to feel it out,
I've got right to the edge there and now I turn back and I go back and I tighten up on
the stronger part of the core. Right, now I'm nicely established, and round and round
we go, now it's just enjoying the feeling of getting up and away from the hill, and
I'm starting to look ahead, watch the cloud patterns, and try and analyze where the best
lift is going to be. A lot of it now is just patience, it takes
me about ten minutes to climb up to the top here just going round and round, and as I'm
climbing up I'm generally widening my turns ... you can see I'm pretty flat there as the
thermal expands as it goes up. And then there'll come a point where the lift
starts dropping off, getting a little bit bitty, (aah, there's Tefal again, so we're
keeping up with him, he's on a Cayenne 5 which is two classes above this wing).
Ahh, there's something that's happening, there's some sea air that's coming in and creating
a step in the cloud ... it's time to move on.
Now it's very tempting when you've got ground features like a ridge to follow a ridge line
but what's more important is what are the clouds doing? That's where the lift is. So
in this case, it's slightly over the back on the sloping terrain that's facing into
the sun. Here's a classic glide, I've now left the
lift and I'm gliding, and there's a little cloud. Now the sun's off to the right so the
cloud shadow isn't directly underneath the cloud. And in this case the wind is coming
from the left so the shading is indicating pretty much where the thermal is coming from,
and I can link those two up to come in underneath the cloud and intersect with the lift. Somewhere
around ... there! That's a good feeling. Going on a big glide and getting your angle right
that you come straight into the lift and climb back up to cloudbase again. So that's the
game for these English flatlands where you've got little puffy clouds, you're trying to
find clouds that are just forming, not the old ones.
Now sometimes you're going to get low, but don't give up, you can land anywhere here,
any of these green fields will do, especially with a glider like the Epsilon 8, just keep
faith, be ready, and when you get that lift, hook it! That might just be a climb that's
goind to get you away from this and back in the game. I'm usually turning pretty tight
when I'm low down, with a lot of weightshift. In all the excitement, don't forget there
are aeroplanes around, so keep an eye out on your airspace maps. And try and stay out
of the clouds so the other aeroplanes can see you when you're flying around. But man!
What a view! THIS is why I fly! Hey, we're about 60-70 kilometres out from
launch and hey, there's Carlo. Now he's flying a Niviuk Artik 4 so he's again, two classes
ahead of this glider, supposedly more performance, but it's really up to your decisions, it makes
much more difference whether you go left or right, than if you've got slightly more glide
and speed on your glider. And it's really nice to fly with friends. They help you identify
the lift. Now here's another bit of that seabreeze air coming in from the right, you can see
a low cloud pushing in underneath the big cloudbase up top. This ... THIS IS WHY I FLY!
Now we're cookin' ... Ooh baby, this is some spectacular stuff!
It feels like riding some big wave at Waimea. Whooohoo.
There's nothing quite like that! It's just the best feeling in the world.
Um, I think we've just gone past 100 kilometres ... how did that happen? We weren't really
focused on it at all, were we? Just enjoying the flying, and the distance will follow.