Brilliant day on East Lomond

The forecast for the F3F competition on Saturday was for light winds and sunny and this was indeed the case. Peter wisely called for a late start and most people gathered at the Pillars of Hercules for coffee and cakes before heading up to the car park about 11:30. I arrived early and went straight up the the car park to check out the weather and fly my Alula from the wee slope to the south of the car park. I decided to skip coffee and cakes and messed around for an hour til the rest of the guys arrived. I only realised when I got home that the text I sent Peter telling him I was at the car park and the winds were light on hill failed to go. Mobiles!!

We finally got up the hill just before lunchtime and found the wind light and well round to the south but quite flyable. I am sure this hill works best when the wind is in that direction and it improves as the wind strengthens (unlike the south west face!). Great visibilty today too with the Bass Rock, Berwick Law, Salisbury Crags, Arthur's Seat and Hillend ski slope all quite visble.

There were only seven of us today (Peter, Ewan, Dave, Mike, Robert, Ian Simpson and me) and we flew eight rounds interspersed by breaks to allow a couple of paracenders to jump off the hill although they ended up at the bottom and had to trudge back up J. Several of the regulars were missing but maybe we will get a better turn-out next month for the last of the summer league. Summer? Whazzat?

I had a really good day out and even managed to win a round after blundering into a nice thermal :-)

I took some pictures with my cheap (very cheap) wee camera and they can be seen here:-

https://plus.google.com/photos/108721840020869689437/albums/5791633364891572561?authkey=CNWXq-DJk9PqRA

Dave Watson took some excellent photographs and they can be seen here:-

https://picasaweb.google.com/116206729999424042008/F3FEastLomondSept2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCPTN7JPQsoay4wE