Ringerudkollen

I had to work Thursday and Friday, so I had to skip the planned Acro course in Voss. It was overdeveloping Saturday so no flying, but the weather cleared up and I went for a bike ride around Oslo instead.

Sunday looked very promising, I was up at 8:00 to get ready to go to Ringerudkollen early and if possible fly some XC southwest. Erik Vermaas called to get a ride since his car broke down yesterday on the way out to go flying. We met Bjørn and Erling at the landing, and went up to takeoff. It was unusually calm, the CU’s were building high around us, but no thermal activity where we were getting ready.

Erik took off after some paragliders were able to soar at takeoff height. I waited for 20 more minutes until a few paragliders were climbing good over the south takeoff. I took off straight into the thermal, and quickly climbed out over takoff, but it stopped at about 1000 meters. The conditions were strange, and even if there was no wind the cores were easily lost. I sunk back down to takeoff again before getting up together with Bjørn and Erik to 1300 meters. Since we had no permission to go higher into the TMA, any serious XC was out of the question. It’s not possible to cross the mountain over to Sokna with only 1370 meters under the TMA. We flew down the ridge, in nice smooth conditions, and landed at a small airstrip in a field. Egil and Erling had to wait in crosswind for a while, and Erling joined Bjørn and me at the airstrip later while Egil probably flew home.

Erik and I had meatballs, coffe and icecream at Vik to finish of a good flying day. The summer is here now, it was shorts and t-shirt temperatures all day.