And then the winter came and a lot went dark. How hard I try, the winter keeps getting to me. I need to be outside, need to be on the move in the sun to feel good. But responsibilities (work, a girlfriend, a home which I all love to bits!) make me less mobile and to be honest less eager to change the way it is…and that makes me a bit lazy. Once spring comes I feel something starting to bloom. A form of energy starting to flow again, a rebirth?

About a month and a half ago we had our first winchday on the Pro Airfield. A very enjoyable day in which I made 4 flights. On a couple I did a bit of thermalling. On one Andre and Marga came to join (or did I join them?) in what seemed a bit of "elevator-air". A mild start of the yearly thermal cycle.
 You could nearly taste that the big day's were coming again.

That day was a good warming up for the Pro Air trip to Algodonales, Andalusia, Spain. Now without any exaggeration this trip was one of the finest I have had so far. It seemed as if the gods of the air decided to throw us a mix of very different conditions, a couple of types a day. We flew from 4 launch-sites and went to the sea, where Andre, Paul and I had a go on dunesoaring in weak conditions. We have had strong thermal days, good conditions for mountainsoaring and combinations fo the two. We have had winds ranging from a mediocre western and a weak northerly to a strong easterly wind. A very good week full of surprises and a lot…a lot of laughing.

Before I headed out to the airport I was anticipating about how it would be, a group of males only. Before, I allways thought a mix of male and female is ideal and the most fun groups to be part of. But I have to admit that the combination of characters  was just right this time. A great group!

So let's write about a few highlights of this trip. (I can hear Tom thinking "o oh…":-) )

Monday March 28th What a start!
Day one was a blast right away. We all made two long flights, apart from Erik who is just about recovered from an operation. But I think he enjoyed himself waiting on the landingfield. I flew for just under an hour. A nice combination of soaring the mountainridges and thermalling as soon as I met one. At a certain moment I decided it was a bit to crowded in front of launch so I headed for the landingfield, some 2 (3?) km away. On the way there I caught a very nice thermal in a strech of air without any other paragliders. This one was mine. I rode the smooth thermal all the way back up to about 1100m asl, A couple hundred meters above launch. In the meantime other pilots of our group where heading for the landingfield.
Without any feelings of insecurity or loss of concentration for flying I started guiding them as good as I was capable of. A first for me! Now I don't how much the words really helped them and we had no real beginners – everybody was pretty well capable of landing a paraglider – but at least pointing out landmarks and letting students know you've got your eyes on them can give a lot of comfort to them, I shure hope so .

The second flight of the day was in a lot rougher air. +5m/s thermals were no exeption and cumuli where popping everywhere. The wind was stronger as well. Flying these conditions takes more concentration, but is more rewarding as well. I launched and had a 35% collapse about 10 seconds after launch. I am happy with the collapsetraining I did a few years ago, and with all the previous collapses I had as well. I remember getting my first collapse. At that time my first reaction was willing to put my feet down on the ground. Once you know how to handle a collapse it isn´t such a problem anymore. The training and experience have made me a more relaxed pilot concerning collapses. So now I just continue flying once I have restored the glider after a collaps.
After getting the way the air flowed at that time, it became an easy, but very rewarding game. Thermal up to cloudbase, or follow the thermal until you nearly flew over the highest ridge. Ten go headwind and fly a route that would bring you to the next cloud coming your way. Pick up the thermal forming that cloud and repeat the excersize. Great flying. And apart from Erik all others we airborne as well. Tom, Paul, Tonny, Joris and a bit later Andre as well. Great flying and great views.

Three years ago Joris and I agreed about something, today it finally happened. To catch a thermal at the same altitude together with a good flyingmate is even more rewarding than just catching a thermal. Joris and I cirkled around each other a few times, shouting with joy! Now this simply was flyingheaven!

Tuesday March 29th Atlantic times.
Tuesday started with 8/8th cloudcover. We had to take our breakfast inside! And then it started raining as well! Thats not what we came for. So in the van, and of to the beach. At the beach we had blue skies and maybe even a soarable wind. The Andalusian beach is very unlike the Dutch ones. Our dunes are mostly smooth. Long streches of evenly formed sandhills. In Andalusia the dunes were ragged, with lots of crevasses and gullys, not to mention the concrete poles that dotted the dunes. Not ideal. The windstrength was just about enough to keep you aloft, but to stay aloft for a long time was a feat nobody managed. Still the conditions were ideal for some groundhandling. Within an hour around 7 colourfull gliders were up. I put my attention to Tonny, who still had a few problems in using the Australian starting method (starting backwards) In the following hour you could see him progressing a lot. Great fun to see. During the rest of the week his Australian launches were getting better and better.
First our host, Geraldo, then Andre had a go at soaring. Allways great to see good skill in action. Then I had my first taste of dunesoaring. Over a strecht of a few dozen metres I managed to stay aloft for a good 2 minutes in less than 20km/h winds. Soaring the dunes is a special discipline. Most of the times you stay very close to the ground and the aerea of lift (i.e. where you have to fly to stay up) can be very small. So your skills in steering a paraglider exactly where you want and knowing what the different movements in your glider mean have to be up to date if you want to soar for hours and hours.
Paul also had a go. I like his attitude about flying. He wants to try everything. As long as someone keeps a proper safetymargin as well physically as in skill (am I able to fly here now?) then I recommend this attitude.
Even without flatout flying this was an enjoyable day with great views over the Atlantic.

Wednesday March 30th. Shock and Awe  ….and laugh

Because the wind was north and none of the "housemountain" launchsites are ideal in these meteowinds we started the day by driving to Montellano. About 45mins from Algodonales. At the top of the Montellano Mountain the wind seemed to be to strong. So we went for the lower launchsite. This site was interesting, possibly difficult to fly. The hightdifference between the low Launch and landing is about 50meters. The idea was to head out, stick to the mountain and go right. There was a soarable spot where a lot of thermals came through. If you're able to catch a bit of height and reach about 50meters over launch, you can set yourself back to the main mountainside, soar up the mainside and thermal out. But there is little room to do that. I launched first and soon enough Joris was airborne as well. In this small flyable aerea and with these conditions there was just not enough room to stay up with more than one pilot flying. Andre asked me to search for lift a couple dozen meters more to the left, but there was none. I touched down halfway between launch and landing. Everybody had a go. None of us landed on the "official" landingfield. We all touched down somewhere at the foot of this hill. Tom fist landed on the hillside, walked up to have another go and then landed in a hikingtrail, dropping his glider on 2m high blackberry bushes (thorns!). It took three of us about an hour to get the glider out unharmed. He was less lucky that evening.

We went back to the housemountain at Algo. We launched from a new launchsite facing the North West. About a 10 minute walk from a carpark takes you to a clearing where you can prepare. Then a small rocky patch to lay out, pull up and launch your glider. The valley was beautifull, it was evening. Vultures flew al along the mountainface. A nice eveningflight followed. I wanted to fly the valley, not the mountainside as a few others did. I tried to follow a few Vultures, but even for them the thermal strengh was just enough to not let them sink. I had to work pretty hard to keep my altitude, but the views and several meetings with vultures made this flight a great joy.
The landingzone surprised a couple of us. Joris started his final a bit early and got a few bumps up during the final as well. He landed right in the corner of the field, about 2 meters of the fences. The video shows really well that at a certain point, about 1,5m above the ground Joris is thinking "okay, enough. I'm flaring NOW, whatever happens". Okay, not one of his best landings, but pretty exciting to watch on video .
And then I guided Tom for his landing. I directed him to his baseline and told him to start making a large S-pattern. From my point of view he flew his curcuit well. He turned for his final…and dissapeared behind a few trees! OMG… Tom hit the tree at treetop hight. His glider stuck, and Tom fell down. The stuck glider broke his fall and he "landed" with two feet on the ground. And he caught the whole ordeal on video as well. Analysing the video tells Tom chose a baseline behind the trees, and not within his landingfield. My mistake was to not tell him that as long as he stayed within the landingfield all would be fine. I misjudged his distance to me… Oops! Tom was fine and again it took about an hour to get his glider out of the tree. This time the glider was less lucky. The glider broke his fall, but his fall broke the glider as well. Two tears which could be repaired in the following night. Now that's what I call service!
After my first angryness about this double-mistake I joined laughing about it. Toms protested about his treelanding ("I landed on my feet, so technically this doesn't count as a treelanding!" Haha) and we joked around untill the damage to his glider was assessed and all was packed. I have to admid, Tom got rid of his story about going negative last year, only to replace it with a better one. Yep, in the end this was a good day!

Thursday March 31st. Rocketing and records!
Clear skies again! We decided to start a bit earlier this morning. But as it goes in Algo, it doesn't really matter how early you want to start, you head up the mountain around noon anyway. Upon arrival on the Levante East launch site we unloaded the van and took a bit of time to scout the skies, feel the wind and sense the rythm of thermals coming through. I directly sensed that this could become a big day. Pretty strong, but manageable winds, a nice regular interval between gusts/thermals and pretty strong ones too! I launched and sunk right away.

I don´t know, but after years of paragliding I seem to start sensing good conditions more and more quickly. That can be a danger as well. Never trust your senses within a couple of minutes. Allways wait a bit longer to try and see how the conditions change. It can get too strong. You will only know that if you be patient and see and feel how the air moves and changes in, say half an hour to an hour. For example. You arrive on launch and the wind is mild without to many thermals. You're longing for a nice and calm flight. The next say 10 minutes a few stronger thermals come through, but nothing to worry about still. Just wait a bit longer. After half an hour the gusts are immense and trees a shaking by the wind. The conditions might develop in such a rapid and strong way that it would be foolish to launch. Imagine that you did launche right away, and it takes at least twenty minutes to get to the landingfield. Not nice! Patience is a golden gift in Paragliding!

But that day conditions were good, but didn't seem to change very much over a good 45 minutes. I launched eastwards and went down pretty fast for quite a long time. I headed for a couple of cultivated fields at the bottom of the slope. And yes, there was something there. Slowly I worked my way up again along teh mountainface. This happens more often to me, in the sense that I allways need a bit of time, a couple of minutes, to settle in a flight. To get the will to fight for my altitude going.
Slowly I ascended, Joris launched and joined in what became his endurance record flight. We thermalled together for a bit and I had a little altitude competition going with an unknown pilot. And then it happend. On a small glide along the mountainface I hit a strong thermal. Not just any thermal, a real pounder! I started rocketing up. +4m/s, +5, +6, +7! The thermal was a nice and smooth one, without rough edges or a lot of turbulence, but my god did it go fast! Somewhere along the climb I averaged +7m/s with a peakvalue of 9m/s! In general the average was +6.5. Never rode a thermal that strong and within a minute I left all others way below. What a blast! In the meantime the others came out as well, so I headed for the landingfield. I made a spiraldive. A great manoeuvre to practice.
I still have to perfectionate exiting the spiral dive. While spiralling down, the forces on the system become very high, so every move you make will have a very much stronger effect than the same move while flying normal. Exiting a spiral dive has to be done very carefull. It seems to take ages to get out of the manoeuvre. Again patience and precicion are key in a spiral dive. A bit of a contradiction to how violent the manoeuvre is. In this case, I had to pull through my innerbrake after exiting the dive to get back to my line of flight when entering the dive. Food for practice! I landed after Erik, who was comfortably lying down on his packsack in the sun, enjoying himself while gazing at the mountain and the many paragliders floating in front and above the mountainface.

One by one the others came in for a landing. Tonny was bothered by airsickness after his 1.15hr flight. He came down sick and had to take a bit of time to recover. While he was flying his landingpattern I thought I saw him losing something like water…but it wasn't water. Poor guy. Poor combination as wel: a passion for paragliding and being sensitive to airsicknes in more thermally active air… Tonny recovered pretty quick and that evening he took his flyingsuit with him into the shower.
Tom was doing a lot better, especially after his treelanding the night before. Now, the landingfield on this side of the mountain is big and without many obstacles. But we practised his way of watching anyway. Allways keep in sight the place where you want to land, the line your flying and the wind direction. As a former parachutist, possibly Tom was used to looking down a lot more as the glideratio of a parachute is a lot less than that of a paraglider. Today he landed on the landingfield without a scratch. Good good.
Paul waited a bit to long before heading towards the landingfield. So he landed out onto a cultivated field. I let him decide his strategy for his landing and informed him of the lay of the land from my point of view. That's the way it works best for Paul.
Joris came in after a stunning 2.20hrs of thermalling! He was able to outfly all others for quite a while and had a good practice in varying between thermalling, which is like doing a proper workout, and relaxing on short glides. Congratulations!

But there were still a lot of daylight hours, so up we went again for a more relaxing, more smooth eveningflight. The game was on again, but this time the mountainface we launched from was partly covered in shadows. So finding and using thermals was a completely different game. Aiming at the borders of light and shadow I managed to catch +0.5 to +1.5 thermals, next to a pretty soarable wind. A nice and relaxing kind of flight after the banging thermals of midday. The others seemed to have a good time too while flying on their own level of experience. We all landed on the landingfield after a great day in the skies!
That night we had a meal away from Algodonales. Outside, next to a very loud and alcohol-infused group of Germans. Again, the atmosphere within the group was just right. Lot's of laughter and as far as I can tell no hard feelings within anyone of the ProAir equipe. Another great meal. And we had a laugh with the waiter. At first, he seemed "cold" and a bit grumpy. His phone rang every 10 seconds, until Andre grabbed his phone and started answering in Dutch, telling the person on the other end of the line that he couldn't understand anything of what that person was saying (which probably was true )
. Then the waiter asked us where we came from. Learning that we were Dutch, he thawed within a couple of minutes and started talking about the time he lived in the Netherlands. That was fun…and the food was good as well!
After the meal we went back to Algo for our good night beer at JJ's. There we found out that the pilot who I was competing with earlier that day had flown for 7.59hrs! He had taken of at 1.30pm and had landed after sunset. Talking about endurance. 8 Hours in a boeing takes you where, India?

Friday April 1st, nil wind and turbulent skies.
Sometimes you can´t make any sense at all of the air and local meteorology. During breakfast we notices that the wind was blowing way to hard to launch from the house mountain. So Geraldo from Ganterfly
suggested we could go to Montillano again while the winds are often less strong overthere. So we set of to Montillano, drove up the smaller mountain, got out of the van into the searing sun to find out that…. there was no wind at all! Hmmm, so how does this work? No idea at all. Offcourse the venturi-effect (air is speeding up when it has less space to pass through) is stronger at bigger mountains, but this was a world away… strange. Now the thing was that the little amount of mainwind was coming from the "wrong" side of the mountain, so launching from the main launch-site was a no go due to possible rotor and turbulence. Gerald started to cut away a clearing on the supposed windwards side of the mountain. It became a small clearing. Pretty interesting when you are very capable in groundhandling. But not with a group of students. And with as good as nil wind pretty impossible for the experienced pilots as well.
So in the end we had a pretty enjoyable parawaiting session. Very impressive views, a nice tree give us shade and a lot of nonsense talk.
 Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, but flying is better still!

Late afternoon. Back to the housmountain. Windspeeds seemed to drop a bit. Then a bit more. Would it become flyable? It reminded me of one day in Australia a few years back when all pilots where constantly checking the slowly dropping windspeeds, getting more and more enthousiast  untill it became flyable. That day has a special place in my memory, it was the day I fell in love not with paragliding itself, but with the feeling of belonging to a community of crazy people, taking to the skies with their nimble wings.
Up the mountain for an attempt to fly. And again that feeling when I got out of the van at Levante East. These conditions seemed managable! We quickly grabbed the wings and started checking everything. Joris went out first this time. The mountainface was much more covered in shadow than during the last flight of the day before. Joris headed out just to find sink sink sink. A little mistake, he stuck to the mountain, and flew most of his flight in the shadows He had a short, but smooth ride down though. Unlike the rest. Right after launching myself I felt wuite a bit of turbulence, but still fun to fly. As time went on the turbulence became stronger and everything, the whole valley seemed to release it's heat. So there we were with two problems: getting down was difficult, and staying up wasn't nice at all. It took all my concentration and energy to keep the glider above my head, and all I wanted was to get down. Another spiral dive. From my perspective this one was wilder and stronger than the one the day before, but checking my hight after exiting the dive I found I had sunk…15 meters! No, no fun at all. I pulled ears and tried to centre on a pocket of sinking air. It took quite a while, but finally I sunk enough to start a landingpattern. Maybe some pilots like this kind of air, there surely were a few trying to thermal and stay up. But I was happy to have put my feet on mother earth unscathed. But you could tell by the movement of all gliders that this was rough air!

In retrospect this is what happened: When a mountainface is in shadow, the air next to the mountain is cooling down, so it starts to flow down the mountain. This "river" of air is loosening al the warm air in the valley, creating what is called "magic air". The valley becomes one big region of lift. Now this is fun, but when there is a strong wind the rising air can be very turbulent. Joris flew right in the downward flow of air, and had strong sink, but smooth air. Anyone who launched after him met the turbulent side of the medal. At first Joris wasn't happy about his short hop, but he became more and more at easy listening to the stories of the rest…

Ah well, another day survived, and a good experience added to the long list!

Saturday April 2nd, Last flight and off back home.
Would we be able to pull it of one more time? We had to leave Algo before 4pm to catch our plane back home from Malaga. The skies were fully covered, but the wind seemed okay. Okay! Everything packed and ready, we headed up the housemountain one more time. And before we knew it, we were flying again! This time no thermals due to the cloudcover. But the windspeed was fine for some soaring next to the mountain. So for another hour we all flew together. I commented quite a bit over the radio while flying, giving hints about how to soar the mountain. Follow the relief, don't steer into small narrow valleys, keep your distance where needed and try to find the best possible line of lift. It was a great closure of a great week, especially after the turbulent flight of the day before. Very satisfied and full of beatifull mental images we all made a proper landing at the landingfield.

Packing up, down to Algodonales for one last time to pick up the rest of our gear, and of to the airfield. The flight back home went smooth and we arrived on Schiphol, Amsterdam late in the evening. One more coffee? Okay. After ordering the others had to go off quite sudden to catch a bus to the long-term-parking, from where they all drove back to the east of the Netherlands in the Pro Air van. I checked my traintimes to discover that the last connection with which I could catch a bus to a few dozens of metres from home had left a minute before. Ah well, the next train and by exeption a taxi was just fine. I couldn't sleep that night. I just had to see all the footage we shot over and over again.

What a week it was! To all, thanks for your great company.
Tom, keep your eyes open and avoid every tree! Paul, take decicions based on safety at all times. Tonny, if you can find a cure to airsickness, then do! Erik, great to see you making your own decisions about how often to fly and be confident about it. Joris, just keep on going like this! Stay sharp and patient! Andre, thanks for all the lessons and experience I got this week, and thanks for giving me the freedom to fly as I feel is safe and responsible in a (deputy) instructors role.

Here's a couple of 1-minute-thermalling-films.

A long read about Algodonales is following…

Time is flying as well! A lot more than I did in the last few months anyway. I moved house and suffered a bit through the winter. Moving house consumes a lot of time and I simply forgot all about writing my blog for a while.

Still missing is an account of the last couple of days in Watles last winter, and by now there is a lot more to write about. About two weeks ago we flew in the Andalusian air again. And what a week it was. I think only Australia surpasses the fun I had during the last Algodonales trip. A lot more to come soon!

The last couple of days in Watles October 2010 were memorable ones. On thursday Robert, Joris and I made a great flight together. Not at all that long, but very satisfying nonetheless. We launched within a minute after each other, like an oiled machine, and battled the skies to stay up the longest and outfly each other. It was thermally active, but since my mind was on several things (mainly the teaching during the week, and with it a little tiredness) I wasn't able to fully concentrate on my own flying. Maybe, just maybe I would be able to outfly Robert that day, but I have to admit he flies like a devil once he's going ! Joris landed before me, and shot some nice footage of me and Robert landing. Joris is getting there as well now. They way he flew in Algodonales a couple of weeks ago shows that he is growing to become a very experienced pilot.

A tense moment in the afternoon of that Thursday. I was on launch, just as Andre. Bert launched and I had to guide him for the first few minutes until Andre got himself geared up and took of. I misjudged Berts distance to the mountain, thought he was farther
out, and instructed him to try and follow a couple of local pilots in their thermalling. I could have known better, but in my enthousiasm of the day I let Bert do something a bit too early in his career as a paraglider pilot. Cirkling near the mountain is fine when you trust your judgement of distance and when you take in account a big margin in case your turn goes pearshaped. For Bert this was his first time trying to thermal with other pilots and his first time trying to cirkle near to a mountainface. There is a lot to take in account when you make these kind of manoeuvres. Possibly a bit too much for Bert at that time. At a certain point he flew out of my line of sight, in a straight line towards the mountain. For a few seconds Andre didn´t see him as well. He landed on a meadow halfway down the mountain, telling that his glider stopped turning all of a sudden. Pheeeeuw, he was allright and I added a big mental note in my career-ruksack.

The last day in Watles was far from ideal. Thick clouds hung before launch and it seemed that there would be no flying at all. We had a proper parawaitingsession and I recorded about 20 minutes worth of looking at clouds right in front of me and waiting for a window (litterally!) in which I could launch. We went back to the hotel, ate lunch and went for the launch site again. Finally cloudbase seemed to (just about) reach launch.  Andre gave me the green light to pierce through the small clouds in front of launch. That was a good experience. Within a cloud it's cold, wet and you can't see anything! So you just have to keep your bearing and hope the cloud is not extending for a long way. And not the least, clouds form pretty quick. You'll notice when you're close to one. So while flying in a cloud it can build and build without you noticing.
The view when leaving the cloud was amazing. A grey valley, totally overcast, and mild soarable conditions in front of the mountain. This was mainly due to cloudsuck. Clouds themselves create an upward airflow as well! Once air reaches a point of condensation due to thermal lift or because it flows up a mountain a cloud starts to form. But condensing air releases heat, which makes the air in a cloud rise faster than it did before condensation. This air is replaces from below. So clouds really do suck!

It was an amazing 25minute flight in conditions you wouldnt think flyable when you're on the ground…

Once I landed I could relay my findings and observations to launch and after a while a small window opened for Robert and Joris to launch. It took them conciderably longer to pierce the clouds, but both of them were smart enough to fly a course away from each other and ride it out.

Final words: This Pro Air trip to Watles was a succes, apart from a couple of whet days.

Wednesday 06/10/2010. Clear skies!
Waking up on a flying holiday, being either participant in a course or deputy instructor best is started with a good look at the skies, and a sigarette if that's to your liking. This day started with clear skies! A first to us (Bert, Andre and me) since we arrived. It was still very wet from the buckets of rain that fell the days before, so strong thermal activity wasn't to be expected. The water needs to vaporise first before the ground can heat up properly. But still, after two non flyable days, days with clouds and rain, and in a group with students this could become a pretty much excellent flying day! And it did!

After stuffing myself up with breakfast (jum!) we headed out for a first check-of-conditions-on-launch, uhm, flight! It didn't take long to see that conditions were flyable. A very light valleywind, clear skies, a southerly meteo-wind, ideal for a course on the Watles startsite. I geared up and launched. I went past the regular housethermal, but nothing (yet?) and flew into the valley. The conditions were as expected, excellent glide conditions. Ideal for practice. So out they came: Robert, Joris, Bert, Tom and Andre. Looking back at the launchvideos you can tell that we were longing for airtime. You can see the eagerness in the way everybody launches. This promised to become a very good day!

A few excersises were set The B08 and B03, meaning you have to turn an eight and two full circkles, each within 35 seconds. Here's where Tom got into trouble. His first full circkle of two went okay. He started the manouvre quite forcefull, quite dynamic. Halfway into his second circkle the wing seemed to start exiting the turn, so Tom pulled the innerbrake a bit more…and stalled the left side of his wing, he was going negative! Luckily Andre and I had our full attention to Tom´s excersise and both of us gave the right commands at the same time. Tom made two full rotations in the helicopter manouvre, then released the brakes. The wing shot forwards and Tom checked the dive pretty well. Luckily the Infinity III is a mild wing in these situations. I estimate it dived to about 50degrees before Tom stopped it from diving any further. And he still had lots of height to spend before landing. An extreme manouvre, a good learning moment for Tom.
So what went wrong? It must have something to do with our chat about turning fast the night before. Tom told me that more often he feels that the wing seemes to exit a turn without Tom wanting it to. He showed me how far he pulled down the breakline during a – in his eyes – steep turn. To me it didn't look like he would be in the dangerzone pulling down the brakeline a bit further, as long has he has enough speed. In retrospect I should have asked him how much weightshift he used during his turns, but that didn't occur to me at that moment. So he pulled the brakeline a bit further during his manouvre. Since he had the outside brakes on as well, the overal airspeed was low, in which case pulling the inside brake further can result in….going negative. I've learned a lot from this situation as well!
After exiting the helicopter Tom wanted to start the B03 manouvre again, but Andre told him to take a breath and fly to the landing-field. Once down I asked him how he felt. "I enjoyed that actually" his response came. Hah! I've seen people catching their breath after an extreme manouvre, or not even flying for a few hours, to recover. This was a new one to me. Tom felt safe due to our instructions over the radio. Thanks Tom!

Berts second launch was very "exciting" as well. Since this was his first mountaincourse, and with only a few dozen flights in his log you couldn´t ecpect him to be very selfconfident yet. That's not anything you should worry about, being a rookie paraglider pilot. I rather have less selfconfident pilots on a beginnercourse than overconfident people. The latter are very much more prone to making dangerous mistakes.
I was on the landingfield when he launched. From far below, it looked like a false start. but he actually launched with his glider as good as 90degrees cross to the slope. Just below launch there is a road and apparently a car had to break to let him past. Afterwards he told he had to wait for a second while flying close to the road before he could clear the guardrail next to the road. From the videos you can tell that he puts way to much energy in pulling up the glider. Those big pieces of cloth can react forcefully to an overdose of input. Keep training Bert! Only by training a lot, you can get a feeling for what a glider does without looking at it. I'm not really worried about Bert becoming a good paraglider pilot. He takes paragliding very serious, which is good. But putting to much pressure on yourself can result in making a mistake to many.

In the end we made four flights each. The conditions stayed really mellow. A little bit of thermal activity in the afternoon, but barely enough to keep aloft. We stopped when the mountainwind settled, way earlier than expected. At around 4.45pm we were back in the hotel. And then the usual Watles-paragliding-course-evening started. A 5 course meal followed by analysing the videos. And a few drinks offcourse. Going to bed I encountered Bert writing down his experiences of the day in a big excel-sheet. Thats a reccomendation to all you rookie pilots. Keep up your own logs, written down on paper or on the computer. Self-analyse what you have done during all your flights. Thats the way to learn!

So much to tell still. There are still 2 more days to write about! To be continued…. 

It was time to return to the mountains where I learned to mountainfly. Back to the place I made my first ever flight linger than an hour…back to the big ones!

Friday 01/01/2010 On route to Watles, Sud-Tirol, Italy.
Looking at this years flightlog I'd nearly say that I stopped paragliding. Now that's short of a lie, but I was shocked when I looked at the 16 flights (just 16?!?) I made this year. God, it's October! Compared to all my flying years so far this must be the worst, flight-amount-concidering. We had a very very bad summer for Dutch paragliding. Front after front came through during the summermonths. A lot of drops, a lot of wetness. And the timing of good weather days was bad at times, at least for me it was. When it was flyable I had to work, and during the weekends the weather was shit. Then there was a short and weird "illness" (in search for the right word) where I lost my balance every 15 minutes or so. I got better nevertheless, but I missed another couple of scarse good-weather-days, can you believe that! And then there is the search for a new place to settle. Believe me, if you are going to buy a house for the first time, take in account that it's going to take a large chunk of your free time. From this point of view the bad weather of the last couple of months weren't that depressing for me. Lot's to do, investigate and discuss anyway. But boy did I miss paragliding this year. Okay Niels, stop whining, there are a few very positive paragliding-experiences as well, like breaking every possible personal record except my altitude record (and amount of flights…), thermalling with two vultures for a good few minutes, the beautifull cross country flight from Lochem to Nijverdal-Hellendoorn and that excellent blue-day XC-flight from Lochem to Apeldoorn including my long time wish to cross the IJsselriver. And offcourse a lot of other less big moments, lots of laughs, a longer holiday than planned due to a volcanic eruption in Iceland and al the talking and dreaming about the perfect flight.

No, not all has been bad, I only whish there was more of it!

At the moment I'm in the train towards the east of Holland. Tomorrow morning we'll leave early for a long drive to the borderregion of Switserland, Austria and Italy. The weather seems to be just good for a week of all out, full throttle paragliding fun. It'l be my first experience as a deputyinstructor in the mountains. But with four pilots, of which two don't need a lot of instruction anymore (to be honest, I don't really know about the other two) I expect to do a bit of thermalling myself as well. We might even get some airtime together and fly like a flock of birds. It will be fun anyway and I expect to learn a lot.

Sunday 03/10/2010 And we flew!
The trip over to Watles was smooth. No trafficjams and only a few toilet-and-coffee breaks. We arrived in hotel Watles a bit late for dinner, so before settling down in our rooms we enjoyed a great meal, as I am used to in Hotel Watles.

The site is great. Hotel Watles lies 700m up from the valley floor, across the wide valley from Mals Im Vinschgau, Sud Tirol. There are two launch sites very near the hotel. The main launch site is at the same level as hotel Watles, and only about one hundred meters walking. The other launch site is a bit below "hotel level" but has a lot more space, which comforts pilots starting to fly the mountains. The big space gives room for launch errors. The official launch site is steeper and smaller. Both launchsites are facing south east. The hotel itself is luxurious, the food is great and you can use the steambath and sauna as you like.
 
Since two days of bad weather were coming up we decided to start flying on Sunday. I can´t tell a lot of special things about how the conditions were…they weren´t. The air was laminar and the sky was pretty much overcast so we all made two glides into the valley. For me it was great to fly again. The Dutch summer seemed like winter, flyingwise. In other words, I didn´t fly for over three months! I used the smooth air for a bit of practicing. I´ve got the feeling that my wingovers are slowly getting to a stage where I pitch myself up higher than the wingtips of my Kaïlash and that the turns are strong and precise, without deflations. Good feeling!

But my flights weren´t the most important of this week. Before the trip Andre asked me to join the trip as a deputy instructor. I had to think about this request. I wanted to keep the mountains to myself, and be a deputy instructor in the flatlands (two different disciplines of Dutch regulations). But since we had three students in the group, and Andre couldn't find a deputy-instructor for this tour I agreed to become one. And what do you know: I still can fly to taste the conditions, but I can't go full throttle and give it my all to stay up as long as I can. I didn't care! I enjoy instructing!

We had three students. Joris has done a lot of airtime in the Netherlands and he came along to Algodonales earlier this year. He needed only a little bit of support at times. Tom had done one mountaincourse before, so he was somewhat familiar with mountainflying. He needs more experience to become a independent pilot though. For Bert it was his first time in the mountains. And with about 35 flights of experience (am I correct?), paragliding is still very new to him.
Instructing went okay that Sunday. I had to get used to having my eyes at different pilots at the same time. But most of all, I had to get used to judging distances and glide angles of different gliders. Under my guidence, Tom and Bert landed safely, but outside the official landingfield. I noticed there was (and still is) a lot to learn.

Monday 04 and Tuesday 05/10/2010, parawaiting junkies again.
Then we had two bad-weather days. A front came through, meaning rain and to much clouds in the valley.
It wasn't hard to get through those days though. We knew better conditions were coming, so we waited it out and enjoyed ourselves with playing a few games of mini-bowling in a hotel nextdoor (great laugh!), playing computergames (Worms!) and chatting away about more and a lot of less important things.

Tuesdayafternoon the rain stopped. Eager to fly again we took to the big launch. Andre launched first to sample the air…and that was the last flight of the day. The mountainwind picked up and I decided to cancel further launches after Robert (the only independent pilot in our group) made a launch attempt and failed. Launching the students would be unresponsible and dangerous I thought. I'm happy I was very clear about the possibility of a cancel when I told them to start setting up.

The next couple of days would become the best days of the week. I'm sorry to test your patience. I'm still writing about these days. I expect to share the stories of those days with you somewhere in the coming week…

It's been a while since I wrote about a flyingday. Matters in private life had a priority (like finding a new place to live), and probably will continue to have a priority over flying for a while. But that doesn't mean there's no flying lately!

After my last story I had an enjoyable day at the field at the beginning of June. It was a day of good height, playing around and flying Roberts glider as well. Robert was trying and trying that day, but didn't manage to catch any good thermal on his Pro Design Jazz, very unlike him! Everytime he landed, his face radiated a bit more grumpyness. After a hint from Marc I went over and offered him a flight on the Kaïlash. He took the offer like a greedy kid, ready to play with a new toy. Great! And of he went for a good 45 odd minutes reaching over 900 meters above ground level and landing with a big smile on his face. In the meantime I took his Jazz up for a spin. And I was happily surprised what this 2003 design was capable of. Allthough the glideratio isn't as what I'm used to now, the Jazz has nice roll-movement combined with pretty good thermal capabilities. During the 2 short flights I made I realized there was not a lot of pitch movement, which makes the Jazz a fun and relaxed glider, giving a strong feeling of safety. Thick lines and proper risers made of solid, quality webbing. A good glider to throw around. And when needed it marks thermal pretty okay! At times it even seemed to pitch forward a bit, like it really wants to get into that thermal. Offcourse the succesor of the Jazz (the Accura) has more performance, but don't under estimate Robert on his Jazz! He has outflown me and my Kaïlash a few times!

And then came Sunday June the 26th. Again one of those days of which I don't know how they will end (as usual), but I didn't expect it to be such a great great day!

Arriving a bit late on the airfield I saw the cars of the usual suspects on the parkinglot. I had to walk all the 800 meters the field is long to reach the launch area for the day. While walking over I saw Marc going up. Good, it looked pretty instable, a good day to make some height, despite it was a blue day. No clouds whatsoever. No upwards indication of where to go to find your thermals. We had to rely on the housethermals.
The atmosphere on launch was relaxed. I handed over the protectionbags I made for Marc and Marga. The Hybrid harness is one of those reversible harnesses. Turn the rucksack inside out, and there is your harness. The bag itself becomes an airbag, damping a possible hard landing. But the fabrik layer of the airbag is the same layer as the rucksack. So damaging it will mean you will still have a rucksack with a hole in it, but no airbag anymore! So I made a few protectionbags of spinaker-cloth, to protect the airbag-fabrik…

Andre made another flight to check the winddirection. We might have set up on a wrong part of the field…but no worries. We could launch with a bit of crosswind. And given the expected thermal strength it would be no problem to get up in the skies launching towards the SouthEast. So as allways: of we went!

My first flight of the day took me to above a 1000m Above Ground Level (AGL) right away. I am getting to a level of flying where catching a thermal isn't that hard anymore (at least most of the times). It's more about how to get to the most efficient lift within that thermal. Trying to fly my cirkels in such a way that I get most out of the thermal bubble as possible, that´s the challenge. It gives a relaxed state of mind to know that you can catch thermals with your eyes closed and without the vario-beep. I am addicted to the beep though, which I regret from time to time.
I wanted to wait out the possible arrival of one or the other flyingfriend, so we could go cross country together. But I waited too long, lost the thermal and started descending again. In a way I could not be bothered about the descend. Hey, I touched a 1000AGL again! That is allways a great feeling. I started playing about for a bit. Doing some mild wingovers, which one day I want to learn properly. and a mild spiraldive. See the picture!

Once down I waited for a bit. Had a drink and a sigarette before having another go. If I could make it high up again, I would not wait and head off on my own if no one would follow. Folkert Datema launched and went up right away. I had to wait for a few other pilots before it was my turn, and Folkert seemed to wait out the arrival of another pilot as well, just as I did before. He couldn't possibly wait for another half hour and then go Cross Country. I mean, bombing out can be quite easy on blue days, so this was his chance and I'm happy for him he took it and went. Allthough flying together is so much more fun, you have to take the opportunity when it arrises.

Off the towline to the left, where only a couple of minutes before someone caught a nice thermal. And yep, it still was there! It wasn't very strong, and a bit fragmented, but rising it was! I drifted along on zeros and half points (+0.5m/s). And then the housethermal was added to the thermal I was in and up I went again. In the meantime Martin launched as well and managed to stay up. And after that Max came up. Max is a very good pilot. He broke the Pro Air endurance record last year. He flew 4,5 hours and landed on the field again. He came up on his UP Edge and quite easy overtook me. By that time Martin, Max and I were drifting well towards Lochem, still not ascending like a rocket but enjoying the fantastic conditions nevertheless. The skies were clear, visibility was well over 15km and the inversion became well visible at about a 1200AGL. I made a little mistake in not chasing Max, but going towards Martin who was still lower than me, but corrected fast after a hint of Andre over the radio.
Right over Lochem I hit my highest point of the day: 1533m AGL. The views straight down on Lochem was worth the flight on it's own, but since I was on my way, I might as well go for the long run. So I crossed the Twente Channel and continued flying parralel to it. Martin was still a bit lower, following the same line. Max was well ahaed, and had taken a more northerly line. The thermals seemed to get weaker in the region I was in. And it was bumpy at about 1500AGL. When a thermal hits an inversion, the air can't get up anymore, so it starts to spread out. Hence the bumpyness. But nothing to really worry about, the turbulence wasn't that strong. I decided to go for my first proper glide towards Max, towards Harfsen. The terrain looked familiar. It was the same area where I made my first ever cross country flight over (see post "A Gift of Life", filed under category "Cross Country"). I still had no expectations of distance or endurance, but the IJssel river came into view and I allways wanted to cross it since that first XC-flight in 2008.

I encountered an area with a lot of sinking air. In retrospect Max and Folkert coped with a lot of sink in the same area as I did. Now there is a few things you can do when you're in sink. You can fly at minimum sink, so with the brakes on, trying to keep your sinkrate as low as possible. But that means you're not going anywhere fast as well, and if the sink-area is big, you're destined to touch down within that area. The other possibiliy is using the speedsystem. This adds to your sink-rate, but your forwards speed is going up by 10-15km/h (or even more with some gliders). Thats the way to go. If you don't want to be in the area you're in, get out of there as fast as you can! Using the speedbar has a kickback as well. If you use full speedbar, the sinkrate is going up quite a lot! So try to find a balance between speed and sinkrate that you're comfortable with…and hope for the best. As soon as you start feeling a bit of turbulence again let the speed drop a bit. If there is a thermal nearby, you can catch it more easily with a lower speed logically!

This was not okay…I got forwards pretty quick, but lost a lot of altitude as well, and as long as there was no sign of a thermal near, I didn't dare putting the brakes on and lose my speed. I even lost my concentration for finding a thermal and started focussing on a landing-field near Harfsen. Just south of Harfsen I saw a football (soccer) pitch, and a few nice grassy fields with an easy route out to Harfsen. I arrived over the footballpitch at about 400m, still sinking fast. I felt a wobble and tried to stay with the area of lower sink while drifting past the footballpitch. A bit further on there was a Australian-like farmland. A farm, surrounded by slightly yellow grasspitches and two dams. That farm attracted my attention. Probably because of the Australian look of it…I don't know. That was the moment I told myself to stay focussed. I needed a moral boost. And whaddayouknow! Turbulence! And a happy beep from the vario! Down to 200m AGL I finally felt a boost of energy as a good thermal served itself at just the right time. I caught it and held it. My arms were getting pretty tired. Pulling a few kilos for a long time can be tiresome. But this was my chance to get to the IJssel river, about 10km further to the west. So I was determined to stick to this thermal and get up to a good height for crossing the river. And okay, it might not be the most elegant or safe way to ride thermals, I slammed down my left brake and grabbed a part of my harness with the brake in my had to relieve my left arm muscles a bit. Correcting could be done with the other brake. 5 Minutes later and 600meters up the thermal grew in volume and coring it became easier.

And the IJssel river was below. Because it was a scourching day on the deck there were a lot of boats. Deventer on my right and Zutphen on my left were basking in the sunlight and the A1 highway was packed as ever. The train from Zutphen to Deventer was halfway and I knew for sure that I would get past the river! WAY! Goal accomplished. About 10km away Apeldoorn was inviting me to come over. I flew over a recreational lake packed with sunbathing people, parasols and small boats.
And conditions were a lot stronger here! At times I had to work to keep the Kaïlash where I want it to be. I hit a small +5 thermal that brought me up to over 1300mAGL again. A good position to go for the glide to Apeldoorn. Between Deventer and Apeldoorn there is Teugen Airport. A small strip for skydiver-planes and other small airtraffic. I asked Ab if I would stay on the safe side if I would stay south of the A1 highway. I didn't want to get into any restricted airspaces. I got the answer that it all was okay, not realising that Teugen hasn't got an CTR (Control zone, prohibited for paragliders). Back to the theoriebooks and airspace map!

I followed the A1 towards Apeldoorn, gaining and losing hight a lot faster than before crossing the IJssel river. Teugen airport was active. Small airplanes flew their patterns below me and all around in the distance I saw gliderplanes cirkling their thermals. Stunning stunning!
At Apeldoorn I still had a good 900meters to "waste". By now, about 2 hours into the flight, a calm came over me. I didn't feel very tired anymore, just a euphoric feeling of getting so far, on a day with such magnificent views and crossing the IJssel, a natural "weather changer" in the Netherlands. What ever I would decide next, would be okay by me.
Past Apeldoorn towards the west Veluwe begins. A good 20km of National Park. Forests (a lot!), moors and I think a prohibited area as well, regarding the (stupid) natura 2000 settlement of the European governement. Why are paragliders not allowed to fly over natural areas? Their silent, don't produce any pollution while flying and we can land on a "stamp" without creating any (or at least a lot) of damage. Crazy bureaucracy…
Not that I wanted to head up to the challenge. Crossing 20km of mainly forests is not to my liking, flying at about a 1000m with a glide ratio of 9…Hmmm… So I decided to try a Northerly route along the edge of Apeldoorn. A headwind and therefor a steeper glide…right into the aproach of Teugen…not a good idea. South then…crossing the A1 again I actually felt very satisfied and to be honest the tiredness came back as a result of the doubts of where to go next. And I was losing height. No, I was done for the day. So I picked my landingfield, about 300m south of the A1 near to a tunnel into the city of Apeldoorn. Before landing I checked how to walk to the main railway station… Yep, another hike in prospect. I like those. It gives the legs a good exercise after burning away energy in mainly my arms and abdominals…and my head. And it gives me a bit of time to wind down after a flight.
From the air a distance allways seems shorter than it is. It took me a good 3 quarters of an hour to get to the railway station. But I didn't care. I broke all my personal records again! 2hrs 27min, 32,7km straight line and 41.8km on route. I don't know my flying distance including all the hundreds of thermal circles I turned…

Once back on Lochem station Joris was there to pick me up. Unfortunally he didn't manage to gain a good height that day. He lost his understanding of what his Nervures Faïal is telling him and turned his circles to wide. He suffers a "paragliding block" a bit. But the way he flies, he will be able to come along in not a too long time I think. I hope so anyway.

The best flight still has to come when, one day, the lot of us take of and fly away like a flock of birds…
Next time….

(pictures taken with the GoPro Hero Cam, set to take a 5mp pic every 2 seconds)

After a very very short night we finally made our way home Thursday 2 weeks ago. I can’t remember much of the travel, and I’m not sorry for it. I opened my eyes, chucked my bags in the van and shut them again. I opened my eyes, got my glider checked in, had a coffee and a laugh with the team and Joris, who was still pretty "happy", got in the plane and closed them again. I opened my eyes and was in the Netherlands again.

I remember saying to the others at Sevilla airport that before we went to Algo I hoped that we would come back as trained and hardened sport heroes, instead of pubjunkees with hangovers…but hey, thats paragliding as well I suppose. Especially when the weather is bad more than good.

But overhere the predictions were pretty good, especially for the weekend! So what do you do being a hooked paraglider pilot. Indeed…
Sundaymorning the day started with my standart routine of having a quick brekkie, getting the glider on my back and catch the train towards the east. A 2,5hr traintrip. whitch most of the times I’m not bothered with. Traintrips are ideal for a bit of reflection, listening to music, write a bit on the computer, or chatting a bit with strangers while travelling. I like it more than driving a car daily. You don’t have to pay attention to the road in the the train, and early Sunday morning it’s even more quiet than else.

Arriving on Lochem, Joris was waiting to pick me up. I am will allways be gratefull to the persons who are going out of their way to pick me up. In that sense I would like to have a car and be equally generous in picking people up from where ever they are. But I’m paragliding and I’m a sailmaker. Combine the two and you’re puzzling with money often. And a sailmaker can have something to offer, like making straps to connect Joris´ stage-towing release system to his harness.

The atmosphere at Pro Air grounds was sparkling. A lot of pilots would show up today. It actually was the first flyable day for Pro Air in the Netherlands…and what a day it would become! I missed going XC in Algodonales, and the conditions of the day seemed good enough for a cross country. A weak coldfront coming up from the south, a lot of sun and a temperature difference of over 10 degrees between the night before and in the midst of the day. We were eager to fly. After a short coffea, sorting a problem with the winchradio and laughing about the stuffed squirrel Ab spiked to a tree we set of into the field. It took only a couple of minutes to decide that we would winch the long side of the field, a good 800 meters. That ment good altitude with only one pull, which in its turn ment a good chance to pick up a proper thermal and go XC! We had a lot of nationalities that day. To sum them up: Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Hungarian and Turkish pilots mingling together, looking ever skywards.

Of we went in ever stronger growing conditions. It was promising to see that on average the pilots (including myself) got a bit more airtime every next flight. Someone would pull it of for sure and get to a proper working altitude. I can’t say to cloudbase, because apart from a very thin layer of cirrostratus and an ocasional bit of altocumulus there weren’t any clouds. So let’s get those senses working and find a good blue thermal.

Flight one wasn’t that exciting. I felt no real thermal activity, or I must have really missed them by a length. A bit of sink, but pretty much straight forward gliding. The second flight I found quite a bit of sink and more turbulence. Basically they were two short flights…but still…the chance was there to grab. I needed some food, so I had a break. In the meantime I saw Marga going pretty strong, and Martin was having a really good time, apart from the 60% collapse at 40odd meters high. Didn’t he feel that one coming?

Unfortunally I haven’t got any aereal pictures of this adventure. I was focussed on flying this one…

I felt ready for another go. The tow up into the sky was wild. I felt a strong thermal while going up, but was amazed about the +8.4m/s on my vario readout. Values of 7+ can happen during a tow through a thermal, but 8+ is strong! I could have unhooked and find back that thermal, but I allways like to ride out the full pull. I don’t really know why…more time to find those thermals I guess. Anyway, once I unhooked my vario kept beeping happy beeps. Good one! I unhooked right into a thermal, so I didn’t hesitate to start turning. And right on the mark it was as well! The wind had increased due to the imminent arrival of the weak front. So the drift was strong. But the thermal was easy to keep track of. I think my average climbrate during this first ascend was about 1.5 – 2m/s. And that Kaïlash flies like a dream as well! It’s feedback is really strong, so it’s pretty easy to locate the best lift within the bubble of rising air. That helped. By the time I hit 600m AGL (Above Ground Level) I was well on my way to the Twentechannel, about 2.5 – 3 km away.

Marc and Marga were going home and radio’d that if I would make it to their place, I could have a beer and they would bring me back to the airfield. By the time I hit a 1000 I was way across the channel and nearing Markelo, nearly 8km away. This was going really good!  The nearing cold front must have triggered a lot of heat to lift from the earth. I hit the inversion at about 1035m AGL. Frustrating in a way, a funny feeling as well. You just can´t go further up. There are thermals, yes, but they bump against this invisible "weather-lid". The layer of air is rough and turbulent and I needed my focus to keep the glider flying properly.
By the time I reached Markelo, Robert had taken of as well and was hunting for me. Why the others didn’t follow I don’t know. Maybe a lack of experience, willingness or luck made them stay near the "air"field. I didn’t care at that moment. I needed my focus on the flying.

Past Markelo thing became more tense for a moment. The thermal I was still with not only stopped rising due to the inversion, it seemed to weaken as well. Should I fly away from it to search for a new thermal? Nearly blue skies, hard to see where those rising pockets of air would be I decided to go for it and I stopped cirkling. Towards the A1 highway and Rijssen behind. Before the highway I picked up another weak and fragmented thermal which didn’t bring me any higher, but no lower either. I crossed the highway and glided towards Rijssen. A large strech of fields next to town should do in case I had to land. I reached 500 m AGL next to Rijssen when I picked up another good thermal. Fighting for it I reached the 1000 once again while drifting a Northerly course. Then I had to decide which course I would fly next. The Holterberg to the west (my left), a relatively large natural area with lots of woods. Nijverdal in front of me and a strech of no proper landingfields. The thermal I was in started dying.

Should I try and stick with this thermal to keep my (safe) altitude? Or should I glide? Again this question. It’s a question which most of the times gives me quite a bit of stress. But this time I thought about why. When looking out for a good landingfield I misjudge the size of things on the ground. I looked at a field and thought "nah, too small in case of…", then I realised I was watching a soccerfield. Talking about space for a safe landing! A soccerfield is royal! Basically I fear going down when I’m flying and things look well. I fear not being able to find a good landingspot should I need one. But now I realise that a soccerfield looks tiny from high up. And in the Netherlands you would be really stupid not to find a spot to land a paraglider. In case of an emergency, an average field in a park in a city is sufficient, although prohibited in the Netherlands.

In a straight line over Nijverdal, that was my decision. And with the wind from behind, a glide angle of about 9 and a good airspeed Nijverdal shot past in a blink. Now that wasn’t that hard, was it? I did go down to about 300 meters. It allways seems low when you come from about a 1000. Like driving into a city after a few hours on the highway…it seems so slow going!

The air started to get more rough. There was more wind and the front seemed to close in. I knew I wasn’t able to keep flying and stay in front of the front for long. I needed either to hurry up or land. I was tired as well. I knew I had broken my personal flatland record. I started feeling satisfied and started longing for my feet to be on terra firma…
At about 280 m AGL I got another BIG push upwards. A strong thermal I happened to meet. But I was looking for a good field to set down the glider (and myself) and I noticed there wasn’t a lot of stamina left…I had to let this one go. I found a field right in between Nijverdal and Hellendoorn. There was a small lake or something like that. Looking at the water, the wind direction was clear…and the strength as well! By now the windspeed was as fast as my gliders trimspeed…so around 39km/h. Hmmm, that’s pretty strong. I landed safely though…straight down and smooth. I was just under 26km from where I left the ground.

Now during this story I noted down all the places I flew past. But in the air it’s not that easy to see where you are. Just past Markelo I saw the place where Marga and Marc live in the distance…or I thought it was…but it couldn’t be. Marc and Marga live near the Twente channel. This place was way past the A1 highway. A lot more North…huh? That’s one of those well known…"I’m lost" moments. There is only one big difference between paragliding and for example hiking or driving a car. During a flight I couldn’t care less about getting lost, as long as I know that in the general direction I’m going there are no forbidden or dangerous airzones. That maybe is the beauty, or essence of freeflying. To get lost on purpose, and find out where you are as soon as you land again.

After I packed up my gear I walked over to a man and his daughter observing me packing up from a bench. And I asked them the best question in paragliding sport: "Hello sir, it may sound a bit strange…but where am I?"

And then a real Algodonales-flying-day came along!

Early in the morning Erik and Marc left for Malaga to try and get home. Johan from JJ’s offered them a lift, because he had to pick up 2 people.
We had decided that the groupthing was slimming chances of getting home as soon as possible. By splitting up the group everyone had a bigger chance… Marc and Erik made phonecall after phonecall. They have been to the airport, the railway station and again the airport. During the day we first received a phonecall from Marc and Erik saying that they had found 4 places on a KLM flight to Amsterdam next Thursday. Ellen and Ike decided to fill the other 2 spots, next to Marc and Erik. About 45 minutes later Marc and Erik called again to tell that they had found 4 more places on the same flight. Since airtraffic is getting pretty normal again I expect that we’ll be flying home tomorrow. Thanks Marc and Erik!

And then it was time to fly ourselves…The skies looked very thermally active with cumili building over the mountain. We went to the West launch and prepared. A couple of people launched before us. This looked like rough flying! Turbulent conditions, but when you were able to catch a good thermal, you’d be at cloudbase in no time. A few hundred meters above launch conditions seemed calmer than at launch altitude as you could tell from looking at other pilots in the sky. Allright, let’s do this. I was a bit tired from yet another late night (without the usual alcohol consumption though). I knew this could be getting rough, but I felt allright enough and eager enough to launch. There were 2 windsock to watch out for. One at launch and one at the ridge about 80 meters above launch. I felt a valleywind, but the windsock on top was pointing towards us, then to the other side of the ridge, than again towards us. We were in the lee, but the mainwinds were really light. I pulled up the glider, turned around and needed a moment to feel control. In that moment the glider lost a bit of pressure so I had to start speeding up and fast. The pressure of the glider was at the low end and I needed more space for take off than what I liked. And then I started "tumbledrying". God that was a wild ride. I needed all my concentration to keep the glider above my head. Therefor I wasn’t able, or didn´t have the guts and try to properly catch a thermal. Next to that, where air is going up, it needs to go down somewhere else. My vario read out gives values of +4m/s and -4.5m/s. And all this happened within seconds. I’m happy I was able to prevent any collapses. And then a big area of sinking air, but relatively calm conditions. I needed to land. Going headwind I had to asses if I would make the short bomout. I needed a bit of luck to get there…and with the present conditions I was happy to fly in a relatively calm part of the air. A field right below launch looked appealing, but the lay of the land (sloped? and what way was the slope?) was hard to see. Let’s not take the risc of pushing on towards the short bomout and meeting more turbulence or more sink. No, I decided to have a good look at the field below and land there. First thing I though when I touched down: "I’m not a parachutist!". I needed to cool down and get rid of my negativeness. It was a very instructive flight. Now I know that I can handle the Kaïlash in pretty rough conditions, and what it is like to fly in the lee of a mountain. It was withing acceptable limits, but no fun…

Robert landed next to me. He had had the same "tumbledryer" experience as I had. Looking at the video images of his launch you can tell the air was very much in motion. He launched, got picked up by a thermal and went up about 15 meters in a couple of seconds. You might think that is great fun…and I’m sure it is, when you’re a very very experienced pilot and know how to handle those situations.

Robert and I packed, walked to the short bomout and waited to be picked up by Carlos for another ride up the mountain. While waiting, we stuck our heads in a little stream to cool down. We had a good chat about not fearing the future and not regretting the past. A hard thing to do for a lot of people, but a good guideline.

The second flight. Ah the second flight! Undoubtly the best flight of this (extended) holiday! We went to the South East launch. Due to the previous flight, I was very clearminded and very awake. What adrenaline can do! I set up quickly and made a good launch into much calmer air. Conditions were smooth and easy. Thermals were spaced pretty close and gentle. They weren’t strong anymore, but broad and mostly soft-edged. The game was on! Everybody launched and everybody managed to stay in the air for pretty long time. I saw Marc and Ellen working the housethermal. Over I went and together with a Nova gliderpilot we accended towards one of the few clouds. Marc and Ellen left when we started drifting back over the mountain. I had to decide to keep going with the Nova glider or turn back as well. At a certain point we were above the leeside ridge of the mountain, but with a lot of altitude. Looking at the sky I didn’t expect there would be a good possibility to go cross country, that would be a hard task. So back to the windward side it was, to join the others.

Joris’ launch went really good and controlled. He sunk pretty fast and flew into the valley. I was afraid that he would have to land earlier than he would like. And there his flatland experience came in handy! He started fighting for it and managed to gain altidude slowly. In the end he came back to launch altitude. Good job!
It was at about that time that by coincidence all of us met and started working a reasonably small and very light thermal. What a great view. Everyone was there. Andre, Marc, Ellen, Erik, Robert, Joris, me and Geraldo, all in a tight circle. That was one of the best moments of my paragliding history so far. Weeeehoooo! After a while the group split up again and everybody went on their own way.

Then Geraldo caught my eye. I saw he was in trouble. Something was stuck in his right lines. It was flapping and big. My god, is that a vulture in his lines? I had to have a good second look to conclude that indeed, a vulture had flown into his right stabilo-lines! He wasn’t able to fly straight anymore. In slow 360-s to the right he was losing altitude. Fortunally it looked like the glider didn’t steepen the turn to progress in a spiral dive. That would have been a rescue-pull for sure. After a while Geraldo seemed able to straighten out his flightline and slowly he went over to the landingfield, the vulture still stuck in his lines. He landed safely, or at least, it looked gentle from high up.
As he concluded later on, the vulture and him flew towards each other head on. Since Geraldo had the sun from the back, the vulture probably was blinded by the sun and wasn’t able to make an evasive manouvre in time. Still strange, because birds naturally have an flying instinct greater than us humans. But a good example that even the best "pilots" make mistakes.
Once down a few people, including Erik helped the vulture getting free of the lines. It walked away, hopped around for a while and took of again! It seemed never to fly again when it was so tangled in the lines…Pheeeuw… I’m happy for the bird. Unfortunally Geralds glider has got a big tear which needs to be repaired.

But the flight went on. I got determined to break my endurance record which was 110minutes. Therefor I needed to relax. A few times during the flight I conciously made a glide to just sit back and relax. I was happy I ate quite a bit just before the flight. It all worked out fine.
I was knackered when we reached an hour and 45 minutes. It was only Andre, Robert and me left in the sky. Every flight has it’s rythm. When your rythm is in sync with what happens around you, you’re having a good flight. And what’s beyond the rythm? I can start feeling like being in some sort of trance. Somehow you can compare it with driving a fast car I think. You’re very focussed, but you’re not conscious of the passing of time…
The sun was sinking, the dusk slowly arrived. By this time it was so easy to stay up. I followed a flock of swallows and went up. I saw a couple of vultures turning so I speeded over and went up. I just floated, waited a bit…and went up.

We decided to go down. Andre and I simultaniously took a ride by spiralling. Well, Andre spiralled and I kept it just before "the dive". Intens allready, but easy to exit… Then Robert played around a bit as well.
We landed…I checked…and YES! A new personal record. It now sits at 114 minutes.
What a way to end the flying part of the holiday!

And it was the last paragliding flight. Today the weather was doubtfull. And at the moment the sky is overcast and it’s raining now and then. In a while we’re going for our last meal and whiskys at JJ’s. And then, after a short night, we’ll have another go at getting home.

The Algodonales story ends here….(???????)

What a joke! The Pro Air Legacy hasn’t been received very well by the priest. Hmmm? Apparantly Algodonales is waiting for a subsidy to replace the old fashioned cogwheel tower clock by an electric one. It doesn’t help when all of a sudden the clock starts running again. Oops. All of a sudden Ike isn’t the Algo hero. All of a sudden we should start worrying about being lynched before being able to leave Algo…haha….

And then our Monday-flight was cancelled as well. Luckily this time we had a phone-number, so we didn’t need to go all the way to Malaga to – again – rebook our flight. Our homeflight is now rebooked to next Saturday, a week later than we had planned.
We had a tough meeting about how we could get back home, while outside the skies were great. Nice Cumili building and not to much wind…perfect flying weather. But not knowing how and how fast we can go back made the athmosphear negative. Jep, okay, the weather is nice and we’re not on even a half bad spot to sit out the massive delay, but it doesn’t feel right when you’re forced to stay at a place.

Andre started calling…and calling… all sorts of idead were opted, discussed, tested and tried to get working. The son of Geraldo, Carlos can bring us back to the Netherlands on one of the vans of Ganterfly. It’s going to cost us some money, which is not the worst thing. From Algo to Dusseldorf it’s 23ish hours of driving straight, without delays, trafficjams etc. The van is way to small to make this a comfortable trip. An ideal recipy for war in our group. That would be hell. Rental cars are very very hard to find, let alone a van (preferably a car and a van) and very very expensive. Trains are fully booked, in France there is a strike. Touringcars are fully booked. But one option was to charter a touringcar and hope that driving past Malaga airport we could pick up stranded travellers who want to go north. Chartering a touringcar would cost us a big big amount of money. But would we be able to fill the touringcar, than it would be managable, together with the refund from our cancelled tickets. Still a couple of problems. What if we can’t find enough people to come along, or what if we would have 150 people standing in front of the touringcar? Phonecalls with our travelinsurance didn’t brighten up things. If we could get a list of people needing to go north, we, or the insurancecompany could try to contact them, and so taking away (part) of the risc. But the insurancecompany didn’t seem to (want to?) cooperate. So another plan ended pretty dead. In the meantime the news came through that airliners are starting to fly again… all in all a very tough situation.
Marc and Erik have got pretty big responsibilities at their jobs. In the end (tonight) we decided that the chances of going back sooner than Saturday will be bigger if we split up the group. So Marc and ERik will head out to Malaga in the morning to try and book a last minute flight or train up north. Slim chance that they will have succes… For the others, including me, things are a bit easier. Okay, it doesn’t feel right to be here still, but seeing how gruelsome a forced travel back to the north can turn out into, we decide to keep an eye and ear open, ask anyone we know if they have contacts that can arrange something, hope for the best and let the situation be. What else can we do?

The search went on untill about 5pm. At that time people were starting to get enough of the waiting and hoping and not knowing how and when we will go back. Having this mindset it could have been dangerous to go flying, at least to me it could have been. The focus would be in the wrong place. Next to that, I drunk to much last night, so another hangover said "hello" this morning. By the end of the afternoon the tension calmed because we got to the point of running out of options really quickly and started to accept that we really are stuck here…

So what do you do?…Good weather…a mountain…a group of paraglider pilots…and time to kill…
We drove up the mountain, walked to the NorthEast launch and launched. The launch area looks pretty hazardous. A road and a rocky 5 meters to spare before the cliff, surrounded by prickly bushes. Get your glider in there, and you will lose half an hour getting it out again. So launching has to be controlled really well (as ever really). Robert told us about his experience the last time he launched there. Previously he had lost a couple of hours due to a few failed launches. Possibly there was a psychological effect, because his first launch was a fail…and he lost half an hour getting his glider out.
Most others had a good and controlled launches, or a fail without the involvement of prickly bushes. I saw Joris’ launch from the sky. A real beauty. Very relaxed, very controlled, very stable. Good good. In the end all of us got away safely and for the next half an hour we had a great time along a strech of the mountain. The wind was pretty cross to the mountainface. It was very clear where where the best lift was, but conditions allowed to go searching for better lift a bit, and maintain about the same altitude. And as the soaringgame goes. You try to be the highest in the pack. I had to fight against over 15 years of experience in the form of Marc. And I wasn’t really "in the zone" as well, thank you whisky! I did manage to get above him…for about 5 seconds. Not really satisfying, but enough for that flight. I requested a spiral dive exercise. Ellen, who had been higher than me for a while as well, went towards the landingfield in front of me. Marc, filming the whole thing with his helmetcam came behind. So into the valley with my heels in the speedbar. Then I entered a spiral. Lean to the right and slowly but progressivly pull the breakline. A steep turn, followed by the accelleration and increase of g-forces. The glider turnes nose down and you start diving. Due to the build up of g-forces I got pressed back into my seat. As if I wasn’t able to keep the weightshift in. It’s a mistake I have made previously as well. Exiting the manouvre went too fast. The glider and me shot upwards. Then the glider shot forwards and I had to break aggressivly to keep the glider where it should be. End of exercise…
I want to do it again…and again…I keep mistaking in the amount of energy the manouvre has. I hope for a good thermal day. Then I can get altitude easily, try a few light spirals and get them right!
My landing was a bit "out the zone" as well. I flared a bit to early, gained a meter and a half and came down straight and relatively gentle. Not one for in the books, but safe enough.

Hey, we have flown again!!! And sooner than those boeings. We have dreamt of going for a big cross country flight. What about to the Netherlands? Now that would be a story. Because the jets didn’t go they went by their own mean of transport: a paraglider. Unfortunally I can’t get a couple of years off work (first to train, then to actually fly back to the Netherlands)… Ah well, you need to have dreams right?…

The story continues….

How could I think we might fly yesterday. I don’t know if we are doing something wrong. Is it us, or are we just very unlucky?

Because we had to get up really early yesterday to catch our flyight (NOT), I had a couple of powernaps during the day. Basicly I was commuting between the algo square and my bed for a part of the day…
The weather was strong in the afternoon. Massive cumili (cumulus congestus) were building above Algo. We hoped that as the day progressed into the evening conditions would be tempered and a flyable situation would set in…and then the rain came…AGAIN!
In the appartment the laptops were running all sorts of weatherfigures (rainradars, sattelite images of cloudcover, the weatherstation on top of the mountain that needs revising, different weathersites…) We came to two conclusions. It would brighten up within a couple of hours and we needed to do something, and that maybe luck would be on our hand. So we drove the 40minute stretch up the mountain. Arriving on launch it was clear that we still had to wait for a bit. It was raining and the wind was still blowing to strong, but in a flyable angle to the mountainside. A few kilometers out there was a change in the weathertype, and it was closing in. The rain stopped, The wind seemed to lose a tiny bit of strength…and turned over 100 degrees anticlockwise, making us standing in the lee of the mountain.
I’m sure it hasn’t got to do with us. We tried and we tried. We’re just very unlucky this week.

At night we had a meal at JJ’s. Jaqueline had a good laugh when we came in, since we said goodbey the night before. It was busy compared to before. There were a few people stuck, like us, because of the Icelandic volcano.

Sunday April 18th 2010
And another day in Southern Spain. Since the weatherprediction was just really bad for today, I didn’t even set my alarmclock. We did have breakfast in the sun though. After that the laptops and books came out again…but we needed to do something as well. Robert went for a run up and down the mountain.Just after his return we decided to go kiting and hiking.
So of to the landingfield without our gliders, but with the kite I made for Joris and my own nasawing. We got them out and had a play in the moderate to strong wind…untill the rain started (what else huh?). It was good to fly Joris’ kite for a bit. I’m still not completely staisfied about the left side of it’s nose. I tends to collapse to easy. Also it doesn’t seem to have the power a wing that size should generate. It needs a bit more tweaking. I would like it one more day to get everything right.

Ike was with us as well. When we arrived back in town he looked at the townclock…and it was running! Huh?
Geraldo told that the townclock had stopped working about one and a half years ago after a repair. It went for a few days and then just stopped…again… Before that repair the clock hadn´t been working for a loooong time. Geraldo doesn’t even know how long the clock didn’t work. But now it goes!
Apparently this morning Ike and Geralde were at the townsquare having a chat and a coffee. Ike told Geraldo that he would like to have a look at the clock. Ike has had education in clockmaking and has worked with clocks years ago, hence his interest. By accident a man with a key to the church came by and Geraldo asked him if they could have a look. And Ike got the clock running again!
He wants to check it out again for a proper checkup…see if he can adjust one an other to get it running properly…
And so the Pro Air legacy of the springtour 2010 has come into excistance. What bad conditions can do to paragliderpilots. Hail Ike!