Today we enjoyed a few hours Ager flying. Cloudbase wasn't as high as the locals had predicted yesterday but Marcel reached it at 1830m.

Due to the pressure rising and inversion we saw our XC aspirations blocked.

But hey flying, sunshine, good food and good company at beer o'clock...what more does a man need?

As many times in the Pyrenees you have to be ahead of the weather, allways tricky, if you're down to late you might be caught up in the air when the predicted instabilities start playing their football game.
Chatting to the local pilots had made it clear that they had a very looooooooong winter, so now they fly early mornings to get their airtime topped up. We follow their procedure and get up early, head for take off and stay up until the roughness wakes us up.
But none of this witholds us of having a great time amongst pilots- friends on our roadtrip.
Tomorrow were invited by the local pilots to join them on midday when the forecast promises us a 3000m (yes meter) cloudbase.

Vamos Villa, que Villa, que MARAVILLA!!!!!

If the vuvuzelas haven't told you the news by now then surely you've heard all the Spanish cheer! Bye Ronaldo, see you next season...

¡Olé!¡Olé!

Vamos Villa, que Villa,¡ que Maravilla!

Yesterday we set off for our annual roadtrip again, due to some delay we did not make it to Berga before late afternoon. No flying and the fore cast for the next 2 days look like ... british...rain rain n rain.

But hey what you know, by 10h30 everybody was already up in the air and flying til 14hoo, then the wind picked up, so time for lunch and a little siesta.

Andy flew to visit the Monastery hoping to take some of the divine singing along with him on his flight.

And at 16hoo we go and watch see England defeat Germany- well it was what we prayed for, I guess the nuns did not appreciate Andy's visit, it was a German Blitzkrieg- 4-1 time for some more beer. At least we have Messi n 'god' tonight.

Santa Pola

Santa Pola early morning till strong,

Santa Pola late afternoon till late.

Soaring your socks off on our precious cliffs near Santa Pola.

Getting ready to go tomorrow morning, off to the Pyrenees, Berga, Organya and Ager. Sites popular in the 90's, and again the hype to go for lots of clubs and schools.

Talk to you later, I probably won't be able to blog for you guys, hope you get great flying in.

What a foto eh, found it on meteocaudete.

Santa Pola

Early morning flying at the coast. Then conditions got too windy. Excellent to use other toys like the kayak. A full sportive day, feels good.

And we had some talks this morning with the pilots about the importance of a controlled take off, again. We briefed about the steps to be taken, when on a new site, when winds are strong, when conditions are not like at home. With succes, Dann and Peter, swedish pilots took off like pro's !

A boat ...

Daddy what's that in the distance ?
Let me have a look, it's a boat.
How do you spell that dad ?
b - o - a - t

minutes later ....
Daddy what's that there on the horizon ?
Let me have a look, it's a boat.
How do you spell that dad ?
b - o - a - t

minutes ....
Daddy what's that there far away, there ?
Euh, let me have a look.
It's a hoovercraft.
How do you spell that dad ?
Euh, let me have a .... .... it's a boat.

Thermals and wind today were strong enough to make figures of eight upwind to get to cloudbase. A lovely day of flying again.


shut-up, siesta in the village


Rolf from Switserland. Robins' Montenegro's lookalike.

Santa Pola paragliding

News about Cabo de Santa Pola. After our meeting with councellors of Santa Pola and the responsible guys from the neighbouring urbanisation we decided to publish this. It is an agreement signed by the local clubs and the federacion.

It is actually all common sense, but sometimes needed to establish an unanymous behaviour.
Cabo de Santa Pola, how to fly and approach it. If you like the foto, well that's Santa Pola at its best, lets all do the right thing, whatever you think the right thing is.

CLICK !

Thermals in Spain

June is a month when thermals can kick off too aggressive sometimes during midday hours. So we leave later in the afternoon to fly from 4 pm till late. For us till 7 pm, others will still flying.

At 4 pm, some pilots were already flying and we could tell it was not baby smooth by the pitching of their wings. But knowing this was all gonna be smoother by the minute we launched. No stress at all, conditions were a bit sporty, but lovely for those who enjoy a bit of rough edges.

There were two layers of air. The lower one was bit rocky, then you hit windsheer and then it got all smooth and effortless to get to cloudbase.

Lots of pilots do love Palomaret, and you can see again and again why. Because every day it is a different story. Everyday Palomaret offers you something new.

For those interested in the never ending story of Cabo de Santa Pola, soon I'll publish some rules. We had a meeting with the townhall of Santa Pola and with the responsable dudes of the neighbouring urbanisation. To preserve our site, to keep it hassle free, we had to agree on some rules, forwarded by us. Definetely not parking inside the urbanisation any more, and only come down and fly with license (international license permitting to fly abroad), and being insured. If I get around how to publish a pdf file here, I'll do, I just don't know how yet .... .

One things' for sure, you'll be flying Cabo with your grandsons, and grandsons, and grandsons ... forever.

,

Thermals

Fortuna, yes it is. Eastern winds, and a lovely sky. Lads had a jolly good thermalling day.

Gecko in our back garden.

Bullfights and hogueras

Pilots going home, pilots moving in. So hardly possible to go flying today. Late in the afternoon, out southern hills must have worked, but I wasn't there. Winds were strong at first, and a very aggressive breeze kicked in at 1 pm. I was at the beach that time, and the winds hit the parasols, which were blowing around with their pointy steels heading towards people. Scary sight, people ducking for missiles.

This time of the year, in Alicante we do have our big big fiestas. They are called Hogueras. And with the fiestas, there are always bullfights involved.

I am not gonna go near a bullfight, but I had a glimpse of some costumes they use on the corrida. And I must say, if they forbid the fiestas we are gonna loose something, something very typical for the spanish culture. The horses, the riders, the brass band opening the corrida. And the costumes.

Fiestas nearby

Ronny Vaes from Belgium, Niviuk HOOK

Unstable, towering cumulus today. Flyable late last hour. During the day, the weather was too agressive to fly in. Western winds on top of that.

After several calls we decided to enjoy the summer and use beaches to cool down.

There are also fiestas going on at all places, for those who like greasy calamares and ice-chilled beer. Or do you prefer paella, most important dish in the region.

.

Clouds

Agost from a distance. Below a Gin Sprint just flying above.

Clouds. No bad meaning clouds, good meaning, nice, friendly ones. For some it was the first experience to fly them. A very good step towards flying in more tricky air. All controlled. In the back thunderstorms were nearing, but the breeze withheld their speed. The more greyer clouds were proof of moist more than anything else moving in. If they would have been development, active air, then we wouldn't have flewn it.
And if we would have been more inland in Spain or lets say France, or say the Alps, then we wouldn't even have thought to fly. But this was all safe, breeze meeting instability, you can't find this in no meteo book about flying. It's just local knowledge about a local site.

what you see is what you get

Indeed. Blue sky, thermals, flying your socks off, tandem flight for your lover, anything you wish. Playtime in Alicante. One of the best summer destinations to get your wings out. As it was today, at 4 pm all relaxed after some beach, arriving on the hill.

Huh, it looks good already, forget the siesta, lets fly. Yeah, why not. Off we go.

It was sportive. Not rough. Active. Winds were gusty as soon as you got high. But lovely till the end. Beer o'clock at 8 pm, well deserved.

mid june in Alicante

Mid june in Alicante is usually hot. And for us paragliders a month when we fly in the morning and later in the afternoon. But non of that for the moment. It has been raining again this morning and this afternoon winds didn't die off.

There is that bag of cold air still above us. Look at the green circle, - 20 degrees celsius, right above northeastern of spain where we live.

And the height of the 500 hPa line is at 568, which is the geopotencial height per decimeter. Geopotencial height is the geometric height measured, involving the latitude's gravity.
That's why.

That geopotencial height of the 500 hPa line, is highering up by tomorrow, so pressure rising, hurray ! Sunny, beach and fly, hurray !

Tandem paragliding

northern weather

Grey and rainy, being honest about the weather this is. Unfortunate for my guests, but tomorrow it looks better, sunshine high temperatures and southern winds. Uf.

Watched some worldcup soccer, and don't know if I got so used to the quick fast football games I see on spanish TV, but all these worldcup games looked as if in slow motion .... . Boring, luckily the humming harmony of the vuvuzelas kept me awake.... I can t wait to take my wing for a dance.

Summer in the city

Cloudy when eastern winds were good enough to fly. Too cloudy when eastern winds were perfect to fly. Soon white horses and some drops fell out of the sky.

Some flew, early birds at the cliffs.

But inland it was a no-no. Too rough to be good, too instable too be good.

I think Greece has the better weather now, hot out there, while temperatures down here are more bearable.

Skywalk Alicante

Our three paraglider dutch paraglider pilots had their first flights in today on a 'normal' free flight glider. At Cabo conditions were not excellent, but good enough to test their skills.

Hopefully this was convincing enough to come back and practice more free flying on top of their paramotor flights back home in holland.

XC day

Instability inland, made you wonder of you wanted to fly all this. A couple of pilots had their XC flight though. It looked all very unstable with towering cumulus in the back.

I am sure the pilots near Reconco did well as well, as Juan Pedra was leading them.
I am very interested to see the flight of our Murcian pilots, if they flew Sierra del Carche that is.

On our more technical site Calpe Olivier, was having his late eve flight.

Some foto's of the sky yesterday, saturday inland.

A photo of the weather near the coast in this morning

madre mia

Tutu, yesterday night, a little bit of black in us would do good.

---------------

No flying today. We could have, yes. But too late for guests who live an hour away.
And Graham who arrived, is chilling. He is here for more than a week, and no stress.

Strong winds during the day, so some of us were kite-surfing. Oh yes.

Just read a message on our local forum that cloudbase is supposedly gonna be 2000 m high this saturday. Well not high maybe in the Alps this is, but reasonable enough to go XC down here.

Lets look at the prevision,
air temp easily 26 degrees
relative humidity this time of the year is around 50 procent,
and especially close to the med, like our famous site Palomaret could be even more,
Then we would have dewpoint at minimum 10 degrees.
With these figures we get to a cloudbase at 2000 meters indeed.
But ! We need to have southern winds for that to fly it.
So my option would be, go inland and fly at a western site like Sierra del Carche. Or go chase the conversion at Reconco, with some luck you'll find indeed a cloudbase at 2000 m like last week.
Anyway, lets hope I can chase the local pilots out of their comfort zone, or nothing is gonna happen again this saturday.

I think lots of meteo knowledge is based nowadays looking at pre-chewed programmes like XCSkies etc... . Very allright. But we are not gliders, we cannot be airtowed to 1500 m and do our thing. We are footlaunching aircrafts,m and we should not forget the basics.
Love you all

Hot hot hot

A couple of maps. Up above the temperature tomorrow afternoon 12 am. Between 25 and 30 celsius so.
Below the wind, southwesterlies probably too strong.
Lower, the rainchart. We do love in the southeast Alicante region (near figure 27). No rain there, but over to the west and norht, and in Andalucia, rain.
So we'll have a hot and dry day again tomorrow. Flying will be doubtful. Not only the direction of the wind is not our favourite, but mainly the strength of the wind.
And for those who like to see more charts, lower the isobarmaps thursday, friday, saturday.

Today the flying was in between coffee's, sometimes too strong, sometimes nice. You had to be greedy and be on the hill all day.

snotty air

A bit of snotty air with that inversion today. Thermals were there, nice ones, but died off and got snotty as soon as you hit cloudbase.

Fun though, and good there were only few pilotes about. The whole air for ourselves.

It was so nice as if on vacation

Easy flying at the sea. Chilling on last day of Marcus, our dear german-swiss friend who visited the Alicante heat, the Alicante nightlife, the Alicante flying, the Alicante casino's, he just can't get enough. Cheers Marcus, please say hello to Susanne, no better, give her a hug and kiss from all of us.

Ian, regular flying guest in Alicante. Lives up the road in Guardamar. Since having an Ozone Buzz, another pilot enjoying the flying again.

Giles Morris from the Isle of Wight, happily married, 4 kids, pleasure.

Max Schuler, Germany, 25 years old, 1.76 and 71 kgs, single, yes my ladies.

It was a nice.

Time to get the GIN Bobcat out

I saw Manolo flying his speedwing. For normal lowspeed gliders it was impossible. Overall thunderstorms inland. At the coast sunny, but the storms too nearby and causing a strong sea and too much wind.