This morning the weather at the field was overcast. Wind was about 20 km/h  – bit more then what I have expected. Talitha and Jim got ready. Jim took off first – it was just quick circuit and immediately down for landing. Jim again was pulling a little too much break on take off but other than that very good flight and excellent landing. Tal also had a very good flight – everything was perfect there’s nothing I would fix. Then wind started to get stronger and gust up so I pulled out my wind measuring pitot tube and since we were seeing gusts up to 25 kilometres per hour and more we had to pack up.

The forecast for tonight is 50-50 – both Jim and Tal decided to go home and they will come back for two more days of training in the future.

Both students accomplished five solo flights which is below average but it is not their fault. We had two very bad days where we could not even ground handle and even those days when conditions were okay our windows of opportunity were always less than normal. So over all both Jim and Talita did really well.

Congratulations to you  both on your ability to fly PPG solo.

Given the cold in the mornings we have decided to meet little bit later. At 7:30 AM wind was already up to 20 km/h per hour coming directly from east. East winds are absolutely terrible in this area, they are always turbulent and quite dangerous. Normally I do not test fly first thing in the morning but today it needed to be done. I have set up paramotor for reverse launch and as soon as I inflated the paraglider I knew that it’s going to be bad. The glider was twitching above my head and it was tricky to control it. I have taken off and quickly determined that there is a great amount turbulence in the air. So much so, that I have decided to pull big ears to safely come down through the doggy height below 200 feet. The winds were very unpredictable in fact I landed cross wind and ended up on my knees. I don’t even remember last time I did something like that…

It was clear that students will not be flying this morning we’ve done little bit of the ground handling with the promoters on and since both students were interested in my tandem unit I took them to Peaks to take a look at it. We got it out of the storage, dusted it off then started it so they could check it out.

Off to the field now. Forecast is good.

Okay this is ridiculous – snow on April 16! I can’t believe it!

Forecast was good for the morning with respect to the wind wind but temperature was -4. Yuck!

We have arrived at the field, puddles were frozen, it was bit on it windy side – just freezing cold. Tal and Jim set up their equipment up and Talitha was going to go first. Very nice inflation, beautiful take off but around  20 feet her engine started to sputter and she had to make forced landing. She handled the situation really really well. Since we knew that we only had limited time this morning, I made sure that Tal is okay and then went to Jim. He also had very nice takeoff + nice and smooth climb out and good flight.

After five minutes though Jim started to signal with his legs that he wants to land. I told him to go around for one quick circle as I was helping Tal to get the glider out of the bean field but he simply proceeded to his landing. I was afraid that he also had engine problem but as it turned out his hands were frozen solid. I guess that is what happens when you fly at -4 Celsius. After Jim landed, Tal took Jim’s gear and was going to do another flight but after couple tries she lost her confidence, Jim was still frozen so we have decided to pack it up. The wind started to gusts up to much anyway…

Forecast for the evening is good – hopefully we will have a good session.

Yesterday: + 25 Celsius. Shorts, T-shirt and sandals. Today: – 1 Celsius and snow on the grounds – what the heck, I have never been interupted by snow in the middle of April!?

Forecast for today is bad. No flying today, too windy. GRRRRRRRR

We will be getting together for 3 pom at Peaks do do some theory and watch intructional videos.

Forecast Wednesday and Thursday looks good…

Since we could not fly I had introduced the students to a fun exercise which I call kite wars.  The idea is that you handle the paraglider in such a way that you  take away the wind from your opponents glider or use your paraglider to crash the other person’s wing. This is a lot of fun and it really fine tunes ground handling skills.

We have also practised the silly PPG runs…

Unfortunately as you see on the picture below the weather forecast is not good for tonight and tomorrow either – bummer. Okay we got to look forward to Wednesday, Thursday and Friday so far it looks good.