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Sat 14th May 2005
I was camping with Cliff near the remote Corrour
station on Rannoch
Moor, in boonyville in other words!! Cliff was
having a family day out
so just had a morning flight.
The hill we were on wasom Leum Uileim. I bombed
out on an early attempt
and thought it felt a bit stable. I walked up
again to sit it out. I
fell asleep after finding that according to the
GPS the nearest waypoint
was the kingshouse at Glencoe 12k away over the
lochs and marshes of
Rannoch moor. However, eventually I woke up sunburnt
and with a crowd of
Cliff's family and friends looking on felt I needed
to give them some
further entertainment by flying down to the station
for the BBQ.
After launching I had a bit of scratching around
before I got a 5metre
per second climb to 5500ft then set off on bar
towards my goal of the
Kingshouse. I scudded over crualiste at 60kmph
and ended up above the
pub a few hundred feet above it. Just after radioing
to Mark Harrison
that I was about to land I ended up getting a
slow climb above the pub
which accelerated and took me to circe 5900ft
way above white corries.
I then set off for the next pub, the Inveroran
where again I got low
with another voice, Tony McQueen, telling me about
beer. However again I
got a good climb in the middle of the valley right
above the pub. At its
strongest the climb was smooth and 9metres per
second to just under
7000ft. The climb eased off and as I bimbled along
I suddenly met Stuart
Daisley on his white boomerang.
Stuart set off towards Loch Lomond, and I kept
my slightly crosswind
track south. At 7200ft the cumulus still looked
very high above, I took
a few more climbs but ended up landing beyond
Cladich part of the way
down Loch awe. I was decked by a howling sea breeze
as was Tony Spirling
who had flown there from White Corries.
This was best flight I have ever had in Scotland
even apart from the
obvious factors of it being the highest and longest.
I took a shedload
of pictures of the stunning sky which had wave
bars, cumulus and all
kinds of mad things going on.
Other pilots such as Bob Gair and Chris Canata
et al have been doing 40
- 50 flights midweek ad nauseum in the last few
weeks and I think made
around 80-100k yesterday.
The ones I know about....
Julian Robinson (Nevis Range to beyond crianlarich)
Stuart Daisley (Nevis Range to Lomond)
Chris Canata(Nevis Range to Luss!!!)
Al Brown (White Corries to beyond tyndrum)
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