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I had arrived at Sisteron towards the end of a poor
spell of weather, so our decision to push back our holiday by one week seems
have been correct. This morning dawned sunny with a brisk wind, so we
collected our oxygen kit ready for some high-level action.
Alan and Wendy had arrived with the Duo
the previous evening and had called a rest day, so Ariane and I were given
the opportunity to fly together. Rigging was fairly painless; the tow,
however, was 'interesting'. Rotor was setting up just to the west of the
airfield, and with a 20-knot north-westerly crosswind and lots of nearby
terrain, we needed robust, full control deflections in order to keep the tug
in roughly the right place.
We eventually climbed above the mayhem, released
the tug and climbed away in strong ridge-lift in the Gache.
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Obiou
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From then on it was a fairly predictable day.
A couple of beats on the Gache were enough to give us the height to work
onto the Lure. At its summit we pushed out at around 6500ft into the Jabron
valley and popped into the wave. Passing 7000ft we called Salon Approach
where a recorded message in French and English advised that R71, restricted
airspace with a base at FL75, was not active, so we continued our climb to
FL115.
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Pic de Bure
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Carrying on northwards, we worked our way to Chabre, Serres,
Aspres, eventually locating the high-level elevator to the south-east of the
pic de Bure. This worked very well, although we called a halt to the climb
at 14,000ft due to a malfunctioning oxygen cylinder. We had enough height
for a brief foray into the Valgaudemar where I have previously found very
good wave, but today it remained quiet, so we retraced our steps back to the
pic de Bure, Chabre and Lure. The circuit was a little bumpy but there were
no problems there either.
As a footnote, we were interested to notice, after we had
landed, a helicopter of the l'armée de l'aire tracking down the main
runway, at around 400ft directly through the final turn position for landing
gliders. And there was a glider on base leg at the time...now that never
would happen in the UK, would it?
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West towards Ventoux
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