The Man That Never Flies Anywhere And The 100 Mile Club

Sunday 18th May 2014

I have been flying since the early eighties. That's nearly twenty years chasing clouds (taking in to account time out from the sport). Initially I didn't get involved with competition flying, but that didn't mean that the flying was any less adventurous or challenging. 15000' cloud bases and very long flights in South Africa, being the first to make a 75km task to goal in Hungary during a free flying practice week of "The League", exploring little known flying sites abroad, squeezing in to small landing fields on my Solar WIngs Scandal. I know I can fly, and sometimes pretty well. 

So the start of my season this year has been what you might call a wee bit frustrating. Low XC scores, unorthodox landings and failed take offs, a near miss with a Paraglider. It had felt as though nothing was going right. And if beating myself up about it wasn't enough, there were rumblings that "Ben never flies anywhere...". Who needs enemies, and all that. The nice surprise this year though was winning the Royal Aero Club "Prince of Wales Cup" (awarded to Team GB for winning Bronze Medal at the 2013 World Championships) and receiving the award from HRH Duke of York at the very swanky RAF Club in Piccadilly.

Even though I had been sceptical about the forecast for last weekend, it had surprisingly been improving during the preceding days, much to the delight of Tim King who had been watching the forecast with great expectations of a good day. Saturday had delivered mediocre flying conditions for a days towing , but the start of Sunday was bright and breezy, the wind blowing strongly from the SSE. Well, at least the PGs would be grounded to give the HGs more room to find a climb (or so we thought). A few phone calls later and Tim had persuaded me to go to the best site for the day ("don't worry about the logistics") and agreed to meet at the Mere "Rifle Range" in South Wiltshire, just off the A303, while Rich Hunt and Andy Hollidge, driving down from Cambridgeshire, opted to go for my local site Milk Hill. Launching from Mere would buy Tim and I a further 30km, and we did try and persuade them to join us...

RASP Forecast showing good lift for Southern England

I was out the house by 8.15 for the hour long 70km drive to Mere. One of the first to arrive I walked to the front and immediately got that "butterfly" feeling of anticipation and excitement. The wind was spot on the hill and blowing 15-20mph. If the thermic activity kicked off and we could get away from the hill, then some serious distance could be covered.  Soon more HG pilots arrived, and a good number of PG pilots. I rigged behind a mound in the field to protect the glider and by 11am was ready to fly, apart from deciding and declaring my route for the purposes of maximising scores in the UKNXCL. After a brief conversation with Tim as he rigged his rigid, and having asked Tim if I could get a lift back with him, I decided to follow his declared flight plan of 160km to a goal near Dudley on the West side of Birmingham, navigating past several airspace restrictions. I downloaded the coordinates to my main GPS and texted the declaration to Phil Chettleburgh (our Scorer) and returned to my glider for final preparation: Glider rigged - check. Main GPS  - check. Back up SeeYou IGC flight recorder - check. KOBO rolling airspace map (also a second back up flight recorder)  - check. Radio - check. Right, good to go.


At around 12pm I launched in to a lovely fresh breeze with the signs of nice cumulus starting to form. Very quickly I stumbled in to a good climb which took me immediately to over 2000'. As I drifted quickly over the back, Grant gave me the heads up over the radio that more cloud was forming up wind so, wanting to wait for Tim to launch, I pushed forward of the ridge again, something which almost cost me the day. For the next hour I was part of a gaggle of rigid and flex wing hang gliders and paragliders thrashing about at ridge height, trying to core lumpy gnarly thermals. One rigid went to the bottom while a couple of other hang gliders landed as soon as they could. A yellow canopy paraglider pilot flew in company with me as we got thrown about on the West side of the ridge. Having to focus hard on keeping the gliders pointed where we wanted to, I could not believe my eyes when a light blue and white canopy below us started doing acrobatic manoeuvres right in front of take off while we were all struggling to safely stay in the air. This selfish act basically took away 50% off the usable flying space, making the East side of the bowl even more crowded as we all opted to stay away from the dangerous antics.

Longleat House and Safari Park

Shortly afterwards Tim started to climb slowly from the hill, drifting low over the back but hanging on to the thermal he had cored. I missed the boat, and caught glances of him getting further away as I battled to stay up. His dulcet tones came over the radio: "Hurry up Ben. You can bring the sandwiches..." For a further hour I fought to find a climb out and was eventually rewarded with a solid 3 up which I knew I was going to take over the back. I was very relieved to be leaving the turbulent mess of the Mere bowl behind. I decided to stay as long as I could with this first climb. With the wind blowing at times over 30kmh the drift underneath my forming cloud would quickly take me away from the hill. As I reached cloudbase for the first of many times, I began to relax, taking in the beautiful sight of Longleat House and Safari Park (and yes, I flew over it high as I didn't fancy being lion dinner), and the views to the East of the Westbury White Horse and the Bratton Camp ridge.

Drifting on the edge of a cloud
waiting for things to develop

A glide in to the blue

A big blue hole appeared downwind towards Melksham and Trowbridge so I patiently drifted with my cloud until it started dissipating. As I took the glide out in to the blue, unable to reach an excellent looking sky much further downwind, a few whisps of cloud started forming East of my glide so I diverted towards them. Bingo. Back up to 4000'. And that was the pattern of the first 40km of the flight. Glide, climb, drift, glide climb, drift... With the Bath Gap approaching the Mini Kobo e-Reader runniung XCSoar really came in to its own. The clarity with which you can read the map, your projected glide direction and glide angle is fantastic. Always gliding to the NE I was on a perfect course to clear the East tip of the Gap and make it to the M4 and a turnpoint at Sutton that was set to help guide us through airspace. Strangely the Kobo kept dropping its GPS fix. probably due to my dodgy soldering but a quick reboot mid-flight seemed to do the trick.

North of the M4 and it was a great to fly over my old stomping ground of South Gloucestershire, even flying over the old family home near Minchinhampton, where the open common land created an inviting landing field to go for Sunday tea with Mum and Dad, and an easy retrieve back home. But, with the thought of Tim racing on ahead, and superb cloud streets forming both over the Severn Vale and the Cotswold Hills, there was only one thing to do: Push on. And fast.

The first cloud street of the day over the Cotswolds

Suddenly my GPS stopped recording my track. First the Kobo and then this? I thought that carrying three flight recorders, and a back up mobile using the Tracker app to send location updates via text and Livetrack24, would be enough to log the flight. But now I was getting concerned. 

Finding lift low over Cheltenham
(Race Course in the background) 

"Fly the sky!" is a saying often quoted by Nev Almond, one of the UKs most experienced XC hounds. Well Sunday was a classic example of that. With Gloucester and Cheltenham now firmly in my sights I was choosing my route to get round Gloucester Airport based on the sky. I decided to glide to the East of the airspace, aiming to go over the middle of Cheltenham which had a nice looking cloud over it. As I pushed on through heavy sink, I approached Cheltenham lower than I wanted to be,and began scouting out various large playing fields in the centre of town. Luckily my right wing started lifting, indicating that over to the right there could be lift. Now sizing up Cheltenham Race Course as a possible "bomb out" landing zone I turned right over the town and was rewarded with a 2 up climb which took me back to base at the start of a cloud street directly on track.

 With no airspace to worry about and about 70kms to go, I pulled on speed, and headed straight down the street. At times I was covering the ground at 120kmh. With an improving sky, it was at this moment that I realised that maybe, just maybe, I was going to make goal. I was getting tired after four and a half hours in the air, but a quick calculation reassured me that at this speed I could be in goal easily within the hour. Virtually following the M5 past Tewkesbury, Worcester and the Malverns, Birmingham became visible to the North East. I was getting close to goal. I began to look at my "Glide Ratio to Goal". 30;1, 25:1, 23:1, 20:1 - it was coming down very quickly. I wanted 15:1 or less to think about a final glide in with a possible top up if necessary. 30kms to go and it was going to be one more climb and glide to get in. It was all happening very quickly.

Climbing East of Kidderminster 15kms out I decided to go for goal. Ahead I could see the town of Stourbridge and my final destination of Wombourne beyond. I  knew from the angle at which I was approaching, that goal was in the bag. And then I looked up. Clouds were still well formed. I had a quick glance at the Kobo to appraise the onward journey...Voices in my head were telling my to carry on. 

Final approach in to Wombourne

Luckily my brain switched in to common sense mode. One of the reasons to fly the same plan as Tim was to make sure I could get a lift back (in time for shooting a commercial in Wales on Monday).  As I made the goal radius, I sized up a large open landing field on the south edge of town, near to the main road and a cricket match. Burning off the extra height, it was apparent that the wind was still very strong, but I made a perfect touchdown in the middle of the field away from any rotor inducing obstacles.

100 MILES!

I quickly unclipped and phoned Tim to ask him if he was in goal:
"Of course. And I am having a BBQ and a beer. Where are you?"
"In goal" Silence. "No! Really?"
"Yep, I've just landed at Wombourne by the cricket club".
"Well done. We better come and find you..."

When I went to check my back up track, my heart sank. The IGC recorder on the iPhone had not recorded the track. Trying not to panic, I checked the Tracker App on the back up Android phone. S**t. No data sent. This could not be happening. There was only one last chance; my newly built Mini-KOBO/GPS unit running XCSoar is meant to record tracks, but as it was the first time that I had used the instrument on a scoring flight, I had never checked the files. The only way to check is to plug the unit in to a computer, which led to an agonising 36 hour delay before I could find out if my 100 mile "declared goal" flight could be verified.

Dave the farmer

While de-rigging the local farmer and owner of the field kindly came over to check that I was OK. When he asked where I had flown from, thinking that it would have been somewhere local, he was very surprised to hear that I had flown up from South Wiltshire. Because I had concerns over my track log we exchanged contact details in case I needed a landing witness. 

Babs Raymond
(C) Hampshire Chronicle

As I finished packing up the glider, Tim and his BBQ host Dave arrived and took me back to the paddock near to where Tim had landed and where the BBQ was in full swing and the beer flowing. What a great way to celebrate the flight thanks to some generous Black Country hospitality! Perhaps we should set this as a BOS goal field? At around 8pm Tim's partner Babs arrived after driving the 100 miles AND having cycled 50 miles to the hill to pick the truck up... well, it was planned as training for the 400 mile  "Help For Heroes - Big Battlefield Bike Ride" charity cycle ride, but nonetheless respect is due.

Tim with the Dudley BBQ Crew,

Back home at midnight. Where's the cable for the Kobo? In the car. Where's the car? At launch. I set my alarm for 4am to give me time to cycle the 70kms to the hill, drive back, shower, download the track, and drive off to work. Unsurprisingly when the alarm did go off I quickly reconsidered the decision and went back to sleep!

Needless to say that I managed to meet my colleagues en route to Wales to shoot a test commercial for AT&T, our location conveniently being at the top of Pen Y Fan, the highest peak in South Wales. Again arriving home at midnight, I grabbed some sleep before jumping on the bike and cycling to the hill (I think the urgency to find out the outcome of the track saga helped me average 19.6mph over the two hour ride!) As soon as I had driven home and was through the door the Kobo was plugged in and with some "live" email support from Miles Hockcliffe (the Mini Kobo/GPS/XCSOar guru) I managed to download the tracks and immediately dispatched them to Phil for ratification.

My track in purple, Tim's track in red

Later that evening I received a brief Skype message "All good. Check UKNXCL". And there it was. Clear as day. 197.5 points.  And who was it that said I don't fly anywhere? Well, stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

197.5 points (158.13km x 1.25 multiplier)

Thanks again to Babs for the retrieve, to Phil the scorer for working on the tracks and to the Dudley Crew for their amazing hospitality.

And of course, the flight would not have been possible without my trusty steed, my Wills Wing T2C 144, and the support of Cloud 9 Hang Gliding and Paragliding 

Lets hope things keep improving...