Não, mole. Estou uma menina. E, volto a dizê-lo, esta asa é para homens de barba rija, pelo menos até tirares os pés do chão... E depois de aterrares... Tenho os antebraços cheios de nódoas negras, pareço um "junkie", das cacetadas que dou a montar e desmontar as réguas e os bordos de ataque. E se não fosse o Fuzo a ajudar, então...
Quanto aos recordes, assim espero. Mas, em termos de voo, isto é outra aeronave; não é, de facto, comparável com as flexíveis em termos de performance.
I was eager to fly: had been on holiday for three days, the weather was beautiful and hot and I hadn't flown yet... Tuesday would be the day. But the forecast was not that good: N to NNW wind up to 20km/h, no clouds but some cirrus, low ceiling at 2000m with thermals not attaining 3m/s, certainly not a record day, possibly not even a good day.
But I had to go, so I summonned the Team Bacalhau (Codfish Team) or, as I call it in words that have, in Portuguese, the same sound, the Timba Calhau (Boink Stone, in free translation), offering somebody a ride. I had already contacted Araújo, aka Fuzo, who'd agreed to be the driver.
Zé Miguel asked if he could join in but I though that going to Gardunha, with no obvious "official" landing field, was a little too much for his still newly learned flying skills. The only other answers I got from the Timba Calhau were warnings about what used to be the "official" landing field being now full of newly planted cherry trees and therefore unable to be used.
But the direction of the wind and the weight of my glider, which asks for a steep take-off ramp, made me choose Gardunha, thinking that with the new rigid glider I would be able to go land in the big fields North of Fundão, by the A23 highway, if I found no thermals...
So we set off at 08:00, after a breakfast at Botica do Café, where we bought some sandwiches to get us through the day.
At 10:30 at Fundão, 20 minutes later at take-off. The drive up is on a perfectly smooth dirt road any car can manage. The wind was light and facing the ramp.
It was a good thing that I went with Fuzo: he has had a rigid hang glider, an old ATOS, for many years, and was almost perfectly acquainted with the way the glider is to be set up. So, with less difficulty than in the two times before, we both set the glider which was ready at 12:15. I had aimed to take-off at around 13:00 but was not too worried about keeping the time, for the conditions did not seem extraordinary.
So I took my time to mount all the "peripherals", namely the varios (two Flymasters Live and one Compeo), cameras, the true airspeed sensor, the energy bars and chocolate tied to the uprights... Ate one of the sandwiches, put my flying clothes on, dressed the harness and carried the glider to the ramp. The wind had come down a bit, to under 10km/h, and was variable of direction but mainly NW.
Took advantage of a light gust to take off and down I went, catching only very small and irregular patches of lift, until I lost almost 250m. I was already seeing myself looking for those far away landing fields and trying to decide at what height I should give up on looking for lift by the hill in order to ensure getting to a safe landing...
Fuzo was on the radio, shouting instructions about the thermals I was bumping into. I then saw a bird and followed it to consistent lift. I turned up to 1800m and got to the ceiling. Decided to go with the wind and Fuzo said he'd follow in the car. He was receiving my position on the mobile phone, through the Flymaster Livetrack page.
Crossed the Serra da Gardunha and made my way towards the South, in the direction of Castelo Branco aerodrome, which I could already see in the distance, 25km away.
Got another small thermal after the Serra up to almost 1800, continued South and at around 20km and at 1000AMSL (as are all the heights in this text), before Alcains, topped up at 1800 and, a couple of kilometers later, got up to 2100m.
In 1h10min I had done less than 30km, the ceiling was, as the forecast had warned, only marginally above 2000m, there was not a lot of drift because the wind was weak from NNW... But landing in Castelo Branco did not even cross my mind: I was set to go on.
My GPSs were not well: I had not set up the Flymasters with decent pages so I could not find the relevant information, the airspace warning kept ringing and changing the page without me having anything to do with it, as a trigger was set... The Compeo kept sliding down to over the Flymaster deck and I had to keep pushing it away, the only distance marker I had was the distance to the previous take-off which was... 1,670km away, in Scotland... I could not see the TAS indication. The two cameras were filming, though, and I was glad because the air was very clean and I was flying over some beautiful landscape.
I kept radio connection with Fuzo all the while and after Castelo Branco he started saying the wind was more from the Northwest than before. I did feel that change in direction as well, as the thermals now seemed to drift a lot to the East. And what bumpy thermals they were, sometimes making me fall off them, sometimes increasing their strength only briefly. Not yet very familiarized with the glider, I was more cautious than usual and there were some manoeuvers I did not even try, like throwing the glider into the core of the thermal by forcing a side-stall... I took it easy, or at least as easy as I could cope with: all of the flight had, to this point, been made with half flaps on, like they had been for take-off. I let go of the cable to get them to 0º and the glider picked up a lot of speed, almost to 100km/h. The rate of descent increased and the erratic bumps on the glider increased as well, as we flew past air irregularities which, not being used to flying at this speed, I sensed only as turbulence and not ascendance. So I quickly reverted to a slower, "bit'-a-flaps-on" configuration which enabled me to feel the air better and not to see the altitude counter decrease so fast.
As usual I fly by the ground and not, as is always recommended, by the air. Better, I fly not by the ground, but by the landing fields, trying to avoid dark extensions which are normally either forests or agriculture fields and making my way over flat yellow pieces of land which normally offer better landings. And those did not abound on the way the wind was pushing me, South of Portalegre.
So I kept forcing a South direction. And I started whining on the radio because I had over three hours of flight, I was sore all over, mainly at the right hip, compressed by the harness.
But the thermals were still showing up, it was early in the afternoon, I could do a lot better. I managed to go for another 50km, abandoning the thermals when they drifted two much into "oak-land" to keep a South route.
And, after 4:00 hours of flight, tired and sore, I decided I would land. And that was one of the hard parts of the flight, coming down: between 800 and 500m it was going up everywhere, and I had to force going down to be able to land, smoothly, on a flat field almost 145km from take off.
20 minutes later Fuzo arrived, with a couple of fresh bottles of beer with which we celebrated my first cross-country flight in my new rigid glider.
After another hour of struggle - again with the precious help and advice of Fuzo - the glider was packed, tied on the rack ladders and off we went, to have dinner in Montemor, before we made our way to Lisbon. I got home at 00:30 and finished my day after a soothing shower half an hour later, to dream about thermals...
The day after I found that neither of the cameras had filmed at all during the flight...
On the pictures:
- Getting the cameras ready (!!...);
- On the ramp with my new airplane;
- "Twolfie" after landing, with Fuzo and a bottle of cold beer;
- The flight over the forecast.
And why in English ? For Glenn to be able to read it, of course, even if with some mistakes. He is my haematologist friend who I am nowadays working with, at Inverclyde, in Greenock, Glasgow, and he is himself an aviator, both of motor aircraft and of sailplanes, and very much into any form of aviation. As I left him alone in the department, I hope this description will soothe his busy work day and contributes to his coming to Portugal to go see us hang glider and paraglider pilots "in action" from the top of some hill.
And also because I had written, a couple of weeks ago, that at the time of the next "MDT" meeting, which is held every Tuesday from 16:30 hours, when Glenn would be presenting one of our patients, I hoped I would be flying my hang glider a mile high over Portugal or Spain. And Tuesday, at 16:30 hours, I was flying my hang glider about a mile high over Portugal. I am a man who keeps his word...
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Dr Kamisas!
Rijo?
Agora é que vai ser pulverizar os teus próprios recordes!
Parabéns!
Abraço
mneto
Manel,
Não, mole. Estou uma menina. E, volto a dizê-lo, esta asa é para homens de barba rija, pelo menos até tirares os pés do chão... E depois de aterrares... Tenho os antebraços cheios de nódoas negras, pareço um "junkie", das cacetadas que dou a montar e desmontar as réguas e os bordos de ataque. E se não fosse o Fuzo a ajudar, então...
Quanto aos recordes, assim espero. Mas, em termos de voo, isto é outra aeronave; não é, de facto, comparável com as flexíveis em termos de performance.
I was eager to fly: had been on holiday for three days, the weather was beautiful and hot and I hadn't flown yet... Tuesday would be the day. But the forecast was not that good: N to NNW wind up to 20km/h, no clouds but some cirrus, low ceiling at 2000m with thermals not attaining 3m/s, certainly not a record day, possibly not even a good day.
But I had to go, so I summonned the Team Bacalhau (Codfish Team) or, as I call it in words that have, in Portuguese, the same sound, the Timba Calhau (Boink Stone, in free translation), offering somebody a ride. I had already contacted Araújo, aka Fuzo, who'd agreed to be the driver.
Zé Miguel asked if he could join in but I though that going to Gardunha, with no obvious "official" landing field, was a little too much for his still newly learned flying skills. The only other answers I got from the Timba Calhau were warnings about what used to be the "official" landing field being now full of newly planted cherry trees and therefore unable to be used.
But the direction of the wind and the weight of my glider, which asks for a steep take-off ramp, made me choose Gardunha, thinking that with the new rigid glider I would be able to go land in the big fields North of Fundão, by the A23 highway, if I found no thermals...
So we set off at 08:00, after a breakfast at Botica do Café, where we bought some sandwiches to get us through the day.
At 10:30 at Fundão, 20 minutes later at take-off. The drive up is on a perfectly smooth dirt road any car can manage. The wind was light and facing the ramp.
It was a good thing that I went with Fuzo: he has had a rigid hang glider, an old ATOS, for many years, and was almost perfectly acquainted with the way the glider is to be set up. So, with less difficulty than in the two times before, we both set the glider which was ready at 12:15. I had aimed to take-off at around 13:00 but was not too worried about keeping the time, for the conditions did not seem extraordinary.
So I took my time to mount all the "peripherals", namely the varios (two Flymasters Live and one Compeo), cameras, the true airspeed sensor, the energy bars and chocolate tied to the uprights... Ate one of the sandwiches, put my flying clothes on, dressed the harness and carried the glider to the ramp. The wind had come down a bit, to under 10km/h, and was variable of direction but mainly NW.
Took advantage of a light gust to take off and down I went, catching only very small and irregular patches of lift, until I lost almost 250m. I was already seeing myself looking for those far away landing fields and trying to decide at what height I should give up on looking for lift by the hill in order to ensure getting to a safe landing...
Fuzo was on the radio, shouting instructions about the thermals I was bumping into. I then saw a bird and followed it to consistent lift. I turned up to 1800m and got to the ceiling. Decided to go with the wind and Fuzo said he'd follow in the car. He was receiving my position on the mobile phone, through the Flymaster Livetrack page.
Crossed the Serra da Gardunha and made my way towards the South, in the direction of Castelo Branco aerodrome, which I could already see in the distance, 25km away.
Got another small thermal after the Serra up to almost 1800, continued South and at around 20km and at 1000AMSL (as are all the heights in this text), before Alcains, topped up at 1800 and, a couple of kilometers later, got up to 2100m.
In 1h10min I had done less than 30km, the ceiling was, as the forecast had warned, only marginally above 2000m, there was not a lot of drift because the wind was weak from NNW... But landing in Castelo Branco did not even cross my mind: I was set to go on.
My GPSs were not well: I had not set up the Flymasters with decent pages so I could not find the relevant information, the airspace warning kept ringing and changing the page without me having anything to do with it, as a trigger was set... The Compeo kept sliding down to over the Flymaster deck and I had to keep pushing it away, the only distance marker I had was the distance to the previous take-off which was... 1,670km away, in Scotland... I could not see the TAS indication. The two cameras were filming, though, and I was glad because the air was very clean and I was flying over some beautiful landscape.
I kept radio connection with Fuzo all the while and after Castelo Branco he started saying the wind was more from the Northwest than before. I did feel that change in direction as well, as the thermals now seemed to drift a lot to the East. And what bumpy thermals they were, sometimes making me fall off them, sometimes increasing their strength only briefly. Not yet very familiarized with the glider, I was more cautious than usual and there were some manoeuvers I did not even try, like throwing the glider into the core of the thermal by forcing a side-stall... I took it easy, or at least as easy as I could cope with: all of the flight had, to this point, been made with half flaps on, like they had been for take-off. I let go of the cable to get them to 0º and the glider picked up a lot of speed, almost to 100km/h. The rate of descent increased and the erratic bumps on the glider increased as well, as we flew past air irregularities which, not being used to flying at this speed, I sensed only as turbulence and not ascendance. So I quickly reverted to a slower, "bit'-a-flaps-on" configuration which enabled me to feel the air better and not to see the altitude counter decrease so fast.
As usual I fly by the ground and not, as is always recommended, by the air. Better, I fly not by the ground, but by the landing fields, trying to avoid dark extensions which are normally either forests or agriculture fields and making my way over flat yellow pieces of land which normally offer better landings. And those did not abound on the way the wind was pushing me, South of Portalegre.
So I kept forcing a South direction. And I started whining on the radio because I had over three hours of flight, I was sore all over, mainly at the right hip, compressed by the harness.
But the thermals were still showing up, it was early in the afternoon, I could do a lot better. I managed to go for another 50km, abandoning the thermals when they drifted two much into "oak-land" to keep a South route.
And, after 4:00 hours of flight, tired and sore, I decided I would land. And that was one of the hard parts of the flight, coming down: between 800 and 500m it was going up everywhere, and I had to force going down to be able to land, smoothly, on a flat field almost 145km from take off.
20 minutes later Fuzo arrived, with a couple of fresh bottles of beer with which we celebrated my first cross-country flight in my new rigid glider.
After another hour of struggle - again with the precious help and advice of Fuzo - the glider was packed, tied on the rack ladders and off we went, to have dinner in Montemor, before we made our way to Lisbon. I got home at 00:30 and finished my day after a soothing shower half an hour later, to dream about thermals...
The day after I found that neither of the cameras had filmed at all during the flight...
On the pictures:
- Getting the cameras ready (!!...);
- On the ramp with my new airplane;
- "Twolfie" after landing, with Fuzo and a bottle of cold beer;
- The flight over the forecast.
And why in English ? For Glenn to be able to read it, of course, even if with some mistakes. He is my haematologist friend who I am nowadays working with, at Inverclyde, in Greenock, Glasgow, and he is himself an aviator, both of motor aircraft and of sailplanes, and very much into any form of aviation. As I left him alone in the department, I hope this description will soothe his busy work day and contributes to his coming to Portugal to go see us hang glider and paraglider pilots "in action" from the top of some hill.
And also because I had written, a couple of weeks ago, that at the time of the next "MDT" meeting, which is held every Tuesday from 16:30 hours, when Glenn would be presenting one of our patients, I hoped I would be flying my hang glider a mile high over Portugal or Spain. And Tuesday, at 16:30 hours, I was flying my hang glider about a mile high over Portugal. I am a man who keeps his word...
Primeiros - Bem vindo.
Segundos - 150 Km, boa.
Terceiros - Abaixo dos 2000, melhor.
Quartos - Com térmica miserável, extraordinário.
Quintos - Com boas aterragens, perfeito.
Sextos - Com "bazucas" do Fuzo, o céu.
Sétimos - A foto da borboleta, a todos os titulos perfeita.
Com amizade,
Pedro Fonseca