Pepe helping me out launching tandem. 1400 m ASL today, smooth thermals. Later in the afternoon, cloudy, but still floaty.

Pepe, Rafa and Ismael got to Agost village and back, pretty good.

November, nothing too strong, just central hours of the day, good for 3 to 4 hours of paragliding.

Inversion didn't get us too high, nvertheless we had a good day thermalling up a couple of hundred meters above take off. Ron flew his 2 a 3 daily hours again.

Alberto's site, Carrasqueta near Jijona. Needed a change, another view, another kind of flying.

Carrasqueta is quite different. Take off is at 1100 m ASL, and only 12 km crowflight from the sea, so pretty close to cloudbase on a weather forecast like todays.

When there is a high pressure, an anticyclone, cloudbase is not at its highest. In our region it is easily to be spotted by a thick inversion, and a very peaceful sea.

Then you choose to fly from a lower take off and use the lift which can only bring you a couple of hundred meters above take off, and feel like a pinball. Or you choose for higher hills like Sierra del Carche, Monte Cabrer or Carrasqueta for instance.

And that flying is different. Once in the air, you know you are hitting the ceiling. It is a bit of a game, trying to find that trigger point right above the wooden house on your right, or just outside where the roads get together and vehicles trigger off the thermals.

Hoping and fighting not having to land on the smaaaalll landing field ..... but topland.

Cold air, better wear gloves. Views sharp, as northern winds were prevailing up high. Towards the coast more 'bruma', more foggy air. Super to thermal up 3 m/s in november. You had to catch them though. Because first flight, must have been my fastest top to bottom for a long time. I was just fiddling about with my vario and camera, and before I realised I had to scratch on the lower ridges to get back up .... didn't. I was looking up and saw everybody even from a distance with a big smile on their face looking down .... .

Revenge, second flight, stayed up untill my hands frooze off, because then I forgot my gloves. Brilliant day.

It was pretty busy, as lots of pilots from Valencia and Alicante had to do their final tests to get their pilot license. Also Felix Rodriguez, no not the world champion acro, but his and Raul's dad was here. Everybody knows Raul and Felix, because they are super guys, down to earth, etc... . Well you haven't met their dad yet, he's a star.

Kike and Cristina, Dominique and Eva's little stars, Lea and Theo cuddling.

As promised for the girlfriends, the boyfriends back home, a foto of all the pilots flying today near Peña Rubia. They all leave tomorrow, I hope and I am sure they had a good week.

Excellent flying this week, 4 different sites, which can count. Palomaret, Caudete, Carrascoy and today Peña Rubia.

I hope you all will be back, it was nice to have you around. Stay sexy !

Oh, jus Ron isn't on the fotos. While taking them he had his 45 min flight at Peña Rubia, the only one, except for local Ismael who made something out of the day. The weather forecast looked great, on the spot, blue sky, norhtwesterly, but thermals never were strong enough to get cloudbase at reasonable height. But we flew it anyway !

http://picasaweb.google.com/jasna.parapente/Palomaret#

Jasna, Niviuk Artik tool these foto's last weekend, nice ones. Thanks Jasna sharing this.

Today we took it easy. Not driving out, relaxing, beach weather, more than 20 degrees celsius still. Lots of things to do, siesta, relax, chill, feet up.

Flying over Carrascoy. No local pilots to be seen, only Pani who I called to do my tandemflight. Strange, lately we have been flying a lot on our own. Few local pilots. A pity because it is always nice to share our flights with my buddies from Murcia, Alicante.

Windy in Alicante, northwest, that's why we left for Murcia, And spot on. When we arrived we just had to wait till the sun burned through the clouds just above take off. The valley meanwhile warming up, as that was in sun since early morning. Promising.

Just had to wait till those first breezes came on the hill. Bingo at 1 pm there it was.

Smooth air, pilots hesitating to take off. But they didn't know the magic of this mountain yet.

Just fly towards landing field, try the house thermals above the farm, stay in 0.5 m/s lift, the cycle will get stronger. So did Johan and Anders (Swedish), and both topped at 500 m above take off. Then Ron, with his old beaten up UP Makalu. Again, top of the stack ! Imagine Ron you have a shiny new glider, last generation... .

Then at last our polish friends arrived after an unfortunate breakdown with their van.

Winds picked up, easier to get above take off now. Speedbars ready for the end of the day ? Yes sir. Because last hours sometimes those winds pick up at Carrascoy and form a 'wave'.

Excellent, all down with a lovely sunset on their side.

Just got home, 7.30 pm, still 18 degrees outside in El Altet where I live. And this with a cold front passing through, cold ? front ?

Toni, thanks being here again, see you in 10 days for another week of flying in Alicante, Mr Mr Boomerang.

That is the only foto I shot today.

As good as the day was yesterday, as lousy it was today. This morning strong western winds on our hills, as the front was coming in. But all those winds died off in the whole province. Streamers hanging slack, lazy windsocks, cirrus clouds screening the sun, time to chill.

Ron, with his old beaten up UP Makalu, at cloudbase !

Caudete, impressive to fly on the first time.

Take off near the windmill farm.

Above the windmills at Caudete.

Take off. Thanks Chris for the foto.

Fog this morning, mist, dew. We had to move inland to get away from this very low cloudbase so.

We drove all the way inland to Caudete, some 80 km, and I was hoping I had it right. Backed up by info from Ismael who lives in Caudete, I was pretty sure actually that this was gonna be THE site of the day.

When we arrived winds were too off to the south. Not so good at take off, and even less good to find the right thermals with this cross wind.

But it got better. Fluffy clouds started to form over the inversion. Thermals started kicking in.

I asked my pilots to head out and look for thermals in the valley, not to fly too close to the ride. And it worked. After flying through some 'cobblestones'-air, the thermal was present in the valley. Soon all rigged, and in the air.

More and more the winds were on the hill. We had to convince Ron to get down at 6 pm, beer o'clock mate !

///////////////////////////////////////////////////

http://www.topparagliding.pl/ Polish pilots, with chief instructor Woytek 'Troll' visiting Doyouwanna Alicante, encantado.

It's been a while seeing so many pilots on take off. Polish, swedish, english, irish, heard some german and lots of local pilots today, nice one.

On the foto's, the polish pilots from http://www.topparagliding.pl/ who are here for a week. And they choose a good week, it looks like flying every day as far as we can see.

Conditions were super. At 12 am, already they were carving the sky. And this until 5 pm. Hours of thermals, and cloudsuck alltogether. Cloudbase not the highest, but for some awesome, flying upwind in the valley and reaching Agost.

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

I had to do a couple of tandems.
One was with Claire who loved it, the other one was with Wendy. The flight with Wendy was a tandem flight sponsored for raising money for charity. Charity as in giving money to help out war veterans, this Remembrance Day.

As you know the 11th of november is Remembrance Day, a day when the world commemorates the soldiers and civilians that died during World War I. It is also called Poppy Day.

We flew tandem, and when circling above take off, Wendy let go a thousand of 'poppy's'. A poppy is a red flower, which bloomed on Flanders worst battle fields.

A white poppy is used to express your desire to work more on peaceful alternatives than war. And this would have been my choice, a white poppy.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

These are the days I like. Most pilots went out and return 10 k, Peña Rubia - Biar and back.
Not a huge achievement, but if you see pilots making this out and return, pilots who rarely make it above take off sometimes, it feels great.

It started off with cycles, good cycles - bad cycles. So most of the pilots bummed out together with others, only a couple managed to float around untill new cycle kicked in. Great practice.
Then later on, when the hole paragliding scene of Biscoy arrived, it all got more laminar.
Tandems, low airtimers, all splendid making the transition from Peña Rubia towards the hill near Biar, and back.
Warm valley, hot sun, cold upper air, northwesterly, cocktail for a good day.
I feel good, life is a trampoline !

Brilliant day. Gunther all the way to Biar and back. Brigitte, last flight the best. Tom from Norway, Toni, Peter with his personalised HOOK. All flying over the 'mama' of Peña Rubia.

My favourite site.

Enlarge this bottom foto and lean left.

Ok, sit straight again.

Flying near Murcia. Where northwestern winds usually kick in less strong than In Peña Rubia.

It is a site very well taken care of by our Murcia friends, club Espuña.

The take off is carpeted, and signs at take off and landing are regularly updated. On the foto you can see Brigitte from Germany using valley thermals to float around.

While the whole world lived in a kind of euforia after the US elections. One guy wasn't very pleased. Good old Michael Jackson : "Damn I just started to look very white."

Hello guys, summer day, nice and warm, but too windy today. Almudaina was on my list, but too gusty to be good. Thanks Ismael, Juan Pedro for all the info.
Meanwhile Toni from Ireland is back, yes he's like a boomerang, always comes back.

Lots of clouds, couldn't find a window to fly nowhere. Cumulus congestus over Alicante, we could see them clearly, coming back from Murcia. Looked all very angry.

Olivier Legrand, Belgian XC pilot, who flew 237 km XC at Piedrahita !! Was here, and showed his skills again. Too bad he's back in Belgium with his buddy Jean Paul. Left this morning. Love to fly together with those skilled, experienced pilots.
Unfortunately not here today, which was a day of his kind, a true XC day for skygods.
We were early on the hill, as you should be when XC is calling. Right on time to hear the vario screaming, and looking down on the mountain ranges. 1800 m ASL, not every day so.
It lasted till 2 pm, then breeze kicked in and cloudbase lowered a lot, which is normal and natural. Most pilots arrived too late, and could only stare up and see the skygods way up.


Tom from Norway, Mike English, Birgit German, Ken English, and Gunther German

Written by Ken wilkinson, member of the Avon paragliding club England :

Great flying today - small thermals at the start, but strong up to 3 m/s, and lots of sink about as well. Spent 20minutes at 200m above landingfield, before contactin a screamer up to 1700 m !!

Acroos to the peak, and cloudbase at 1800 m, and off for a short XC, about 20 km.

Great flying ! The best ! Thanks Nick

We are hit, we feel hurt. We are hit, because we are nominated by some, as having the WORST place to go fly (on a well known international forum). Main reason , the take off being covered by dogshit.
Nominating Cabo de Santa Pola as the WORST place in the world to fly, is a hit in our face, is a hit in the face of our local paragliding community. Most of all because the Alicante paragliding pilots are one of the most welcoming paragliding communities I have ever met in my entire flying carreer. And we have done everything, everything in our power to save the site, and let visiting pilots have the soaring time of their life.
We have saved Cabo de Santa Pola from being closed.
As one of the best known mediterranean soaring sites it was defended by us locals, and foreign pilots. For five years we were acting in our most diplomatic way, having talks, having discussions, but in the end having to sue the neighbouring urbanisation to achieve our goal which was : SAVING CABO DE SANTA POLA.
We were obstructed by the neighbours from the urbanisation. Discussions, threats and insults, and them letting their dogs out, shitting on our take off. Time after time, we were cleaning up the mess, and decided to keep calm, not to start discussions with the neighbours. THEY were behaving badly, disgusting by trying to get us angry. But no, we were behaving educated, and I'll tell you what, it wasn't always easy. We let our lawyers do the job. And it took us five years, to get the final result. CABO is saved, the access is public, we can fly here forever.

All visiting pilots are welcome on our sites, as long as they stick to the rules. They are welcomed, but not those who only have the guts to backstab us through some forums. I don't think these are the pilots we want here. We want real pilots who share the passion of flying, share experiences and skills, who will fly with us as friends. And who will respect the local paragliding community, because I repeat a more welcoming paragliding scene you will not find anywhere else.

////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Down below, some foto's of Frans belgian pilot. Thanks Frans.

Driving up to Sierra del Carche.
Village St Eulalia near Peña Rubia, ready for lunch during central hours when thermals are too strong.

Flying above our crests inland with spectacular views of nature reserves in the back.

Flatland flying. No obstacles.

We flew at Toix today. Almost two hours and all the way to Bernia for Olivier and Ken.

Others all flew to Altea Hills.

Surprisingly, as the weather looked bad early morning. But we were right on time, to enjoy the first southwesterlies at Toix.

Easy laminar winds, take off piece of cake. It was actually excellent for first timers on this hill.

Foto from Olivier under his Up Trango taken by belgian pilot Jean Paul Bihin. Other pilots Ken, Mike, Birgit and Gunther as well, in the air near Calpe.