Brasilia Open 2016, task 1 and 2

Olav Opsanger, Erland Åmot, Georgia and me are in Brasilia to fly the Brasilian Championships and the Pre-Worlds here. Two competitions in a row to get plenty of practice and experience for next year’s worlds.

We are traveling with our hanggliders shortpacked and without sail, packed in some really nice travel bags that Skyline provided us just in time for the travel. Checking in the gliders at OSL went fine, but we saw the gliders were not loaded onto the Luthansa Airbus 321 that we had booked the first flight to Frankfurt. We had paid extra and got confirmation from Lufthansa that they could take our hanggliders, so we were not happy, and the SAS agent that handled the gate was not exactly helpful, telling us it was our problem to get the gliders to Frankfurt ourselves…

All padded and packed
All padded and packed

Lufthansa saved the day in the end and got the gliders on a SAS 737, so when we arrived in Brasilia after a layover in Lisboa we had 3 undamaged gliders going through customs.

We have rented a house with a big garden and pool, so it was nice mounting the sails back onto gliders and getting ready on the green grass on an overcast day.

Assembling gliders in Brasilia
Assembling gliders in Brasilia

The first day with Task 1 got  quite stressful when we went to the wrong takeoff at first, but the weather conditions was good for a late start, so we all got off and almost made the race start and all 3 got to goal. Lots of pilots infringed the airspace limits, but none of us went that high.

Results task 1 – https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-42/#

Task 2 saw more sun, but more wind, so we struggled with weak lift in strong winds once we got towards the end of the 109km task and the clouds shaded the ground. I landed 30km from goal, with Olav and Erland behind me at the last TP.

No results yet for task 2.

Weather looks good tomorrow, and a bit iffy sunday, with great forecast for the rest of the week.