Bassano report

This year’s flying in Bassano was the best I’ve had there so far, but sadly it rained the last few days so the competition was cancelled.

We drove for about 30 hours from Oslo, including a stop at Skyline in Übersee to pick up Nils Åge’s new harness. I got a new set of the “old” fibreglass tips, since the new set seemed to bend as easily as the one that came with the glider in Oz. Not much new on the Skyline harness this year, a little longer boot was all.

The first few days was perfect, when we arrived Saturday evening it rained, but Sunday saw blue skies and perfect flying. Everyone got nice flighs, I flew a trip to the river and back, while Robin and Johnny who had been here for a week already crossed the river east and turned at the tunnel turnpoint. The rest of the days went fast, everyone got up and away. Steinar and Arnt set new personal rekords in duration and height gain. It was unusually clear air, good lift, and cloudbase from 1800 to 2300 meters every day.

Pictures – Johnny taking off from Bar Deltaplano – Line, Kjell, and Arnt relaxing before takeoff.
Johnny taking off Line, Kjell and Arnt

A few video clips from takeoff. Audun “El Loco” Etnestad – 745KB, Arnt “Parrot” Opsanger – 565KB, and “Barron” Steinar Sverd Johansen – 796KB

I decided to rest on Friday to be ready for the start of the comp saturday, in retrospect I should have flown that last good day. The rain started as predicted on Saturday, just as we started to set up at the comp takeoff, how typical…

At least we got plenty of time to walk around the fair. I bought the last of the new 4Fight helmets from Icaro, all the other were sold before the fair started. I have not flown with it yet, as I have to mount the headset for the radio first. The helmet have a visir, I have never flown with a visir before, guess it takes a few flights to get used to it. I also got some new flying gloves from Icaro, where the outside of the index finger and thumb are kevlar reinforced. This is important as the VG rope wears thru normal gloves after a only few flights. Most of the fair was Paraglider and Paramotor related, with only a few hanggliders on display.

As the forecast was shitty for Sunday and Monday we decided to start driving bak home on Sunday afternoon. The trip was OK with no traffic jams, and the 2200 km went in just under 26 hours. I was watching DVD’s on my portable PC and trying to sleep most of the time.

Arriving back in Oslo it was even warmer than Bassano, with a solid high pressure and blue skies. Steinar and I went to Ringerud to attempt some XC flying, but it was too inverted and stable. We soared for 30 minutes in front of takeoff without getting up. Forecast for the weekend is rain, next weekend the first comp starts on Frya.

Bassano

Sorry for no news from Bassano, the Italian GSM providers have not improved their data services. Weather was good, but it rained for the comp. More news and pictures when I get back online with broadband

Off to Bassano

We drive to Bassano in Northern Italy later today. Kjell Chr. Krane drove from Narvik yesterday, he will pick us up in Oslo in a few hours. We are 8 people in his bus, should be around 24 hours of driving to get to Bassano. We might stop at Skyline in southern Germany to pick up Nils-Åge’s new harness.

Weather forecast is quite good for both Italy and Norway. The newspapers here have stories of how nice the Easter will be – like they ever get it right…

I will most likely be updating these pages from Bassano, but it depends on where I can get a internet connection. GSM data have been very unstable in Bassano earlier, maybe things have improved.

BASE jumping

Yesterday Fritz and I went to see some BASE jumps from a building in Oslo. Radical stuff, it was a kick just watching it, I can really understand why people want to do it. The jump off point was 60-70 meters over the ground. Nice conditions with clear skies and a setting sun, jsut a little cold in the breeze.

After two jumps the police arrived in force, 2 cars and one motorbike, and we had to climb down with the remaining two jumpers. It’s not illegal to do BASE, but the building is private. One of the police officers was a BASE jumper, guess that’s why they showed up so quickly – to see a few jumps if they could. All they asked us for was personalia, which is normal procedure according to the locals.

Fritz took a few pictures and some film clips, the film clips are in Windows Media format. Click on image for a larger view. Clip 1 – 860KB and Clip 2 – 560KB

Windy weekend

Nice weather, but way to windy to go flying the last few days. The weather station at Sundvollen reported 26m/s on Friday. Sunday was better, but I had some other plans. Today seems nice though…

Salad bowl

I’ve been flying with a Icaro Skyrunner helmet for quite a few years now. I got my first one when I started flying, and it saved my life when I flew headfirst into a rock after a failed takeoff from Vole. The one I fly with now have been with me since easter 98, and is quite beaten up by now. Icaro released the 4Fight half face “head fairing” last year, looks nice but have no protection. It was quite popular, and this made Icaro design a real helmet with the same shape.

Guess what I’m gonna get for Easter ? ;-)

New CompeGPS 5.0

Just downloaded CompeGPS 5.0 and played with yesterdays tracklog, most of the new features are in the 3D mode of the program. The thermals are calculated and marked from the tracklog, and you can view the flight in “realtime” with a glider that turns and banks like real. Update and evaluation version can be downloaded from http://www.compegps.com

These images are from my flight yesterday at Sundvollen. The orange and red cylinders are thermals.

Another useful program is SeeYou, a Slovenian program originally made for Sailplane use, but nice for all free flight logging. SeeYou’s killer feature is integrated 3D maps. You can download an avaluation version from http://www.seeyou.ws Both SeeYou and CompeGPS read IGC files for the tracklog. Newest version of GpsDump can write IGC files, as well as read old flights from the international flightlog and save to IGC format. Highly recommended!