The Dragon Has Landed… Finally!

This weekend we had all decided to fly on Saturday for various reasons and as the wind was looking to be best from 1 o’clock onwards we didn’t have our usual early start of 9 or 10 o’clock.  As the wind was a west south westerly we decided to meet at Itford.  I think Tony was as relived as I was, no brambles or gorse to deal with this week!

When I arrived at the top of the hill at 1.30 Paul, Rob, Mark, Tony and Russell were already flying various models ranging from Tony’s Wildthing to Paul’s Willow 2 which both had already buzzed me as I walked slowly up the side of the hill.  I think Rob and Russell both had their Coyotes along with various other models.  Sorry Mark, I didn’t see what you had with you today.

We were joined today by the usual walkers, runners and mountain bikers, along with a horse rider doing gallops up and down the hill, well the horse was doing the galloping, and a first for me, two tethered hang gliders.  We had been flying for well over an hour and with no warning given, one of the hang gliders decided to fly untethered from behind where we were flying.  Not a great move given that there were several moulded gliders flying around at speed!

I took my Dragon and my “comfort blanket” as Paul calls it, aka Wildthing.  Today the Wildthing stayed on the ground as I was determined to persevere with the Dragon, a get on with it or admit defeat sort of scenario. 

After the first couple of minutes I was getting a feel for it again and with much encouragement from Paul after not too long I was doing multiple loops and speed passes along the slope.  Then Paul suggested that I tried flying around with the flaps down to see how the Dragon reacted and doing dummy landing approaches to see where to position the glider.  Before I knew what was happening with Paul shouting, “more nose down”, “more nose down” and “keep the wings level” the Dragon was sliding through the grass.  I’m sure that it wasn’t a textbook landing but at least the Dragon was down in one piece with no damage and I was elated, I had finally done it!!  Just to be sure it wasn’t a fluke we put the Dragon up again and after a couple of runs along the slope I landed her a second time.

Thanks for all of your encouragement and patience Paul, very much appreciated!