Flying new sites

[Dave Thomas]

Footnote to my earlier message. We can only fly at the usual long Mynd field from tomorrow, but once our other English and the Welsh sites are open - or for that matter any other club sites, please bear this in mind.

Flying at a new site is an additional mental challenge, which may not necessarily be ideal when out of practice with launching and flying. That's not to say don't do it, as some sites are better than others for inexperienced pilots or after a long lay-off. Just add that to your list of 'things different' when preparing to fly, and get a coach to support you or at the very least a detailed site briefing from someone who knows your experience level and has sufficient site specific knowledge themselves.

As an example of what you don't want - I went to Devils Dyke for the first time ages ago, and spoke to a pilot and asked about the sea breeze convergence likelyhood. He just said "I haven't got time to teach you how to fly, I'm going flying. Then a person came up to me and said 'you're not a member, you need to pay to fly here'. I did fly and came second on the day with a 50k sea breze convergence flight and beat that guy, but I didn't get a nice warm feeling from that experience. I do hope you don't just get that from our club.