Souther Fell

[RonDon]

Souther Fell Sat 27 Dec Chris little and pasenger Kay Paul Jan Ron

[gary stenhouse]

fantastic photos ron, boy those hg pilots are something else, its bead enough walking up with a pg without carying a topless hg. the weather was looking buitiful as well. when you see how nice that looks it defo was worth the drive over.

cheers gary

[Kay]

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/myerscous ... stmasHols#

[gary stenhouse]

great photos kay could not help notice the height of one of the hg, did they manage to get high all the time or was it just a one off.

cheer gary

[ron freeman]

Nice pic's Kay, looks a good day & I'm stuck on my back !

Gary, looks like there is some wave about and the hangglider with a higher airspeed when flying at minimum sink rate must have got into a bit of low level wave.

[Kay]

Hi Guys
No..we dont think it was Wave we were flying in.

If you look at some of the pics you can see that the Inversion Layer is pretty much at the height of Take Off.....
What was happening was on take off you would go up and very quickly seem to hit a slightly Bumpy layer, There were thermals coming through and at times these would give you good lift through this layer and hey presto..Smooth flying and constant lift . Both HG's and one in particular managed to stay above this level for quite some time. I would say the only thing that brought us down eventually was the cold.

At the bottom landing field there was also a phenomenon that nearly caught a couple out (one low airtimer landing quite a bit short).....Although the wind speed on the hill was never too strong folk who went for the bottom landing on their final approach experienced real difficulties in moving forward.
If you can imagine the Souther Fell ridge we think this may have been the effect of the very cold air mass going for the easier option..rather than pushing its self over the hill it was skirting round and so accelerating the strength just out from the base off the fell.
Anyway that was the Post Flight Beer Talk

[ron freeman]

Sounds more like wave now kay, on the photos you can clearly see wave clouds over the back and not too high ! Onc'e through the inversion you will now be in unstable air thats why the wave clouds are there.. then as the wave tops out it becomes stable again, hence one layer of wave.

I think your right about the surface wind (cold air) plus valley effect.

Would have love to be there with the Phantom! Lucky buggers.

[gordie]

Hiya, just to confirm there was no wave at all on Sat 27th as Kay says. There was a very strong inversion around 2,500-3,000ft and not to strong a wind. The gliders on Souther were getting to around a max height of 2,500ft which altough above the summit of Souther is not very high as Souther is a small hill by our standards at only 522m. So most of the lift was dynamic with the slightest weak thermal untill the inversion. Yesturday did see a bit more wind hence a bit of weak wave forming but again height gains were small by Lake District standards, max of around 2,500ft asl. Again most if not all the lift was dynamic.

Well done Kay for a good and accurate assement of the conditions.

[ron freeman]

Gordie, there was wave about because of the clearly marked lenticular clouds.. if more height had been acheived I'm sure there might have been a chance of connecting ? I would of love to have been there it looked a good day.

Iv'e connected wave in the Cheviots in winds of no more than 10 mph and flown to 3,500 ato.