Drama Open 2007 : 21st - 24th June

144 competitors, from 15 registered nationalities, and our friend Yiğıt Yildirim came a close 4th! See the results here. You can click on the individual task scores to see animations of the flights and Google Earth tracks.

Very impressive given the quality of the guys who beat him. He loves his new Ozone Mantra R7 it goes without saying. He also flew the Ozone Mantra serial class wing and strongly recommended it to me for both safety and performance.

The two Valic brothers got first and second place (world ranking 3 and 6 - see PWCA rankings). Primoz PODOBNIK got third (world ranking 2 after Maurer).

Note on the Valic brothers distance record, beating Will Gadd by 3km:

The Slovenian born Valic brothers travelled to South Africa in the middle of November 2006 with the specific goal to achieve a world record in terms of a declared goal. Despite tough and very strong conditions, and after spending 6 and half hours in the air, both brothers made the declared goal, and had enough height and time to continue to fly further, eventually landing within 300 meters of each other, setting a new world distance record of 426km. (Wikipedia)

The Blue Lagoon

A beautiful photo taken by skybabe Annie of the 'blue lagoon' on Friday 15th this month.

click to enlarge

Akdağ flight- 22nd June

Numerous plans were formulated for this flight, and the end result was disappointing as far as the flight went - although the locale was beautiful and well worth exploring. Murat C. was going to join us, as was John Y, and possibly Annie, but I ended up flying on my own. Murat injured his leg quite badly, a day after telling us he'd never had an accident paragliding! He should have pinched his earlobe and then knocked on a table after telling us this. He was practicing spiral dives in Kaş and couldn't pull out in time to make the landing zone, having to make an emergency landing on the harbour's breakwater rocks.

After talking to Uğur in Kaş I opted for a known east facing take-off, to avoid the strong Patara valley sea breeze while hopefully catching some of the morning sunlight. It was too windy on the Thursday morning (northerly catabatics?), so dad, Annie and I set off at 7.45am from dad's villa on Friday which was calmer, and turned into Gombe at the reservoir, taking the dirt road from there up towards Yeşil Göl (Green Lake). We found ourselves amongst dozens - perhaps hundreds - of Muslim pilgrims with empty plastic bottles, ascending the slopes to get to the lake/source of the nearby waterfall (Uçansunsu) for some holy water. A local sufi started off this tradition according to one source. Before taking the track towards the lake, we took the steeper track up the valley which ended up at a bulldozer that was extending the road, after passing through some nomads' (yörük) lush grazing pastures, above 2000m and covered in snow in the winter season - quite a discovery for us.

yörük pastures

We retraced our way to the Yeşil Göl turning, and drove as far as the track would take us, looking onto the lip of the waterfall to the right as you looked out towards Gombe below.

I took off from a rocky slope above the track, at around 1,700-1,800m altitude - not too exciting considering that the mountain ascended behind me to around 3000m. But there was no way of getting any higher without trekking - something that wasn't an option then. Landing options were difficult to identify clearly, but I figured that there were enough flat fields nestled among all the trees and valley slopes to pinpoint a landing spot 'on the wing'.

The main road/reservoir can be seen in the distance

So after a wait for (very) weak thermic cycles to inflate the wing, I took off! Dad took the picture below as I flew over the road, weightshifting towards the waterfall bowl, where I hoped to find some lift.

There was no lift. All birds were flapping. It was sink all the way down. And you can see from the photo below that landing options were limited. I would not recommend this particular flight to anyone unless they were very confident with tight landings in small fields among trees in rotor, and felt satisfied with 10 minute sled rides. The waterfall was nice, but I only noticed it for 2 seconds.

Perhaps if you took off from this site later in the day when there was more thermic air to use it would be worth it. But I would be wary of a prevailing northerly in these conditions, as we had on Friday.

Next time, I'm flying from the top of Akdag - perhaps camping up there the night before, and hiking. And my preference would be to take off on the Patara valley side, although from the higher altitude both west and east would be good.

Ölü Deniz earlier this year.

For those of us who have been enjoying the excitement of Ölü Deniz recently, here's a reminder of how it looks in January! Dead - (dead = 'Ölü' in Turkish, in fact).

Ölü Deniz in January, 2007 (Photo MAS)

Akdag take-offs?

Question: which spot to take off from when we fly from Akdag next week (weather permitting)? Two possibilities are shown below - a west Xanthos plain facing take-off, and a south facing take-off. The former is accessible by a track from one side of the mountain range, the other by a track from the other side. The latter has the advantage of giving you a glide down to a gully and ridge system that is sun-facing and is likely to be thermic. If you could glide down to this and then cruise along in a westerly direction in lift, you may have better height to make the crossing to Babadag - if this is the aim. This might be a more challenging flight though. We'll need to take a closer look when we're in the area.

The Akdag summit, and the two nearby take-offs. (Click to enlarge)

Babadag - Butterfly Valley flight: 31st May, 12pm

This was a spectacular flight - sometimes in cloud - in the company of Matt Senior. Annie also flew from Babadag on this day. Matt took some top photos on this day which can be seen here. The 5 waypoint OCL distance on this flight was 16.85km.

Babadag to Butterfly Valley to Oludeniz (click to enlarge)

Dumanli Dag adventure - 2nd June.

8.5km north of my dad's house in Islamlar, Kalkan, there's a 1956m mountain called Dumanli Dag which you can see clearly across the Xanthos plain from Babadag, 30km away. I'd always fancied flying off it and landing next to dad's (at an altitude of 550m).

Dumanli Dag and Dad's house

There's a track up to the top where there's a forest fire watch tower, manned throughout the summer. Annie, dad and I had attempted to drive up the track last year but it was too rough for the rental car and we backed off. This time we had a rental 4 wheel drive (a little open top Suzuki - 20 quid per day) and perfect clear, calm weather. So we set off from Xanthos Villa at 10am and completed the winding drive to the top no problem, enjoying spectacular views of the easterly valley on the way, really appreciating the jeep's performance. A fire-watcher with a big pair of binoculars (possibly posted up there for the entire summer) greeted us at the top, and invited us for a tea which we declined, being pressed for time. There was some cloud building at our altitude. A dust devil also spun right past us as I was trying to decide which way to take off in the zero wind conditions. I decided to forward launch down the dirt road in the opposite direction from the heading I wanted, and then do a U turn to the left once I was in the air. This worked well enough - although it was a fairly committing take-off.

The flight down was uneventful. I tried finding thermals but the air was dead, except for a little activity caused by large valleys here and there. 30 minutes after taking off I had landed next to dad's as planned without any incident. A good feeling of 'job done'! I took some shots of the house from the air at a few hundred feet for the record.

Dad's place has the wing shadow over the pool

Next mountain to fly off: Akdag, 3000m!

Advice on Full stalls!

I'd been wanting to do full stalls for ages. Here in Turkey anyone who is half decent has done them, and I've flown at Ölü Deniz a few times now, so it was well due.

I took off from the 1700m take-off and managed to thermal up 1,200 ft which was a first. I glided from this altitude to over the 1968m summit along the ridge, and bounced around a bit in quite strong air, and then head out over the sea (thinking it would be safer doing a stall!), arriving with 1,500m to make use of. I did a couple of B line stalls first, and then went for the full stall. A wrap, slow down speed, pull down to try to find the stall point, and then WHAPPP! Total loss of control for a heart stopping second, falling backwards, losing sight of the wing behind you completely, arms locked down as though your life depended on it, and then the wing re-appears, nice stable position with wingtips tucked above you. I recorded I was falling at about 16 m/sec. Hold it for a while, then release, and whoooh big SURGE forward, jam on the breaks, then another surge and then stable flight again. Heart pounding. Now try again: pull down symmetrically, fall and chaos, wing stable overhead, raise hands slowly to chest height to inflate the wing-tips a bit (almost tail sliding here which Matt thought I should try), and then release, surge, break, and away - nice and cleanly. Much more control than the first time. Sweet.

Advice for doing the stall. DO A B LINE STALL FIRST. It's like half way between the two, but it's much safer. In fact my Gangster is less stable overhead when it's B-line stalled than when it's full stalled - so it's good practice for releasing the breaks when the wing is in front of you since the wing oscillates a lot. I measured a descent rate of 6m/sec with a B-line stall. It feels like you're falling faster.

Here's a guy doing a B-line stall on YouTube for an idea.
Here's a guy doing a stall correctly. (although it looks messy to me.)
Here's a guy who screws up by releasing the breaks as soon as he stalls.

26th - 27th May: Denizli Pre-World Cup.

The link for this competition can be found here. There is a nice picture from the site photo gallery of Annie, Yiğit, Matt and I relaxing after the day's flying under a Red Bull tent here. We met New Zealander Matt Senior at this comp, and went on to spend time with him in Ölü Deniz. He was here in Turkey on account of a chance meeting in an Australian comp with Semih Sayir, currently number one competition pilot in the country. 'Why not come to Turkey?' Semih suggested, and here he was. Semih told us in Ölü that his nickname was 'champion'! Modest. He lived up to his reputation, by getting 2nd in this pre-world comp, in a field of about 80 pilots from all round the world. Matt got 11th which he was pleased with. Yiğit was stoical about his 15th position. He was leading the previous day, but the task was cancelled due to overdevelopment. Matt was second on that day I think.

We arrived in Denizli close to midnight by bus from Ankara. We got a dolmuş to Karahayit where the comp was based, 20km north of Denizli. 2 lira each: better than the 40 lira taxi 'deal' we were offered. Yiğit and his friend Mehmet helped us sort out a pension when we arrived. The Hierapolis Hotel where the comp pilots were staying was out of our price range. There were hotels and pensions everywhere. The place seemed like a sea-side resort. Must be all those hot spring baths.

Task briefing on the last day: (Semih crouching over the board)

Annie and I flew on the Sunday. A 34km task was set from the lower take-off - a triangle I think. I don't know for sure because I couldn't work my GPS properly to try it. I just thermalled from one place to another randomly for an hour, but had a great time, one time finding myself at the top of a gaggle. The XC potential here is unlike anything I've known. The national distance record is from here. I think this might be the flight here. The young guy who flew it from METU was also at the comp, doing pretty well. He's new to competition flying.

Annie and gaggle of comp. pilots

I was registered as a guest pilot. It was 15 lira for both Annie and I to get all the services of the comp for the day - transport, medical and a lunch. Good value. There were loads of pilots who turned up for the comp just for the experience. It would be easy for anyone coming out to Turkey from England to register for any of these comps. The tasks weren't that hard as far as I could tell, and some of our boys from Kernow might have a shot at getting a good result. Good experience. Keep an eye out for this kind of competition whenever you're thinking of going on holiday. It's a useful environment to socialise and learn a lot in a supportive, well organised flying event. There were pilots there from France, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Greece, New Zealand, Japan, etc.

The results were: 1st: Jean-François Chapuis from France. 2nd: Semih Sayir from Turkey. 3rd: Daniel Dimov from Bulgaria.

Bork before taking off.