www.FlyingMax.com – Paragliding

Before we got to St. Hilare, we stopped at Silvain’s (French Nova rep.) to get the Mentor 3 light…. no luck and it should come by Monday. So we drove to St. Hilare and prepared our self’s to go hike and fly for the next day. The next morning,the clouds start to build early and at 8:30 am the cloud base was about 200 meters above launch. At 9:00 am the first paragliders started to ridge soar and playing with the clouds and we decided not to go hiking up any higher and get ready for a flight. The first flight was about 2 hours and I flew low all the way east to the Les Marches control zone and back. Top landed and adjusted my harness to make it fit perfect. The 2nd flight was again ridge soaring and the the cloud base got up to 1400 meters. I tired once to cross the valley, but returned as it was to early for the other side to work. About 45 min later I tried again and I managed to find some lift on the other side and worked my self up to cloud base (1600 meters). The clouds made it impossible to fly my planned route to the south and I ended up flying low to the west towards Grenoble and then to the south. After about 30 km I top landed at a higher plateau and contemplated to hike about 10 km south to a higher and more open mountain. I decided to try to fly but ended up to ridge soar only in valley wind and eventually landed at Sechelienne. When Dave picked me up we headed further south and stayed overnight south of La Mure. The next day we tried to hike up another mountain along the route, but felt that the wind was picking up quite a bit and pretty soon we realized that the north Foehn was starting up. We decided to drives further south to Lac de Serre-Poncon. The Foehn was full on and we watched the kite surfers and wind surfers playing in the strong winds. Later this day we decided to head back to St. Hilare and pick up the new Mentor 3 light. Well, the wing was still not there and we ended up driving to the DHL depot in Grenoble to get the parcel. After that we headed back towards Germany as Penny and the kids will be arriving soon in Germany. We stopped at Saint-Jean-de-la-Porte as we heard there was a site where you can fly in a north wind. Once we got there and after a short hike it started to rain and hiked back to the campsite. The next day, we headed to Chamonix and at Passy we could watch a couple paragliders flying and thermaling up right under the clouds. We found the landing site but no hiking trail and the only way up was on a long paved road, so we decided to drive. Wow, what a place to fly, the conditions were perfect and after 1 hour of flying the clouds were sucking a lot. I decided to top land to bring the

car back down and Dave landed in the Valley. It was great to fly the new Mentor 3 light in such good conditions and I have to say that I am very happy with it. The difference to the normal Mentor 3 is that it launches even easier and it even turns nicer, which is hard to believe as the original Mentor 3 is already a very nice wing. Not to forget, the weight of the wing is a lot lighter then the normal wing and the packing seize is just about half form the regular wing. Well done Hannes and crew, this is a very nice wing.