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Flying high - 12/07/2011
If sending them up the 6 peaks of GB wasn't enough, we have now launched them into the sky's of GB as well! Yet another adventurous event to mark our 60th anniversary.
In June, our Explorers teamed up with Bollington Parascending Club to explore new heights! The club had previously visited us on a meeting night and talked us through the safety procedures and had us practicing landing roles.
We had set off from Huddersfield at 5:30am on a Saturday morning to get to the airfield in Manchester, as it's a working airfield we were only allowed to use it between 6:30am and 8:30am. The weather was spot on with very few clouds in the sky.
Parascending is the basic tow form of paragliding. Flights will be carried out towed on 100m of rope behind a Land Rover. These flights are with a basic round canopy and are controlled entirely by the vehicle driver. After being towed across the field the canopy and pilot are brought gently back to the group. These flights were only a few minutes long, but long enough to give us some stunning views over Manchester.
After two jumps each of Parascending, we headed to the base of Greater Manchester Police Air Support Unit where we had a really interesting and informative talk about police helicopters. After the talk we got to sit and play in the countries most expensive helicopter "India 99" worth £4.5 million! Explorers sat in the pilots seat and tried on all the equipment behind heading over to Tesco's for a well earned breakfast!
A fantastic morning was had by all, a massive thanks to Glenn and the members of Bollington Parascending Club and Great Manchester Police for a memorable morning.
We look forward to visiting again soon!
Be sure to check out the full photo gallery here.
