Flight of the Eagles

Back in the Day...

Flight of the Eagles

Iturn gently in a smooth thermal, almost a kilometre above Africa’s Zambezi valley. Relaxed and settled back into my harness, the view is spectacular! Beneath a crystal blue sky the ragged escarpment runs eastward from Lake Kariba to mozambique.

African villages are scattered across the valley floor. Small clusters of mud huts surrounded by mealie fields, hidden amongst the untouched bush of the lowveld. A culture as seemingly untouched as the flat valley floor itself.

The peaceful chirping of my vario is joined by a squawk. Glancing up from the view a Crowned Eagle greets me. He cruises in from the front, level with my wing, swoops around my left wingtip, and straight

Mark Bailey in the Wellington HGPGC Newsletter in 2003

Crowned Eagle Photo; Derek Keats

into my wake. I laugh as he tumbles, chirping in surprise. Recovering, he glides around me, craning his neck almost to the point of dislocation as he inspects my glider.

There’s no sign of aggression, no hostility, just a natural curiosity. I keep leaned over in my harness letting the glider fly itself, giving all my attention to the eagle. He is huge, almost 2 meters across, his eyes sparkling as he checks me out. Although his talons are tucked up, I can’t help but imagine the damage they would do to my glider should he put his mind to it. His interest is directed to my glider, a bright blue SKY LIFT, with a splash of fluorescent green.

Swinging in, he makes a mock attack on my wing, swooping up barely a meter from the leading edge. Rolling away, he comes around again, squawking and playing, and joins into my thermal, sitting just off my left wingtip.

It’s a moment only dreamed of: Playing in the skies over Africa with a large bird of prey, accepted by natures best pilot. Unable to contain myself, I start whistling my happy thermal song. Instead of being insulted by my lack of musical ability, I am rewarded by the occasional chirping and squawking.

A dreamtime later the eagle cranks a left turn, as I continue thermalling right. Coming around again to face him I find that his attention has shifted. He swoops in aiming straight for me. The approach speed must be in the region of 70km/hrs.

Suddenly realising his miscalculation, the eagle pulls up from his dive in a poorly coordinated wing over, no more than a meter and a half away from hitting me. Flinching and laughing, I realise that even the experts can balls it up! Disappearing over my wing, I assume that he has moved on.

I drag my attention back to my thermal; only to have it diverted again minutes later by a movement above my right leading edge. Looking up I swear that I see him doing a barrel roll over my leading edge before diving away.

A barrel roll? Can they do that? Maybe an illusion, but the memory of this flight will join my internal logbook of paragliding nirvanas.

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The FAI/CivL introduced a new portal for viewing one’s competition rankings, their competition history and for creating new competitions.

With the new (Dec 1) FAI portal all new pilots (in fact all pilots, if they want to see their progress etc and create events etc on CiVL) must register and if they are new to the system they will be allocated a number which the scorer must then send with the results. Already ‘allocated’ pilots, once they’re registered, can just use their CiVL number on the ‘Rankings’ page to see all their stats. And more!

Previously, when a scorer sent the prescribed form to CiVL for registering and incorporating a competition’s results into the WPRS (World Rankings System) if someone was new and one hadn’t been allocated a CiVL number, the scorer would put 99999 and they (CiVL) would issue a new number, your ‘CiVL ID’. When you have a CiVL ID any points you accrue in a Cat2/Cat1 comps (as long as you have a FAI NZ Sports licence attained when you apply for your annual NZHGPA renewal) will go toward the NZ country and World ranking (WPRS) (different from the NZ NZPRS system, though closely aligned). The more NZ pilots that are registered and using the WPRS system, and the more comps they do, the better score NZ will have on the World Country rankings which will help our top pilots obtain a place on a world cup/championship competition circuit. So to be registered on WPRS helps everyone!

Now, new pilots must register on that portal and when they do they will be issued a CiVL number which they will use at all competitions and also useful for when one registers for comps on Airtribune.

Use the link below to register with CiVL. You can also see on that link all your previous comps, statistics and a bunch of other details.

You can register at anytime on the link below.

New pilots must go to: http://civlcomps.org/and register, get yourself a number and let your scorer know prior to the end of the competition. Older pilots, register and check it out.

- Tim Brown

UAE Dubai Hike and Fly

nick neynens was one of a select few international athletes invited to fly in the United Arab Emirates Hike and Fly event in dubai.

In the next issue we’ll see his report and spectacular flying photos in the city, desert and mountains.

Upper right; Skyscraper launch: we all negotiated that for the task it was completely optional to fly, but everyone did. Once was enough for me.

Right; Dune flying: looks the safest but under racing conditions close to the ridges unfortunately there were accidents. An amazing site for learning, tandems, acro...