Paragliding Weather

Here's an introduction to the messy world of weather forecasting for paragliding, condensed from various online resources.

Based on the axiom "A little knowledge is dangerous", I hope we can be a little more wary of each other on the hillside from now on.

Yelagiri Topographic Map

Click on the image to see it in full scale

Sites : Favourable winds
Hanuman (Muthanoor) : NW
Ramakrishna (Ramakrishna Madam) : W, SW
JK (Raneri) : S, SE

Yelagiri panorama

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Ramakrishna site, Yelagiri.

Isolated cloudbursts on the plains as we perfect our parawaiting skills.

I used Autostitch to create this panorama from a series of snaps from my cellphone - that explains the twins on the left.

About my Flying in Yelagiri, last weekend

I had 4 flights in all, in the 3 full days that I was in Yelagiri last weekend. I will write about 2 of them which I enjoyed the most.

Landed at Yelagiri on Thursday evening and was all eager & charged up for my first 'flight chance' on Friday morning. I arrived at the Ramakrishna take off site with all my family - wife two kids (2 & 4 yrs) and my pet, a Labrador, just recovering from a liver infection.

It turned out to be a beautiful morning. All pilots including new P2 students were soaring so merrily on the ridge, left of take-off. When I was just about beginning to savour the exhilarating prospect of a lovely flight, My wife was offered a tandem by Temple Pilots. She was over the moon. She had a beautiful, 'mind altering' flight and I paid the bill - babysitting my kids & walking back with my glider & all mentioned 'baggage,' all the way back to parking.

With a 'mind altered' happy wife, sleeping kids & resting pet left behind, I went back to the site at about 3 PM to take my second 'flight chance'. It turned out to be my first flight of the trip and the most memorable one too.

The Southern side, west facing part of Yelagiri (left of Ramakrishna take-off) has a beautiful ridge, one of the best I have flown other than the ones in Billing. It is, I believe to be as good as the west side of Tower Hill in Kamshet - the western bowl below the tower.

The Ramakrishna takeoff is at the lowest point in the entire ridge line south of take-off and the ridge rises all the way after take-off till its peak point. Riding this beautiful & challenging ridge was the high point of my flight that first afternoon. After a 'no-abort take off' and a few minutes of settling in, in front of the take-off, I decided to ride the ridge. I was below the take-off within leaving 200 mts of the take-off and before I could reach the middle sections of the first rock face. From then on, aided by nice smooth winds, I enjoyed working hard and climbed up all the way to the peak point. Must have taken me a good 25-30 minutes to do that. A few more beats, a few facile attempts at wing overs followed by some planning for landing, I headed for landing. I was able to execute the landing plan without any major unknown surprises down the way. The landing ground discovered by Avi is 'made to order' and offers great room for practising landing skills.

The 'second best' flight was Yesterday morning -Sunday. Strong winds with large south component at take-off - was exactly as per XC forecast. Waited till about 1015 to settle, it came down a bi,t but was getting real thermic. Temple Pilots decided to stop further flights for students. Besides that, the forecast early morning, talked about watching out for 'wind shear'.
Launched my glider, had a partial collapse on the way up. Pumped it, inflated it & stabilized it overhead before moving forward for take-off. Thermic conditions in front of take-ff, not too worrying though. settled in & set to climb up without going too close to the ridge line, since the winds were quite cross south. Reached about 100-150 m above take-off around there and palpitating discovered that there was a different layer of winds flowing much faster with a much greater southern component. The transition to this layer was an experience that likes of Walt Disney may never be able to simulate even in the next century. The wind here was cold, moist & hazy all around while a few hundred feet below it was all lit up & hot - like watching a huge lit up room down ways, from the darkening doorsteps outside. The affects on the mind - I will leave it to all your own imagination. The affects on the glider though was very different from what I have experienced in thermic turbulence. There, if all the affects on the glider are more in the x & z axes, here they are almost entirely in the y axis. Some serious 'yawing' and you can feel the extreme stress the glider undergoes. Spent very little time on the ridge line and that too, at a good height. Came away from the ridge quickly, after the experience down back to regular happy thermic conditions which, I am slowly getting comfortable with. A nice landing in strong winds and some soothing reception by a local woman who has her house at the road edge of the landing zone. Water, coolants and flashing smile offered with great warmth. Enjoyed it.


Already looking forward to my next trip to Yelagiri.....can only get better.

A weekend at Yelagiri

Here is a first hand account of my first high altitude flying experience at Yelagiri. Since I already put it down in my personal blog, I'll just link it here.

Vijay

Liability Insurance for flying in Europe

Liability insurance covers injury to other people and damage to their property. You need liability insurance to fly legally in most European countries even if a PG rating license is not required.

Here's a contact for obtaining PG third-party liability insurance for flying in Europe.

Sepp Himberger
AXA Insurance
axa@fly-koessen.at

I've never had to actually test if they pay up (thankfully), but Sepp was friendly enough. He even invited me to fly at his home site in Koessen, Austria.

It costs 70 euros for a year. You need to fax him an application form with the details of your glider and license, in my case the FAI license from the Aero Club of India, New Delhi.

You can find more details about their third party liability insurance coverage here.

Note that emergency rescue and world wide coverage are only available to EU citizens. Last year, Sepp told me that I was covered only for liability and only for flying in the EU.

Traffic in the Sky

Was at yelagiri the past weekend, the 30th and the 31st of May.
Turned out to be rather brilliant, the monsoons hadn't quite penetrated that far east yet and for the most part, we had beautifully clear skies to dive into. :)

Got around to my first, and more importantly; solo, high altitude flight from RK (if I'm not mistaken) take off site. Was a bit nervous actually, not a simple task jumping into a 600m void for the first time, but I found that all that disappeared once I was in the air.

Wriggled into my harness, sat comfortably and had a most pleasant flight down.
While landing though, in the process of avoiding the ditch on the left side, I managed to veer off into the thorny bushes to the right, but luckily enough, I manged to land in a slight clearing so I didn't quite suffer the inch long thorns that so many of the other para-gliders faced on the same landing patch.

Managed only one flight that day though, exhausted as we were from the drive and the psychotic tamil nadu heat. Tried another by the evening after a nice lunch of parotas and curry but someone forgot to pray to the Indian wind god (Vayu) and he therefore, rather pettily, decided to punish us with the most beautiful of breezes going in entirely the wrong direction.

Sigh! C'est la vie.

Wasn't a total waste though, we manged a nice bottle of beer each, with pleasant conversations of arbitrary plans ahead of wonderful glide-able mountains in distant lands... and of course, all this sitting on top of a mountain with a view of orange lightning striking the landscape.

The next day was quite good I'd say, got to fly twice, and even managed to get a video, a minute or so long from about 400m off the ground. Lots of wind, weirdest possible positions to accommodate the camera while trying not the drop the same while I switch hands to control each of the brakes.
Attempting to maintain a course to the bases as well.



Didn't quite work out though, realized that I'd drifted off too far to the right when Vrata told me so. At which point in time, I stop gawking at the beautiful scenery and concentrated on landing. Bit of a messy landing, but nothing to complain about I'd say.

We managed to get up again, and had another round of flights before lunch.
I've forgotten actually, did we have lunch? Hmmm...

Anyway, amazing flight, tried leaning and turning instead of just braking on one side, found it to be rather comfortable. The glider behaved brilliantly, and I managed not to get that bit of churning/nauseating feeling when you free fall.

We managed to get back again, hoping for another flight, though the winds had died down by then.
Vrata managed a forward take off in the low winds and some time later Robin was off and some more time later Vijay got off too.

In the process of course, we went thought around seven million forms of uncertainties, about whether we'd get to fly or not. Some times there'd be no wind, sometimes too much and other times the wind would just have some sort of mood swing and arrive towards us in the most inconceivable of directions. And of course, the rain!

I'm quite sure it was a para-glider that composed the nursery rhyme...

Rain rain go away,
Come again another day,
Little Johnny wants to fly!

I think there was some loss in translation somewhere and someone turned fly into play. :)

I wonder if there are other sports that are so heavily governed by the weather. I guess one would call off a cricket match or two if it rained, but I doubt a few degrees of change in the wind direction or a sudden lack of it ever kept anyone else from whacking a tennis ball around.
For some reason, I get the feeling that para-gliders would make excellent meteorologists!

But such is the way of the para-glider I guess, if I could call myself that quite so soon.

Yelagiri Taj gardens

Found this great little garden retreat at the entrance of Yelagiri this w.e. They are a little strict on alcohol which albeit has it's upside in that there are only quiet families staying there. Anyhow, the place is set on 12 acres with a lovely garden space and the food is quite good. So we've booked for the coming w.e. a 4 bed room suite (with bathrooms, 2000 Rs plus tax, additional bed for 200 Rs) a rather good deal if you ask me. Bfast for 100 Rs, Lunch 150 an Dinner 150, veg or non-veg. A Delux (dbl) room is 1200 + tax and the premium rooms (very nice) go at 1500 + tax.

If you guys want to book, here is the number: 04179 245 231/295 445/245 376, or you can call Mr Salman on +91 9840029445.

There is also a web site: www.zeenathtaj.com, email: zeenathtaj@gmail.com