When you go away on an expedition it always takes a few days to settle into the routines of another club and evan if you have flown there many times before things change. Well the big thing that has changed at Sisteron this year is that they have not employed professional staff to run the airfield and are going to try to rely on volunteers. The Jury is still out on this one, but so far everything appears to be OK.
The tug pilot informed me that for this year there is only one new rule, you must be local to the airfield by 7pm. By the time we parked the Duo at the North end of the airfield ready for a launch and it was then we had found out that there is a second new rule that the gliders need to be further back towards the hedge and we had parked in front of a Swiss glider that wanted to launch. Well if you cant find any Germans to annoy then the Swiss are the second best option.
So a relaxed start today as we were one of the last to launch at about 1pm. After ten minuets on one of the local hills we realised that it may be a bit more difficult than it looked with very turbulent thermals and possibly of wave mixed in with it. After two hours flying we finally managed to climb high enough to move away from La Motte and head towards the higher mountains. The parcours was working well but again it took a long time to get over 10,000ft. I was then persuaded by the P2 to try pushing towards the wave clouds over the Barcelonnette valley. It didn’t take long before we were doing a passable impression of a grand piano thrown out of a second floor window with the result that we had to scuttle back around the corner of Dormillouse.
Colin
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