first day: sprinkles. no flying. went touristing instead. Was good to see Dan, Carlos, Sallie and Hugh though! Lots of history there. Roman walls, baths, Thracian tombs, and we went wine tasting and to a mineral spa.
second day: flying! Three flights. 2 hours, 2 hours and 30(?) minutes.
first flight: got above 5000 ft and froze, froze, froze. Last year it was hot, this year fall had set in uncharacteristically early. Not wearing enough clothes. Lots of popping in and out of clouds. Tried to keep ground reference. Repeatedly saw my glory. Awesome. Never seen that before! Nice and crisp, too. Whited out repeatedly. Once popped out the top of the cloud, after being whited out for what seemed like ages. Was able to report cloudbase as well as cloudtop.
Gotta fly with GPS, if nothing else than at least for the compass! We tried going XC, but abandoned that plan when Hugh had a knot in his lines. Safer for him to land and sort that out. Bobbled around and headed back to launch, where Niki talked me into a toplanding while giving me a philosophical lecture on the merits and frame of mind conducive to toplandings. Lift everywhere made toplanding a matter of patience. Put more clothes on and relaunched. Lift everywhere. Flew for an hour and then was looking for some sink. Had had too much to drink. Couldn't find any sink over the home site. Even tried my hand at spirals (not so scary). Finally gave up and headed to Karlovo, the neighboring town, hoping for some sink there. No go.... Flew back to Sopot and finally found a spot of sink. Cored it. LZ was lifting like crazy, but I managed to not make a total fool of myself landing in it. Probably would have been better to land in the alternate LZ, but the bathrooms would have been further away.
Took the lift back up top. It was getting towards late afternoon when I reached the top (probably should have toplanded). Hugh and I were sitting up top, nervously watching the overdeveloping cumulonimbi, when Niki radioed up, saying we should probably launch, I interpreted that to mean "get the heck out of there", launched, headed for the LZ and pulled big ears - to the surprise of Niki, who had meant nothing of the sort. Lots of lift and he encouraged me to explore the wave that was setting up. Woohoooooo!!!! He later explained to me that systems develop very slowly in the mountains there. Sure enough the clouds didn't let lose until hours later and the gust front was almost negligible.
Hugh had seen Dan in the LZ, but it was a while before we met up with Sallie, Dan, Carlos who had started the beginner course. We were really worried when we didn't see them for hours. Turns out they got two sessions of training, one in the morning and one in the later afternoon/early evening. When we finally saw them, they had huge smiles on their faces and all had flown from the top of the t'hill! They were definitely stoked and couldn't wait for a repeat. Dan was antsy to hit the big mountain.
Unfortunately, the next day was no good for that. Hugh, Mike (Danish pilot), Niki and I bailed to Greece.
When we came back, the other three had managed to have a good time after all and got more training, touristing and some high wind kiting in. They were ready to hit the home site. I was happy to get to witness their first high flights! But when Dan managed to boat around in what seemed to be abundant lift and Mike thermalled out, I decided to watch Carlos's first flight from the air. I missed a good bit of it though, because I went straight to cloudbase and then whited out. Being up high, I figured I'd follow Mike who had decided to go East for some XC. Crossing the first canyon was no problem with that altitude. Bobbled along pretty high, then started losing it. We probably picked the wrong direction, considering it was blowing Eastish... heh... Hugh was somewhere behind me and eventually we all sank out. Made for Mike's field east of Karlovo for an easy retrieve. While hanging out, working a little zero sink, waiting for Hugh to land, I hit a thermal and thought I'd be able to take that back to Sopot. No such luck. Made it to the west side of Karlovo. I probably should have tried for Sopot anyway, considering that landing in Mike's field was upwind and I did make that. Oh well... chalk it up to experience.
Back up top, riding with Sallie, passed the bikers festival in the LZ, we find a lot of PG pilots and two tandems setting up to take a bride and groom up for a flight. Bride in gown. (Check Sallie's pix!) Watched Dan and Carlos's second launches. Man.... those two had some great flights. Hugh and I launched and once up decided to try for a West XC. Ui... nothing but sink there. Bail back to launch for more height. Boat around above launch and once I was high for a while, I try again. Heck, it's the last day. Gotta try something! The sky is starting to close up, clouds are moving in, but there is still lift. And this time there is lift going West as well! I carefully check it out and when I get high over the next finger, I decide to go for it. Clouds are really starting to move in. At first cloudbase is at about 6900 feet. I get to 6800 and then go on glide. The clouds look thick and with the sky closing up, ground reference might be non-attainable and I don't have a GPS. Lift is good, so next time I only climb up to 6500 before going on glide. I catch a slow thermal over the ammunitions/rockets firing range. Good thing it's the weekend and nobody is firing, 'cause I'm hanging out there forever. Cloudbase is dropping, so I have to start going on glide at 5800, which means I have to start leaving the mountains. I hit a lift line over the valley, but now I'm also getting some headwind. Looking at some smoke, I see that the wind is shifting to NW. Durn it. I actually get to the end of the valley (google maps:rozino, bulgaria) where it rises up. I had hoped that I could make it over the low lip, but now there was a strong headwind from the west over the last town and it just drilled me. I made it to the west side of the last town and pick out a nice grassy field on the other side of the main road. The headwind is strong and I am descending over the main road, just hovering down. Ummm.... at this rate I am landing right on the middle stripe. Well, no worries, closer to the ground the wind will diminish and I'll land on the other side in that nice grassy field. At 30 feet, I'm still over the white stripe. Cars are honking at me. Hmm... better play it safe. I made a slight turn in the direction of the freshly ploughed field downwind and zoom off the road. Pointed the wing back into the wind and slowly travelled backwards for my stand up landing. Kited the wing and brought it down with the C's.
Shortly thereafter I was joined by Hugh, who had been complaining the whole afternoon about being tired of seeing the underside of my wing. Payback for skying out above me the whole week.
We were retrieved by Niki, Carlos and Dan. 20km. Not bad.
Great ending to a nice flying trip. We all had big grins on our faces and Niki took us to that little secret restaurant (see earlier write up) in Karlovo. 5 days flying on a 6 day flying trip? Pretty darn good, I'd say.