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.

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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.

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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.

Alicante at night

Tandem flying, always a party. On the foto in the air together with Olga. A blast.
Thanks sending me the fotos Diana and Olga. Hope to see you again.

Competicion near Valencia

Chris Wileman on foto

While most pilots left for Orenga, site near Valencia-Castellon, we had the sky for ourselves in Palomaret.

Winds were off to the east, and with a not so high cloudbase it was not the perfect day. But still managing toplandings etc... always a value in your flight. During our flying we had radio contact with our friends who were flying at Cabo de Santa Pola.

When eastern winds come in, some rotor is expected from Ventos - Maigmo. Also big landing field I try to avoid, I prefer the little one which is less rotory.

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CPR, in english, couldn't find it subtitled

Sorry for the french, it is in english.

Reconco Onil, where playmobil originated from

For local pilots, just some info. Above you can see that my 'guiris', sometimes described as low airtimers, greens, punters, on local forums, have done pretty well no ?
1900 m ASL at Reconco, 3 hours of flying, yes today as you can read as well 4th of june 2010.

Not one local pilot was present, not one local pilot knew where the best flying was today. Not one read the charts.
I have to defend my guests. Lately, there was asked not to come down with my guests, as take off was a bit daunting. Another message saying no worries your clients don't get above take off any way, hahaha.
Well proves wrong. Yesterday at the take off of Fortuna, I haven't seen better take offs in ages. I know lots of locals wouldn't even think going up there, because their skills lack.
Today my pilots' flying was awesome. They flew in strong thermals, had to deal with suspicious cloud formations, later keeping cool in the turbulent air of "breeze meets meteo", ending the day with easing it off soaring for another half hour before a well deserved 'beer o'clock'.

You want me to give you a hand ? Look at the foto below. You can clearly see the convergence line. The southeastern winds blocking the meteo coming from west. XC along the ridges, or triangle flight like our german pilot with DHV1 wing achieved.
Don't know what is happening lately, but foreign pilots rule the sky. It is them that fly different sites, it is them that have personal bests.
Today I just had to defend you guys. Lets keep on going, lets keep on flying different sites, lets keep on exploring the sky. That's why I am here. I could be lazy and take you to Palomaret and Cabo every day - every day, but Alicante offers sooooo much more. Proven, again.

Iceland

This is sent in by my Iceland friend Einar, best pub ever for Iceland. Lovely. And believe it or not, there ARE paragliding pilots in Iceland. I know 'cause I've met several, great stuff.

Inspired by Iceland Video from Inspired By Iceland on Vimeo.

10 minutes for my blog

Fredrik, Alf, Marcus, me , Max, Ian and Alf.

Pilots ask me how much time I spend on my blog. Average 10 minutes I guess. I get home after flying, plug camera in, automatically foto's are uploaded on my pc. I click on 5 or so foto's to upload on my blog.

After shower or snack, I type in some words, reflecting the day. 10 minutes, which give me time to let you know how we did today, and giving me time to end the day paragliding and chill, play with Paco, have my evening.

Morning flying at Fortuna. Superb flying till 3 pm. Take off was not that wild, so all in the air, enjoying the june thermals. At 3 pm all went down, for our lunch at Jesus' place near Sierra de Pila. Most recommended.

Fortuna is a superb place where nobody goes out flying. It has two take offs, upper and lower. The flying is done in a huge bowl. The least of wind triggers of the hot valley air, and let you raise over the ridges overlooking the Sierras de Carche and Pila. A 4x4 is needed to get to the take off, and a 10 minute walk cleans out the cobwebs in your head to get you all boosted up to fly in this magnificient scenery.

After our lunch, the clouds were looking too suspicious and were crawling nearer and nearer. Headed back home with a truckload of happy pilots. It took me 11 minutes this time.

Happiee !!!

Relaxing

Indeed it was Cabo today. Relaxing after the thermalling days we had before. We all enjoyed it, knowing tomorrow it is gonna be a bit more sportive inland again.
It is a non stop flying month, and should last till september, october, november, ... .

The 'after-fly' with Max, Tal and Alf. Marcus and Fredrik not on the picture.

pim pam poem

It was a bit pim-pam-poem said Kike this afternoon. Kike is a Sigma7 pilot and flies almost daily at our sites.

Same was said after the flying by Fredrik, Alf, Tal and Stevie. Most of them flew at their limits, but pushed themselves to stay in the air. I knew it was gonna die off, it was not gonna get any stronger. So it was well achieved, a two hour flight in sporty conditions.

Later off course it was all boaty and smooth, nice to finish of the day. A hot day, a 30 degree day. I wouldn't know what to do without a swimming pool.
From now till september you have to have access to a swimming pool, it is so refreshing when you're back from flying or having your breakfast swim. Almost a must.

All who comes down to join the flying i nAlicane will have a swimming pool included.

You have to enjoy the flying down here at the most. Including chill, ice cold drinks, beach and swim, you bet.

flying creatures