Algodonales, Spain. World Championships 2001. Day 3-4
Day 3 arrived with 35 knots from the east, and no chance of flying competition. We drove to Gibraltar and went up to the rock to have a look around. Strange place, the wind was blowing straight up the cliff and wathcing the seagulls trying to land on the vertical cliff was funny and impressive.

Day 4 and we finally get some flying, the wind had calmed down, but it was still quite stable and weak thermals. I got very high over takeoff in a 4 m/s thermal straight to 2250 meters, never got over 1600 after that. I followed a gaggle on a glide to the second TP straight to the ground, I was highest but got too low before any thermals took off. Landed 16 km before second TP with about 40 other pilots in the area. Including Robin, Ingar, and Olav. Nils-Age came 7 km from the TP and Tor-Erik 10 km. 11 pilots made goal.
Today looks the same, I hope we get a task in the mountains instead over the flatlands like yesterday, as we get higher and better thermals over the mountain tops.

Algodonales, Spain. World Championships 2001. Day 2
Strong wind from the East made it impossible to have a competition today. We still had to wait on top over 3 hours until it was cancelled. The forecast for tomorrow is even worse with quite strong winds from the East.

Algodonales, Spain. World Championships 2001. Day 1
Wind from the NE made it difficult to launch today. We got a task of 96 km to Tarifa Beach (Any further south and you’re in Marocco) Dustdevils made it interesting at launch, and quite a few gliders got trashed and broken. I never set mine up, as we were far back in the line. The day was called at around 17:00, when only one pilot had taken off. The forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday is strong wind from the east. Bad news for any competition flying. We’ll see, the forecast have proven to be wrong here before.

We spent the rest of the afternoon bathing, and walking up to the castle in Zahara, nice view and cool water.

Algodonales, Spain. World Championships 2001.
Tonight we had the opening ceremony in Algodonales. Less chaotic than last year, and shorter speaches. Great fun with the local clown team behind us in the parade. Tomorrow’s the first day in the comp, weather looks quite stable like last year. Today it was not possible to fly off the local site.

Algodonales, Spain. World Hanggliding Championships 2001.
I found a Internet/Computer training center here, it was not here last year. They have 12 computers and a reasonable access speed, but it´s difficult to navigate a Spanish keyboard and Windows. ñç :-)

Yesterday Nils and I flew a local flight, the conditions was great, but still quite low cloudbase at 1700 meters. I still have some adjustments to make on my harness as it did not fit quite perfectly yet. The rest of the team arrived yesterday, Olav, Tor Erik, Ingar, Robin, and Arnt.

Algodonales, Spain. World Hanggliding Championships 2001.
3800 km from Oslo to Algodonales, in 37 hours straight. It went suprisingly easy as we never hit any traffic jams or slowdowns, stopping only for food and fuel.
The gliders for Nils Åge and Olav are here, so is most of the teams. Mike Barber had a chrash a few days ago and dislocated his shoulder, he’s gonna go back to the states.
The weather was nice today, but cloudbase was low. Lots of pilots in th sky this afternoon. We’ll set up the gear tomorrw, and then go flying. Nils needs to fit the carbon A-frame to the new glider, and I need to adjust my new M2 Cigar harness.

GSM data connections fail all the time, I’ll try to change operator if it helps.

I’m off to fly the Worlds in Spain. I’ll update these pages as always, stay tuned! After the Worlds Nils-Åge and I are driving to Slovenia to fly the Pre-Europeans.

Have a nice summer with lots of hours in cloudbase!

The comp at Ringerud last weekend was great. Saturday was quite gray and slow, I never got up over start, but Olav flew the whole task of 46 km to win the day. Sunday was quite windy early, but it calmed down enough to safely fly a comp. We set a race of 66 km to Lampeland, I came first with Sverre and Ingar just behind. The conditions were great with cloudbase around 2300 meters and strong tailwind. Monday was even better, with weak westerly winds and strong lift. We set a local task of 55 km, and took off around 12:30. I lost some time getting up in weak lift while the others got strong lift to cloudbase. In the strong conditions it was difficult to make up the 15 minutes I lost. I came in to goal at 3. place on Monday, and got 2. place after Sverre in the toal scores.

Total results here