April 25th - 26th: Ölü Deniz

First flying of the season - with Özgun and some Bilkent students (Cantekin, etc). METU pilots down there too, and Malissa (Yigit's sister), Umut (with new Mantra R), Samit (?)... Quite a crowd. On the Friday Mahoney and his passenger (cute girl) SATed into Emirhan (Bilkent student on first big flight), causing a mid-air catastrophy. Emirhan threw his reserve, and they were all going down together. Closer to the sea, Mahoney and passenger disengaged and flew to the beach. Emirhan was in the water, tangled in his lines, for 15 minutes before a boat came out to rescue him. Then two days of bad feeling and acrimony between Mahoney and the Bilkent pilots. Emirhan's (club) 1,500 Euro glider was beyond repair - huge split down the middle of the upper surface and tears all over. Who was going to pay for it?

The collision as it happened

Mahoney was certainly at fault here. With a start like this, will he last through the summer?

I had a good couple of flights on Sunday. In the morning I flew to Butterfly Valley, landing in the hope there would be a boat out. There was - and it was magic. I made a wish and threw a coin in 'lovers' cave' on the way. Transport up the mountain, without the Forestry fee (too early in the season) was 5 YTL. The boat back to Ölü was 10 YTL. Not bad for a trip to Butterfly Valley and back. In the afternoon (setting off in the truck at 3pm with Melissa and Tunci) I thermalled with Jocky Sanderson's group. First I was pinned down a bit on the lower ridge, and decided to cross over to the cliff between the 1700m take off and the top. I managed to get a thermal and soar over the top and then kept up high - 200m or more above the summit. I was flying like this for about an hour, before flying off to the mountain across Ölü, where there was no activity. Relative to another pilot on a performance wing who was on the same flight path across I noticed that my speed was good but sink rate bad - relatively. I tried some deep wing-overs, which rapidly became very energetic, ending in a big collapse. I've got to work on these with this glider. It builds up energy and speed very rapidly and I don't have full control over it.