Another blue morning, but earlier cumulus clouds than yesterday. We went up to Salknappen because it’s a higher takeoff that should make it easier to get up in stable conditions. We got a shorter task than yesterday, there was some overdevelopment on the original long task that was planned.

The conditions seemed a bit slow on takeoff, but it was soarable most of the time. The start gate was at 15:30, and I got ready to take off when the first pilots started taking off 40 minutes before the start gate.

I got stuck with one pilot in front of me and crosswind at takeoff. We stood there for 20 minutes before we had a brief period with launchable conditions. So that was it, I lost the start gate with 15-20 minutes.

From the start gate I had a long and very lonely glide to Otta where I got low, but finally found a strong and turbulent thermal that took me up to 2300 meters again to take the first TP. I met up with Jens Krotseng at Otta, but he went for a detour before crossing over Kvam to the second TP. At the turnpoint at Kvam I took out the camera while thermalling up under a nice cloud.

Towards Rondande, nice clouds.

Looking ahead towards Otta, Heidal and Vågå.

I had a OK run towards Goal, and I think I got in at 4. place. I would have been happier with a better start, but I guess I flew pretty fast. We’ll see tomorrow on the results. Tomorrow is the last day in the comp, forecast is good, and I guess we will get a semi-local task to get pilots back in time to the party.

Day 1 was rather slow and northerly winds forced us into Bøverdalen for a late task. We hoped to fly back to Vaagaa, but rainshowers blocked the path, and we made a short 50km local task starting at 19:00 after the rain had passed. Nobody made goal, and I only got minimum distance (So much for going first)

Day 2 was canceled due to windy and general crap conditions.

Day 3 looked promising but the clouds never burned off, and we got a slow day again. We got an optimistic 79km task, but we waited around at takeoff until 15:30, when I took off as one of the early ones. I found good lift and got straight up with Bjørn J and Arnt “Kjakan” Opsanger. Arnt and I took the second to last start gate at 16:00 and went on glide into the shade. We found nothing in the shade, and got stuck low after the first glide for 15-20 minutes. When we finally got a few hundred meters we basically just glided out again together with around 10 other pilots. Nobody made goal again.

Tomorrow should be very good, at least the forecast is exellent

Results at http://www.vaagaaopen.no