Tuesday August 2nd: Recently qualified Rebekah Sherwin dragged me out of the office to advise her on how to fly Bossington. The weather wasn't very helpful, and we spent quite a lot of time sheltering under the gliders from rain and hill fog. But we did both fly, and both survived, so it must have been a successful day out. Well done Graham, Kaz and the team at Cloud 9 - Rebekah is a credit to your teaching methods.

This photo shows one of the clearer moments of the day. It did get quite pleasant at the end, but at other times you could harldy see from one glider to the other when they were parked like this!

It's always good when the weather plays ball, and I manage to get a glider test flown quickly. This weekend I had a Litespeed 4 to try out prior to putting it on sale, and the wind was too stout for my liking. So the obvious option was to trek up to Woolacombe, where the wind is often lighter. And so it was this time. The glider was a delight to fly, and will very soon appear in the secondhand glider lists. £1495? It's a bargain!

Firebird's lovely new Raven is here in the UK. Tony Nelson got his hands on the first of my demos, and has been trying to find some hald-decent weather to fly it in. So far, cross-wind scratching on the coast is about the best he has found.

When he first looked at it, this is what he said: "The workmanship on the glider is remarkable, it has a new special type of leading edge fabric that does not wrinkle and packs away small, a skinny set of risers, relocated speed bar pulleys for easier application, some very sexy-looking cell openings and what is becoming common on new gliders some
acro/transition and thermalling handles, Mallion keeper thingamebobs instead of
o-rings, there is a riser bag for tidiness all packed away very neatly".

Tony's flying report to follow in due course, no doubt! One other thing he commented on was the small size of the packed wing. Firebird have been using their vast experience of freefall and base-jumping canopies to update their paragliding designs, and heavy, bulkier fabrics have given way to lighter materials that result in a much more compact packed wing. Like Tony, I doubted whether I would ever get the canopy back into its tiny stuff sack, but in fact it is easy!

Firebird paragliders are no longer supplied with rucksacks, which really always should have come with the harness rather than the canopy. I have a choice of rucksacks you may wish to consider, according to the size of your harness. And there is always the Mowenpik harness/rucksack, which does the job perfectly - of course!

May 22nd was significant for the signing-off of a new Tug Pilot at Smeatharpe. This is always an important event, tug pilots being worth their weight in gold. It was a rough day, not particularly pleasant, so well done Gerry McCann!

I did less well, flying the single-surface Freedom behind our XL tug. Last time it had been a delight, but in rather rorty conditions I immediately got too high and couldn't get back down. This put the tug pilot into an unpleasant situation, unable to gain height quickly enough. We were both going for our releases (in my case rather too late) when the weak link broke.

I was very, very frightened. Not for myself, but for Jeff on the tug, who looked to be having a very unpleasant ride at a horribly low altitude. He didn't look high enough to avoid an accident, although he later said it wasn't too bad.

We both landed safely, and Jeff refrained from hitting me, or even being particularly critical. His suggestion that slower gliders shouldn't be towed with a chest release has been taken on board. Such a contrast with my last day towing the Freedom, although that one wasn't complicated by snotty thermals and sea breezes.

Another lesson learnt. Perhaps this time I will remember it.....