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A bad day, that just got worse.

Today was one of those days that I should have stayed in bed.

I decided to go flying instead though.

The wind was a light north westerly today and I knew that the sea breeze would kick in at some point so I found a field that would take these directions. Keith O'sullivan and I started to set up but I felt that the wind was a getting bit strong and felt uneasy about launching here due to the fact that we were in a valley, and decided to move to another field a couple of miles away. This didn't go down well with Keith who didn't want to move. He just wanted to fly.

We got the stuff into the other field and half set-up, only to watch the windsock turn 90 degrees to the left. This was not good. We couldn't launch in this. Just then a whole herd of bullocks came over the brow of the hill. They were all tightly grouped and gathered around us. I know from experience that these animals can get spooked and stampede all over your gear so we had to try to get rid of them. They were determined to stay though and every time we chased them away they charged back again. That finally put the nail in that field so we cleared out of there quick. Keith was even less happy now.

We had to find another place to launch now so we drove another couple of miles away to another hill which faced the current wind direction. This was field number three.

This looked good. We got the gliders rigged and the power harnesses set up. Then Keith realised that he'd got no nose pin for the glider. We had to improvise a pin with an Allen Key and some sticky tape. More time wasted. Once we'd got that sorted we started the engines. No problem. We ran them for a couple of minutes to warm them up then mine cut out. I tried to restart it but no luck, it wouldn't run. I'm starting to get really cheesed off with this two-stroke piece of junk. These engines are just too temperamental and too unreliable and I'm losing my patience with them. I tried and tried to start it, I even took the plug out to dry it, but I only succeeded in running the equally junk battery down to the point where it wouldn't turn it over.

I borrowed Keith's battery and hooked it up and it started. Great.

I then unhooked the battery and rehooked it to Keith's harness. While I was doing this mine died again. This really, really, pissed me off big time. Again I unhooked his battery and started mine, this time it kept running. I gave him his battery back and got into the harness and took off into a darkening sky. It was getting late now. I climbed up to about a 1,000 ft and waited above the launch for Keith. No show. He didn't launch and I saw him get out of the harness and drop his glider. I later found out that he couldn't restart his engine due to the battery finally failing and that was the end of his day. This really ended it for him and he decided that it was time to sell his gear.

I climbed up to 3,000 ft and leveled off. By this time I was up behind Devils Dyke, a few miles north of Brighton. It was getting darker all time and because I'd left my gloves off, my hands were also freezing cold. It was time to get down. My entire flight had only lasted 30 minutes after all this hassle. I landed on the football pitches behind Devils Dyke and walked to the side of the field to de-rig. I could hear something buzzing as I set the glider down and as I was unclipping I was surrounded by a massive cloud of swarming bees. This was all I needed.

I couldn't get near the glider. There were hundreds, if not thousands of these bees flying around the glider and gathering in clumps around the tips. What was I going to do now? I kept swatting them away from my head as I stood back and watched as the glider was engulfed in bees. They weren't the average bee either - they looked like some hybrid bee which I'd never seen before. Was this the famous 'killer bee' that I'd heard so much about? I didn't know and I wasn't taking any chances. As I stood around wondering what to do I began to realise that there were less and less bees around and soon I knew that because it was getting dark they were starting to disappear again. After a few minutes they were gone. Where to? I don't know but I derigged the glider quickly. Keith arrived and told me that he'd got to the point where he really needed a cigarette and when he tried to buy them at a garage they informed him that they were closing up and couldn't sell them to him. That put the lid on a really crappy day for him. He had driven 70 miles here, didn't fly and now he had to drive 70 miles home again. He was not happy.

Gliders:
K4, Amour 159
Power units:
Wasp, Doodlebug.

PS. Just heard from Alan Mortimer, he flew 107 miles on his Mosquito - pull start, at the weekend. Nice one Alan.

PPS. To top off this bad day, I've discovered that I left one of my carbon fibre tip rods in that last field as a result of trying to pack up quickly and get away from the bees. It has to get better after this.

Update:
I got some advice from Riaan of Waspsystems who reckons that the problem with the restart is that I've been using the choke to kill the engine. His advice is to use the engine kill switch instead. This may seem obvious but when I did my training I was told that using the choke is the best way to stop it and leave it rich in fuel to restart it again. This, it now seems, was the wrong advice. I'll use the kill switch in future and hopefully this will solve that problem.

Further Update:
I've now tried the new engine-kill method and had no problems with re-starting.