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Thursday 26 July 2012

Never Give Up, Never Surrender

This July I attended the Inter-Service Championships with the hope of representing the RAF team.  The comp was hosted from Nescliff camp in Shropshire (a basic facility but with all the necessary creature comforts and a WiFi hotspot!).  I arrived on Saturday morning 21st July around 11:30 in the morning.  The weather looked absolutely astounding and considering this is the champs that was a first.  As I flew over the English Channel, I looked out of the airplanes window to a sight of a thousand cloud streets which stretched from Dover, all the way to Manchester and beyond!  Brilliant I thought, but as the day progressed into the afternoon the sky became slightly milky and the nice defined cumulus clouds spread to fill the sky.  On Sunday, the wind was weak and we drove to the Long Mynd to see how the upper wind was doing.  A few of the local pilots took off and were very quickly at the bootom landing field and packing to go home!  We all chose not to fly as a top to bottom at the Mynd is quite the retrieve and one hell of a walk back to the top.  Over the course of the week the wind did nt improve from this and site after site was Nil wind!  On Wednesday we drove to Hundred House and paid £3 for the privalige to sit on top of the hill and sunbath.  The wind in the morning was nill to very weak and in the afternoon was 7mph 180 degrees in the wrong direction.  I had a top to bottom but that was it.  Thursday was better and we arrived at a Long Mynd soaring club site called Batch Hill.  We actually were using the wrong launch and had to pay a different club an extra fee to use it :( but the wind was at least blowing and onto the face of the hill.  There was no real lift to speak of but a task to fly the furthest distance was set with an activating distance of 10km.  All tried, All failed!  with no activation the task was not valid and so yet another day was written off.  It was not a total waste though as people got their feet off the ground and flew top to slope landings all day and five pilots managed to get away from the hill in an attempt to score points!  I managed a very poor three or four flights with the longest flight being around 15 - 20 minutes in the air and a landing in the bottom landing field.
I fly home tomorrow so am not able to take part in procedings from this point; however, the weather looks much better so I would like to wish all the teams good luck and a very special good luck to the RAF team who are currently defending their title of Inter-Service Champions! Go Jerry, Go!

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