We met a fellow name Alexi in the LZ (landing zone) and the three of us drove up to launch in Pierre’s car. Alexi is a 44 year old Frenchman who flies wherever and whenever he can and wants. He renovated some flats and gets some income from that, does some aerial photography and who knows what else to make ends meet. He used to be a river guide but broke his back while rescuing “a couple of stupid people” as he stated it. He was laid up for a year and a half but looking at him one wouldn’t know but he said it has changed the activities he can participate in. He lived in Africa for over 17 years as well...very interesting fellow.
It had been six or even eight months since I last flew so any kind of flight was going to be okay with me. I was the last of the three of us to launch but it was smooth and I was pleased with my launch. I headed away from the mountain to join Pierre while Alexi headed the other way and soared the ridge. Pierre was working a nice thermal and I soon joined in. We played around in the same area for most of the flight and I was just soaking in the gorgeous scenery. There are two launches at St. Andre, one facing the town and the other on the back side of the mountain. It was the latter that we had launched from so to reach the LZ by the campground, you must fly around the mountain through a gap that can sometimes have strong winds (it’s called a Venturi effect). Pierre headed through the gap about 50 minutes into the flight and I decided to follow him, perhaps he was looking for some thermals near town. No, he wasn’t, he was working his way down to land. I was above him over the LZ and that Venturi wind was happening so we set up our approach facing the gap. When he was 100-200 feet over the ground, from my perspective above him, he looked to be going backwards. He then penetrated and landed fine. The part that I didn’t see was that he had a frontal and that caused him to temporarily go backwards (a frontal is short for “frontal collapse”, it means that the whole leading edge of his paraglider folded down and this creates more drag and hence he went backwards briefly...it’s usually caused by strong downwards wind from above the front of the wing). I was cautious after seeing this and since the LZ is huge, I did my figure eight landing set up well in front of the trees. The landing was smooth and I had just completed my first flight of my Wandergliding trip....the gliding part had finally been realized!
Pierre flying in front of me...what a view!
Pierre, shortly after the frontal:
With Pierre’s car up on the mountain, I offered to drive him up in Betty but warned him that it would be a slow ride as she’s not the best climber. Another pilot, a Czech named Pavel, also needed to retrieve his vehicle so he jumped in. Betty did her best getting up there and did make a few funny noises here and there with the effort. At the top she was a bit slow to restart so Pierre was kind and offered to follow behind me. Shortly into the descent, the funny noise was gone but so was the effectiveness of my brakes, they worked, but not well...obviously the hydraulics weren’t helping out. I used the engine to slow down around the hairpin turns and gave Betty a real work out. It was a slow descent and as we reached town I planned to head into the garage as I couldn’t drive her like this tomorrow to Sisteron. Just as I pulled in there was yet a new noise. I popped the hood and saw that she was bubbling over due to overheating as it was the main belt that had made the noise on the way up and was now nowhere to be seen so the fan had not been running and this explained the lack of brakes.
The garage was on their two hour lunch break so Pierre and I did the same. We sat on the patio of the restaurant across the road and the lunch options were minimal. I was surprised that one option was raw beef, which Pierre opted for. The waitress, seeing that I was an uncultured English person, offered that mine could be cooked...make it so! I did try a bit of Pierre’s and it wasn’t bad but I don’t think I could have handled that many bitefuls of that consistency.
Pierre with his raw beef:
After lunch, the same mechanic that we consulted earlier did in fact have the appropriate belt, installed it and also topped up the coolant, for only another 70 Euros! Oh Betty. Pierre decided that he was going to head to Montpellier to meet up with his wife who was staying with some friends so we bid adieu and I returned to the campsite for a relaxing evening.
Betty set up for the evening:
No comments:
Post a Comment