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| Help build this site - Tuesday August 23rd 2005 - View the entire paragliding news archive |
I know from my stats that this site is now developing a small but growing following. Visitor numbers continue to grow every week (according to StatCounter.com. I will soon be moving to a new host to accomodate this growth, but the only difference you will notice is how fast the pages load (much faster!). I would love to hear from you all.
Who are you? What do you fly? Where do you fly?
I want to encourage other pilots to contribute articles for the site. Any contributions to the news section would be greatly appreciated. Events/Stories/Anything of interest to fellow pilots. Holiday diaries can easily be added for other pilots, so if you have just come back from a great trip and can write an account that others would be interested to read please use the contact page to send me your diary and I will add it to the pages. I am also looking for an amusing photograph for next month's Caption Competition, so contact me if you have anything that you would like to submit.
There is nothing I enjoy more than feedback (+ve and -ve are welcome), so let me know that I am not the only one that reads these pages. So please, help me build these pages into something bigger. I look forward to a flood of contributions!!!
Incidentally, please keep a copy of anything you send me....just in case it gets lost.
Mark Andrews
After work....
Got some flying in today at the Sodom Road field (powered ofcourse). The thermals were kicking off at about 3-4pm. I was able to thermal for around 20 minutes with the engine off. It would have been longer but I did not want to drift off with the thermals. Wind strength was fairly high and I wanted to stay close to the field.
Later Frank {who will soon also be an instructor with his own school( Powered Paragliding New Brunswick)} and I went for a short flight over the river and within sight of Niagara Falls. A few students also turned up for a brush up of their skills.
More details if/when I get time....
Here it is
Now that I am only working mornings at my day job my afternoons are free. This is very fortunate when you happen to have a generous boss willing to let you use his equipment for. Throw in the pick up and drop off and life gets pretty sweet!!
Andre e-mailed me the night before to see if I would like to go for a flight. After considerable thought for all of two seconds I e-mailed my reply. Ofcourse!
We arrived at the field at around 1:30pm. Frank was already at the field. He is training with Andre to become an instructor (Powered Paragliding New Brunswick). Frank has slightly more powered air-time than me now and has been flying at every opportunity, since gaining his powered paragliding license in March. I took the quick tour of the RV while Joanne, Frank's wife, put the kettle on for a cup of tea. Andre went for a flight to check out the conditions. It was pretty windy and he was making little penetration for a while.
After a while Bob arrived at the field. Bob has been training on and off with us for a while now. He has finally come to the conclusion that the odd day here and there does not allow for the progression that many days in succession do. He has now taken time off work to get his training completed in one go.
This was Frank's chance to try his hand at training; something he is familiar with from all his time in the military. Soon Frank had Bob performing inflation after inflation and old skills were coming back. Bruce also joined us for the next step in the training.
At this point I jumped in for a flight. The conditions were thermic, which suits me since I am a free-flight pilot at heart. Flying the RR gave me the opportunity to switch off the engine and have a go at thermalling. Conditions were perfect and I was soon thermalling , engine off for twenty minutes at a time, using the power to head from cloud to cloud so that I did not drift off. If I had wanted to do a freeflight XC it would have been the perfect day.
I landed and saw that Dan had joined us. I worked with him for a while and discovered that his technique was still very good. He had been getting lots of practice in at home. He was keen to fly and soon got the opportunity to do so.
Herb turned up too. He has a distinctive blue wing with a chequered pattern at one end. He was keen to get in the air once it had smoothed out a bit and made a great launch. Within a short period of time the air was filled with the buzzing of several paramotors. Frank and I went for a flight together by the river and got some good video shots, before switching off at altitude to do some wingovers and a pretty tame spiral in to landing. The sun was getting low so we all packed up, cracked open the beers and got stuck in to the peanuts. It was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.
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The content of this site is � Mark Andrews 2005-12, mandrews1973@gmail.com
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