Lanzarote, 2002

First two days were above the village of Macher, about 400m MSL facing SE or so. The wind was pretty cross, but due to the heating did tend to come up the front OK. Inverted though, due to high pressure conditions. Easy top landing area, convenient. Take off is in the saddle above Ray's Landrover. The front runs down to the sea about 5km away.

The 3rd day had us off to Famara, hoping for the classic run. This is a really fun site - in good conditions, flatlands out in front, coastal tun of >20km, top landing, smooth and thermic...

Hannah and Kasper with me preparing the glider, Merlin 148. Nice trick, tether the glider's nose to your car to stop it blowing away and you can rig on the A-frame, top land without it getting dusty, and so on. Note the "wheels".

Me off in a 30kph breeze on Ray's Seedwings Merlin 148. My wings aren't really level... maybe I was getting that turn into the lift band in a bit early.

XC to the volcanos? Unfortunately I didn't reach the cloud streets, the wind was almost along the ridge (OK as it's got various bowls on it) and a little too strong. Got upwind along the ridge a few times, but even though the lift was 2 to 3 m/s, I was getting blown back to fast to make good vertical progress.

The Famara lower take off, in panorama. It's still early, the clouds got better formed later.

I would say that Famara gives an intermediate pilot a real taste of everything they could dream of. Plenty of challenges, without really any stress. And the potential to give you a really great flight, if you're there on the right day.

Fourth day was blown out and it swing to NNE, which sort of put it between Famara and another site on the East side of the island. The last two days it was still strong, but we were able to fly lower down at El Cuchillo, a half-crater left from a volcano about 70m high:

El Cuchillo towards sunset. In evening lift we soared here at 250m (TO is about 80). Reminded me of my first soaring flight at the Dyke... a long time ago (was also sunset, smooth, same dimensions.

© Copyright 2004 Flyblog. Last update: 22/12/2004; 22:27:22. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.