feck

what is worse than getting back to your room to find a spider literally the size of your hand on the wall ?

answer: failing to squish it and now not being able to find it anywhere....

feck feck feck.

Parawaiting

Today was spent sitting for 5 hours on the top of a hill waiting for the wind to get stronger or change direction.... yeh.. really.

it was, at least sunny, and the view was great (sedgefield) so I at least had summit to do.

There was a bloke there with an 18 year old paraglider... a paraglider old enough to vote! You could breath through the thing..

I reckon you could make a fortune selling dodgy old UK gliders over here.

Flights of the dodo

so, yesterday I actually managed to get 8 flights in. 1 from the end of Paradise ridge in the morning - basically a 125m cliff facing the sea. You jump off the cliff and then try to get some lift from the wind coming off the sea into the cliff.

There wasn't enough wind.

So basically I just went down to the beach after a couple of minutes. Stunning scenery though - it really is pretty dramatic jumping off a 125m high cliff with the Indian Ocean below you - whales frolicking in the waves.

- Video will be posted later.

Map of Africa Video

I finally managed to get the HD video of a Map of Africa flight uploaded last night.

Its more or less a top to bottom, but I have not put any music on it for 2 reasons:

1) hear the silence - bit of a difference from paramotoring
2) to appease the music haters out there.

You'll have to click on video to take you to you tube if you want to see it in full HD.

take offs

One comment I do have i that I hate paramotor take offs - I hate the palaver, the farting around, the failing to launch usually meaning you have to unhook and lay yer wing out again because you're so cumbersome with the motor you can't abort cleanly, etc.

On the other hand - free flying I just always do a reverse - I can take my time, turn or not.. and if it goes wiffy I just turn back and lay it down ready for the next attempt. Take offs almost become a pleasure.

Botlierskop Game Reserve

It's a far cry from Pilanberg (see posts from last year below), but a
few days ago I went along to Botlierskop game reserve - it's the
nearest place to see 'big game' but its a very small park - feels more
like a UK safari park really.

The lions for instance are in a seperate enclosure and are not free to
roam and hunt like in Pilansberg:

You are driven round in a big truck. Saying that, it was still interesting. Didn't really get many good shots though - again look at my Pilansberg piccies for better ones. Here's a few of em:

Here's two Giraffe's fighting:

An Ostrich ...

And a white Rhino (check out the size of that horn - you wouldn't want that up yer arse!):

Woolworths

Woolworths is still one of the biggest department stores out here by
the way, it's just the UK that closed (they are in states too).

my, I am full of fascinating facts me......

Whales

Here's a picture of the whales I saw at the top of the Map of Africa -
long zoom shot so you'll have to use your imagination a bit.

Paragliders have been known to actually spot land on the whales - then taking off again. Local rumour has it that the whales are being seen more and more frequently here and like playing with the pilots.

- I made that bit up.

The Map of Africa

The Map of Africa is one of the main flying sites here. It's a hill at
the back of the town of Wilderness. So called, because the river to
the back of it is sort of shaped like Africa.

The take off is not too bad, though there is the possibility of not
getting enough lift and not clearing the forest in front of you.
Assuming you do, you find yourself flying over the main dual
carriageway around 200 feet up. You can follow the road back and forth
along the ridge, and if the wind is strong enough it is forced up by
the ridge and you get lift. i.e. you can soar. With enough wind you
can fly back and forth all day.

When you've had enough you come out the lift band and head for the
beach, landing next to the car park for a lift back up to the top
again - trying not to land on the topless totty sunbathing on the beach.

Here.s the hill (we launch from just off to the right):

and the landing is just to the front of this picture here:

I've had about 10-15 flights off 'the map' so far. Problems with it are: wind needs to be pretty much SE or it is not flyable. Too light - you risk crashing in the trees, too strong you risk being pulled over the back of the ridge (like I was at the other beach site).

Sedgefield

Sedgefield is one site that has some awesome views from the top and on
the way down.

You start from the top of the hill with a sort of open river valley
below you, and in front of that, the Indian Ocean:

I posted a picture of it a few days ago too. I've only flown there once so far (2 flights), both pretty much top to bottoms (i.e. no lift - so no soaring). At the bottom is a nice big field to land in and the take off is pretty easy. Only issue is that it is pretty much a cliff face once you are in the air , full of massive pine trees - so on the one hand you want to stay close to the ridge (and hence close to the trees) to maximise lift. One other other hand, you don't want to land in a tree. It's very different from Paramotoring, where I am always >500 feet away from the ground unless taking off or landing - paragliding I'm having to get used to my arse being 5 foot above the top of a pine tree... a few times you get a bit of sink and think...'arg prepare for tree landing' which is a bit of a buttock clencher.

View from the House

So, been a bit lacking in posts for the last few days - blown out
today so I'll make up for it a bit.

From my balcony I look out over a river valley between a set of hills
and another set of hills just in front of the sea. In front of the
house is a large tree with loads of herons in it. Here are a few
photos of them:

On the right, right next to the balcony are some trees full of little weaver bird nests. They birds are bright green and they are just making their nests just now. In fact I watched one being made over the last few days. Have to say - it really is bloody amazing how they make them - it really is weaved together - not just stuck together with spit or something.

Here's one starting it's nest:

And here is the same nest finished:

cool eh ?

another blown out day

Looks like today is going to be blown out again. So setting up the
blog to email post so I can add a few more details and stuff.

here's a picture of the sky from the house today:

More details

Here are some
more details then....

I'd been flying above the ridge for about 40mins and was getting pretty high. Suddenly the
wind picked up and I was flying backwards. I had no speed bar system fitted
so I tried pulling down o. The a risers. But was still going backwards.

Next I tried big ears but by now I was behind the ridge in rotar and coming down

all I could do was try to stay out of the bad rotar and get on the ground
but there was only one small patch to land in and it had 3 trees in the middle of it

I managed to land on the ground but the wing got tangled in the trees.

After About 40 mins of tryo g to get it out a local guy turned up with achainsaw

Trees

Had great 40 min soaring flight this morning


However..... Wind then got up and I was dragged over the back of the hill


In the end I managed to land on the only patch of flat land but unforynately my wing had other ideas...

An hour later, and 3 less trees in the world -thanks to the land owner and his chainsaw and I have survived another adventure

Tuesday

Tuesday was flyable, but the wind was moving around all over the place.

We went to a site called 'sedgefield' for the morning. Awesome views from the top of the hill of the bay in front then the indian ocean.

Got 2 flights in there, but not much soaring - the wind just wasn't strong enough coming up the hill most of the time, though a few people did manage a top landing.

We then grabbed some lunch and headed back the the Map of Africa site but it wasn't great conditions either, however I did manage to get one quick top to bottom flight in.

More cool was the 7 Southern Right whales we saw. They were all playing with each other near the beach for at least 30 mins.

We then decided to hit the town for cocktail hour... which sort of extended into a pissup...

I woke up lying in a field at 6.30am....

When I got back to the house, I went straight to my bed and slept for the next 24 hours.. missing wednesday completely... thankfully I didn't miss anything as it wasn't flyable.

Tests

Pissing down rain and blowing a gale today - so a day for the theory.

Today I learned stuff like what can fly:

- birds

- planes

- paragliders

- witches

- little stones

I believe I am well on the way to my south african pilot license.

I also hired a quality ching Deathmaster car for the 2 weeks - bargain at 10 quid a day. It has seats and everything.

First videoed flight and landing - Map of Africa

Hill launch followed by 15-20 mins of soaring the cliff wall above the road, then landing on the beach. sweet. This was my second flight of the day (and second free flight in nearly 10 years). Also the first 2 flights on my Ozone Geo light weight mountain glider which flew really nicely too. Hill is 'Map of Africa'. Landed on the beach ok right next to car to go back up again!

Next launch went fine though

Just to prove I'm not a total muppet, the next one went fine.

How not to launch a paraglider

Ok, here's the video.

Basically a reverse inflation, but when I turned round I screwed it up and didn't get on the left brake quick enough. The result was that the glider started moving to the right. Not usually a problem... however more of a problem when there is a bloke in front of you to the right also about to launch his glider....

My muppet like brain decided that the best thing to do under the circumstances was not to abort the launch.. oh no... I decided that the best thing to do was to continue, leap over the bloke's lines trying to launch, then try to straighten out the wing and take off....

Somehow I actually did manage to jump over all his lines, much to his surprise.. however by the time I landed the wing had collapsed.

Moral of this story: god knows - my brain makes these decisions with no active input from me... so if it happens again, so be it !

Serf Africa - oct 2009 the return!

Well, I'm here! Arrived late sat night in joburg feeling pretty much worse for wear after taking advantage of the free BA booze a bit too much... well 6 miniatures, 5 bottles of wine and a beer.

I think it was a bad beer.

Arrived in George at 2pm, got to Wilderness at 3pm, and was airborne at 4pm!!

Didn't video first flight, but did the second and will post some video tomorrow from a faster connection.

Managed to persuade Jan and Kobi that I could control my glider and they were happy for me to go for a flight.

Ozone Geo flew well - got a decent amount of life and ridge soared for a while before landing on the beach.

Then went up for another flight.

Had a wee mishap that time, as there were a few folk on the hill and I had to jump over one of them... cough... video to follow.

For now, here is a picture from the top of the hill.