Published on August 24th, 2007 | by Mark Ashton Smith
Debacle at the Turkish Open 2007
Debacle at the Turkish Open 2007
‘Debacle’: a total, often ludicrous, failure.
This article is about just that.
Some pilots say you can never plan anything with paragliding – just go with the flow and pick off the opportunities as they come up. But one difference between children and adults – built into the different circuitry of their brains – is the ability to be guided by long-term plans. I gave myself one important goal for the summer: 100 km plus distance and 4000m plus altitude!
I really had my heart set on a big XC. Cloud base is often 4,500m in the central flatlands here, and I figured that if I can get 55km with a 4,500 ft cloud base in Wales, I should be able to get 100km with a 15,000 ft cloud base in Turkey.
Last week I had the perfect opportunity to attain my XC dream in the form of the Turkish Open in Kayseri – epic flatland flying and venue for two Paragliding World Cups, one in 2004 and one running as I write. For those who have been to Piedrahita the conditions are similar. Five hours from Ankara to the east, if there was anywhere in Turkey where someone could fly over 100km, it would be in Kayseri.
Annie and I registered as ‘wind dummies’ which gave us free transport, free lunches and free accommodation in student dorms with the rest of the competitors and unlike those competing, we didn’t have to pay the registration fee, and we didn’t have to fly the tasks. All we had to do was take off before the window opened to show the others on launch that the thermals were working – and they always were.
Competitors for the Turkish Open were mostly Turkish, including our good friend Yiğit from our home-town Ankara. But there were a number of international pilots – from the US (Alaska), New Zealand, India, Switzerland, Bulgaria, and the UK. Some were world-class competition pilots, staying on for the PWC the week after, but many were pilots like myself, or outright inexperienced, never having flown XC before.
So how did it work out for me? Not so well. Not at all.
Saturday, August 18th
This was a pre-comp free-flying day – with no tasks set. Take-off was from the top of the big hill Ali Dag shaped like a big pair of breasts – 1750m ASL and 600m above the high altitude flatlands below.
Ali Dag – 1750 ASL
There were no clouds in the sky – invisible ‘blue’ thermals. I got a taste of climbing in 5-ups with competition pilots on fast wings. I was in the sky with Mac Protos, Sol Tracers, Ozone Mantras R2s, and men in pod harnesses. I noticed that while I was busy trying to stay centred in thermals, the better pilots were flying around me in big sweeping circuits. While they whisked about I felt like I was barely moving. They looked purposeful and very active and they were fast. I was climbing OK, but I was getting stuck at the top of dying thermals while the comp pilots were already in a better lift somewhere else.
Next thing I know, a gaggle nearby fly off on a glide into the flatlands, but in a direction I thought was into wind. ‘They won’t go far’ I thought, and like an idiot I decided I’d stay where I was and head in a different direction. Of course, my navigation skills were bound to be better than the PWC pilots. Where did I end up – into wind, and sinking fast! I bombed out a kilometer next to Ali Dag while the guys I was flying with a moment ago at 2,700m ASL were 15 km away, tiny specks high in the sky.
I got a hitch with a Turkish truck driver who didn’t understand English or body language. The only word I thought I recognized was ‘Choban’. “Choban Salata?” I asked, which means ‘Shepherd’s Salad’. He wasn’t talking about salads and gave me a blank look. Then a long uncomfortable silence, as the truck crept along at a snail’s pace. “Cigara varma?” he said. In this case I thought ‘varma’ meant ‘here’, and I thought he wanted a fag break. ‘OK – Tamam! Yok problem’ I responded. But ‘varma’ (I found out later from Annie) means ‘do you have?’. He was asking me if I had a spare fag, and all he got from me was body language saying ‘that’s not a problem at all.’ We kept hitting brick walls, while the feeling of unease kept building, so at the next petrol station I pointed out the window and made it clear that I wanted to get out. I’d try getting a lift with someone else. But lo-and-behold the petrol station I found myself at – in the middle of nowhere – was just opposite where some vans were collecting to take competition pilots back to HQ!
What a carnival. I met up with Annie here. She was buzzing, and had had story to tell: a massive asymmetric collapse near the ground, probably stalling her wing too. As the glider dived on recovery she thought ‘I should be doing this over Ölü Deniz’. There had been witnesses, and she was lucky. Our first day’s flying at Kayseri!
Sunday, August 19th.
After a good night’s sleep and bustling with energy I was keen to get off early today on the first day of the comp. I was first to take off. After briefly circling over everyone’s heads above launch, it wasn’t long before everyone watched me drop out of sight, down the side of the hill. I did an emergency slope landing, 100 meters below, and slogged my way up to launch again in the blazing noon sun. I was drenched in sweat by the time I emerged.
By now there were two or three pilots in the air. I took off again, and circled with another pilot in a solid thermal up to over 2,500m at the inversion, feeling like a pro. But with 100km on my mind, I was over-keen. I left the hill for the flats on my own. There weren’t any clouds to mark thermals and finding the next one was pure guess work. I’d pushed out a couple of kilometres and then bottled it, “I’d better return to the hill or I’d be on the deck like yesterday” I thought. When I got back I was in the lee and in a compression zone. I was sinking at 4 m/sec while barely making headway to get into wind. I was forced to slope-land again, and this time it took me over half an hour to walk back to launch. I was knackered -but still hopeful. The better pilots were miles away over the flat lands by now. There were only stragglers left on the hill. I climbed to 2,700m and left the hill on my own again. What did I find? Jack squat. I was just about coming into land over a village when I snuck into a bowl and worked bullet thermals in strong drift that took me up a few hundred feet and another few kilometres. I landed miles from any road, only 13 km from take-off. I had to walk for an hour to get to a road where I was then retrieved. The task this day was 66.5km. 4 made goal (Brit Mark Hayman in 2nd) showing what was possible.
Monday, August 20th
Today turned into one of my worst day’s flying ever. A 71.4km task was set and it was obvious conditions were better with a much higher inversion. I quickly climbed to 3,300m (around 11,000 ft) ASL in a big gaggle, and was positioned just where I needed to be. The views were spectacular circling up there tip to tip with a black Skywalk Poison, with 20 other gliders above and below. I had sworn that I would stick with the gaggle after yesterday’s hard lessons. Flying flatlands is easy – fly conservatively, stay high, and use other pilots as markers. So what did I do? Flew off like a cowboy chasing a single comp wing that was a couple hundred metres higher than me! Clever. For kilometer after kilometer I sank and sank and sank – while the rest of the gaggle kept back and high. After 10 minutes of this the comp guy decided that going on was futile and turned back into wind, having enough height and performance to make it back to the thermal he’d left. I was stuck, and just kept dropping. I took a risk by flying further into the wilderness from the road, ending up scratching along a 2km ridge. I was frantically trying to get a low save, just meters from the black rocky terrain below. The wind was strong and I needed full speed-bar to stop being blown backwards in the compression. I was flying this ridge as though it was Hayle dunes – but it wasn’t. I dipped into a gulley where the wind really funneled through. A thermal triggered from the ground at this point, and the suddenly the violence of the air was deadly. I got a massive asymmetric, was whipped round 180 degrees, and on the recovery dive, just cleared the black rock.
Bolt upright, my arms were working like pistons as I desperately locked onto a landing spot below, while the air chucked me about, and as I came into land I dropped the last 2 feet like a stone. Good active flying is what saved me – but far from feeling relief that I was safe, I was furious. I looked up and saw the gaggle cruising overhead at over 3000m, off on a big distance. What a fuck up. Any fool could have flown a good distance today. Yiğit won the task and 23 pilots made the 73km goal through no less than 5 turn-points. I had a free run but could only manage 10 km! I had to walk 7km in the heat and was picked up by a van full of mediocre pilots. That night I had indigestion from a Turkish pizza and couldn’t fall asleep until after 5 in the morning, completely writing off the next day’s flying.
Annie had a much better day than I did. She practiced thermalling, climbing 600ft above take-off – a personal best.
Tuesday, August 21st
I was asleep when transport head off up the mountain, too tired to function. And of course when I got up at noon and looked out of the window I could see conditions were epic. Puffy cumulus everywhere and a cloud-base miles high. A 102km task was set, and 9 people made it to goal, with loads making big distances. New Zealander Glen whose only been flying a year flew 101km on a DHV 1/2. A Turkish guy who’d never flown cross country reached goal. Retired Brit Peter got a personal best of 58km. Cloud-base was 4,500m (15,000 ft), and almost everyone got up there. I was with Annie in Kayseri with a salesman trying to flog us a carpet at the time the others were making the height and distance I’d been dreaming of for the past six months.
Wednesday, August 22nd
After another restless night, I was at least ready to fly this morning. But the wind picked up and the task was cancelled. Most pilots didn’t care because they’d had epic flights the day before.
Thursday, August 23 rd
After the officials had checked the weather reports, the task was cancelled, and the forecast for the next two days was also dire. This meant the American Brett Zaenglein – a 38 year old Alaskan fisherman – won the competition by default. Annie and I were ready to head to the bus station, when I spotted Yiğit in a minibus with a handful of other pilots ready to drive to the top. “They cancelled for no reason,” he said. I told Annie I wouldn’t be long, grabbed my bag and joined the little band of top comp pilots, including the Valic brothers at the back of the bus– nos 3 and 12 in the world rankings, and holders of the world distance record – who had arrived early for the PWC.
On take-off at 1,750m we found conditions were perfect, not blown out at all. Yigit and a few others were pissed off because they were top contenders in the comp. I launched after Urban Valic, and snaked around for a while looking for lift. There were four or five of us in the air and I was blindly following other pilots, not really thinking for myself. I shadowed Yasen, an intense Bulgarian flying a Mac comp wing, close into the hill hoping to get some ridge lift, but the sink was horrendous. He pushed out into the better air, just as I got dumped onto the hillside in a strong core of pure sink. I dropped as though I’d jumped from a garage roof, and as I hit the ground, my canopy overshot me, and landed over a clump of thorn bushes. I was on a 60 degree slope, my orange wing an eyesore on the hill, while all the other pilots were climbing away to base.
The next hour was one of the most frustrating hours in my life. I just couldn’t untangle my lines. The more I worked at them, the more tangled they got and I was like a frenzied dog at one point. By the time I’d finally sorted them out and slogged my way up to take-off again, most of the pilots had been to base, done an XC and landed at the dorms. The Bulgarian Yasen had decided to return to the hill and it was a puzzle to him why I was still up there about to take off.
The thermals were now coming up the hill from the NE. I still hadn’t separated out in my mind the difference between thermic wind and meteo-wind and after launching I head off in a NE direction, thinking I was heading upwind into the thermal trigger zone. In point of fact I was heading downwind into the sinking lee. I turned back too late, almost coming to a standstill. Edging my back into wind, I flew into rotor. I got a massive collapse which spun me round, hurling me towards the hill. With some good control, I escaped impacting the hill on the dive, but on the asymmetric surge following it, I crashed face-first into a prickly tree. My canopy overflew me and ended up draped over it, 15 feet in the air. Yet another comedy on the hill for the good pilots to chuckle at.
But this time though I wasn’t angry; I was buzzing – happy to be alive! If it wasn’t for the tree it would have probably have broken my ankle, half a kilometre up a mountain, no one around. Luckily for me Yasen hadn’t seen what happened, or the gossip would have been dreadful. I zipped up my suit, put on my gloves, and climbed the tree, my legs wobbling on the thin branches trying to keep my balance while I set to work on untangling the mass of lines from the thorny branches. I kept at it for perhaps half an hour, but it became clear that the job was impossible: The highest branches where the lines held the wing fast were out of reach. I’d have fallen out of the tree down a 500m slope if I’d tried to climb up to them.
So what did I do? Got out my hook knife and cut each and every line from the canopy, and then again off all the risers, leaving behind a thicket of lines in the tree. For some reason this actually felt good. Maybe it was symbolic? I had the glider packed in no time and an hour of slipping and sliding later I had scrambled down to the road at the base of the mountain where I got a ride back to HQ and the dorms.
I kept my line-cutting fiasco secret from the other pilots I talked to that afternoon. I was just too embarrassed. Annie couldn’t believe it when I told her in the bedroom in private. All the time I was crashing into the hill and climbing trees and scrambling up and down the mountain like some sort of deranged rodent, she thought I’d been enjoying an epic XC, covering a great distance over the Turkish flatlands, attaining my dream of 100km and an altitude of over 4,000m!
On the 5 hour bus ride back to Ankara later that evening I had a raging toothache.
About the Author
Mark Ashton Smith What’s national standard for paragliding in Cornwall - among the best you can find in the country? (1) the coastline 🧗🏼♀️ - the most beautiful in the country. We can enjoy it, explore it, and get good at coastal soaring 🏆 (2) the views 👀from up high - all coastlines of the peninsula that everyone comes to visit all in one panorama - absolutely stunning 🏆 (3) technical tor & small hill, inverted, broken-up, and low base flying 💥- really sharpens XC skills - none of this lobbing into house thermals and climbing to 6-7 grand off the bat. If you lose concentration you’re on the ground. If you can learn to fly XC well in gnarly Cornwall you can fly well anywhere in the UK. 🏆(4) the convergence 🌥🌥🌥 - it’s the best in the UK and if we can fly it, it opens up 150km plus flights and even learning to soar sea breezes gets us in league with that lot around Brighton. 🏆 (5) We got instant access to lots of ace coastal sites/beaches to train at within a short drive which gives us more air time, ground handling skills, and wagga skills (call out to Dunc)🏆,and (6) our sites aren’t busy!! You’ll be lucky to find more than 2 people flying at Carn Brea on a perfect day. In Bodmin moor you’ll be with your mate and that’s it. No crowds. 🏆👌Happy to be in one of the best flying areas in the country - just important not to get pulled into the league numbers games which suits other areas but not ours. Gavin McClurg made the same point. Distance is great but there’s loads of other ways to have top flights. Focus on what’s the very best in your home turf! 🏴☠️
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