Sparks while Paragliding in the Black Forest
Today I was out paragliding in the Black Forest. The flying site is in Germany in the south-western part of the Black Forest near Freiburg (Germany) at the Elztal. The take-off site is called Gschasi (or Hans Uhl). You can find more details on this flying site here.
A very strange and mysterious thing happend during this flight. While holding my digicam to take some pictures of the clouds that had an icy structure on top some sparks started sizzeling around my gloves and the camera. The spectacle held on for about 5 seconds and i was quite astounded by that mini-lightning. I did not feel anything like an electric shock in my fingers and i am not sure what this phenomen was. I didn´t look like the camera produced this effect… I had to assume the nearby clouds were in relation to this event… they were about to evolve into a storm. Maybe it was an Elmsfire.
The digicam is still working fine. The only strange thing is that it produced a completly black picture and another picture i can´t identify at about the time when the sparks flashed around.
Here is a little videoclip showing the gpstrack of the flight in Google Earth:
Flight Data:
- Paraglider: Ozone Mojo M
- Tracking Device: Garmin GpsMap60c
- Flight Duration: 02h 05min
- Start Height: 948m
- Land Height: 475m
- Max Flight Height: 1884m
- Flight Distance (Projected): 53,82km
- Cumulative Climb: 4668m
- Right Turns: 72%
- Left Turns: 28%
- Average Thermal Radius: 57,95m
- Average Speed over Ground: 25,7km/h
