Today was totally calm and overcast in the morning, but as we drove up to Vole the wind picked up from the west. It was some heating from the sun and still flyable at the takeoff, some pilots from the XC course flew, but dit not get up. Seemed like a few “interesting” landings occured too… We never set up, and had coffe at the cafe instead.

Forecast for tomorrow is windy and wet, so I do not have high hopes… Next weekend we travel to France to fly the British leauge and the the European championships.

What a weekend, many new records and lots of new personal bests, including first HG pilot over 200 km. The paragliders had a comp in Hvittingfoss and got good flights there too.

New Records
New HG open distance record from Bismo
New HG 150 km out and return distance from Vågå
New HG 150 km out and return speed from Vågå
New PG open distance record from Vågå
New PG declared goal record from Hvittingfoss
New PG female open distance record from Hvittingfoss

I was in Vågå on Friday, and met up with Arnt and Frode to fly from Heidal. It was too strong conditions for flying PG, so Frode chose to drive for us. It seemed like a wise decision as we had some of the strongest thermals I’ve flown in, with accompanying turbulence. The combination of northerly winds and very cold air produced some real monsters coming off the leeside down the valley.

I did not warm up enough before takeoff, and I pulled a muscle in my left shoulder fighting the tight and turbulent cores with 7-10m/s lift. It was rock and roll all the way to cloudbase at 2600 where we had about 20 km/h tailwind. I went on glide and got a new rough thermal off the leeside of Teigkampen, I chose to leave it as my shoulder was begging for mercy. I still had 2000 meters, and hoped for a little calmer lift behind Vinstra. I got some strong smoother lift at Harpefoss, and Arnt joined me again. From there it was more or less straight line via Frya and Kvitfjell, before I went on a long glide over the plateau behind Tretten before finding new lift. Arnt was lower and could not go that far in to the mountains, he landed near Fåvang at about 60 km out.

The cloudstreet behind Øyer was overdeveloping, and pushed me more and more out into the blue and headwind created by the sea breeze from Mjøsa lake. I passed Lillehammer and hoped I could keep utilizing the lift created by the convergence, but cloudbase dropped from 2600 meters down to 1200 meters at the worst. It was too low to go on glide towards Moelv, so I broke off and spiralled down to a good landing at Brøttum, 98 km from takeoff. That was a new open distance personal best in Norway. Frode picked me up and we found Arnt at the pizzeria in Otta. I assume I would have made many more km if that cloudstreet had not blocked progress, I used just 2 hours on the first 90km.