Sunday 3 April 2016

Life on the cliff edge !!

A happy group of regulars met up at Newhavn Fort in what turned our to be a gentle SSE/ SE wind. We flew from underneath the Coastguard Station out onto the SSE slope. Slope Hunter said not to fly mouldies at this site as the landing area is small but I'm always up for a challenge and given the light winds which means gentle rotor I thought it was a good time to give the Dragon a go from the Fort.
Ian A flew his vintage CentiPhase which proved to be the best machine for the day. Scott flew his Vagabond, Ian flew his Spectre and I flew the M60 and the Dragon. We all had a good time except Ian L 's jeans which git ripped to shreds on the brambles during a daring retrieve.
I set up the wing mounted camera for some on board video that I think turned out well. My big and heavy mouldy got a little to low for comfort a few times given the very light lift.
Here is the second video from today's flying which is a little montage of various flights.
On a final note.
We were approached by the Assistant Community Ranger from Lewes District Council towards the end of our flying who asked why we were flying above the cliffs as she hadn't seen us up there before and that we should stop flying as we were flying above nesting Fulmar's and our models looked just like birds of prey and could potentially scare and disrupt there nesting in the cliffs. Not to upset our feathered friends or the Ranger we packed up and left.
As a responsible club and one who is keen to preserve our good name and a good relationship with the land owners and conservationists may I suggest we (Slope Soaring Sussex members) do not fly at Newhaven Cliffs for the foreseeable future as not to aggravate or disturb the nesting Fulmars!!
Interesting thing was that apparently the Paragliders are allowed to fly from the cliffs as they are too big as to not scare the wild life. One rule for one and not for others I think ............

2 comments:

  1. Toy aeroplanes have flown the cliff for at least 30yrs that I can bear witness to. Hang gliders used the cliffs from early 70s when Rogallos were state of of the art.




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  2. I really like that first picture of the CentiPhase at Newhaven. It could have come straight from a 1970/80's issue of Radio Modeller or the pages of Dave Hughes' RC Soaring. Call me old fashioned, but you can't beat the aesthetic appeal of RC gliders from that era IMHO.

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