Norwegian Hanggliding

Ressurected from old webserver, pics missing unfortunately

It’s been good flying this season in southern Norway. I’ve flown my first competitions, got a new glider and vario, crashed it, got some XC flights, and learned a lot.

Spring came with unstable weather, and a few good local flights around Oslo. I was in Italy this Easter, and we had great flying there, so my thermal skills was not totally frozen from a long winter. I took a week off work in early May to go flying in Vågå, and got a few XC flights before the first comp of the season in Hjartdal, a couple of hours north of Oslo. It was my first competition ever, and I got my sporting licence at briefing the first day! The weather did not cooperate, and we spent two days waiting for the rain and wind to die. Day 3 arrived with less rain and wind, but it was still very gusty at launch, about half the pilots did not fly because of the wind. I did not fly either.

The weather looked better for Day 4, still showers and gusty, but not too bad. It was a short task just down the valley, TP 1 over a bridge, TP 2 over another bridge, and to goal. As I had never flown in Hjartdal before, I started as one of the last pilots to see where other pilots found lift. It was slow going and weak lift, I got a few hundred above start and drifted down the valley. Around TP 1 there was a lot of gliders low, and more on the ground. I searched for lift over every hill and ridge but there was never enough to gain height, after the last desperate attempt close to a ridge close to TP 1 the only option was to glide over to the field where the others had landed. There was a clearing on a small hill next to the field, and as I was setting up for landing I found a thermal that took me up again. Kinda cool to climb out from there. But luck is blind, because my camera malfunctioned as I tried to take the 1. TP photo. I continued to TP 2 and fiddling with the battery hatch made the camera work again, but the valley was now in complete shadow, so I fell through trying to fly back to TP1. Had the camera worked I would have been #2 that day, bitter lesson.

Oh yeah, I got a good deal on a used Moyes CSX during the comp party, and said yes on the spot, a dozen Carlsberg probably had something to do with that quick decision…

Then came the Norwegian nationals and my 3 weeks vacation. I took my first flight with the CSX the evening I arrived in Vågå. My first impressions were something like; WOW! I love it! Compared to my Xtralite it has better static balance, more sensitive handling but a little slower on roll, much more speed and energy retention, easier to land, and better glide. Downsides are 5 kg’s extra weight, higher stall speed, and more pitch pressure on loose VG. It sideslips quite easily as well, which can be quite scary when landing. Knut Londal found this out the hard way on his first flight with the CSX, and took out a downtube.

Day 1 was cancelled because of no lift. Paal tok a sledride down, and broke his arm landing in the main LZ.

Day 2 was an out and return to Otta and back to Vågå. It was a struggle to fly the CSX at first, it needs more coordination than the Xtralite in thermals, and I did not fly good in the beginning. I was forced to take a longer route when I got low, and had a low save next to the TP. After the TP I had 4-5 gliders ahead of me, and I just followed to use them as lift markers. This proved to be a bad decision because they all had to land as they got low in a narrow valley and the headwind became strong. I was the last one down and if I had taken the straight course for goal I might have made it. Instead I got hit by turbulence trying to land on a small field, had to avoid power lines, houses and trees, and crashed on the road. I took out a downtube, the right leading edge tube, the heartbolt, bent a dive strut and a washout strut. Except for a few bruises I was OK. Oh well, back to the old Xtralite. 5 pilots to goal, I was #8 after day 1.

Day 3 was cancelled, day 4 was a race from Bøverdalen to Vågå. The conditions were very weak, and about half the pilots bombet out, including me. No one made goal.

Day 5 was another race from Bøverdalen, by now the new parts for the CSX had arrived, and it was ready to fly again. I had checked everything, but the glider had a right turn in it, and of course everybody else turned left in the thermals. It was quite good conditions, but I soon became tired fighting the glider. After about half the course it became difficult, and I found myself ridge soaring low with 6-7 other pilots. Nobody seemed to get up, so I just flew along the ridge hoping for a miracle. Another pilot followed, but glided off very low to the next ridge. I saw him disappear behind the ridge, and chose another hill that did not give any lift. I landed in a grass field that belonged to “The Farmer from Hell”, I had to pay him for the “damage” or he would call the police and all that crap. I was too tired to argue, and paid him. He then drove to the next farmers and made them ask for payment from the other pilots who landed in their fields… While breaking down, the other pilot who left the ridge came high over me, he had found weak ride lift and managed to hang on to it until he found a thermal that took him to cloudbase. 8 pilots to goal, I fell down to #17.

Day 6 arrived with nice clouds at 2600 meters, weak winds from NW, and a free distance task. After tuning the divesticks, and rechecking the glider again I took off. The glider still turned right, but it was better than last time. The day was good, and I made good use of the CSX’s glide. The breeze from Mjøsa lake met us 50 km’s down the valley, and shut down the thermals. The few pilots who crossed over to the next valley flew further than those of us who met the breeze. I landed in a field with 3 other pilots after spending almost a hour on a ridge waiting for thermals that never came. 77 km, the best of the day was Nils-Age Henden at 123 km. Up to #13.

Andreas broke his arm landing out.

Day 7 looked like the day. Cloudbase at 3100 meters, weak Southerly winds, and evenly spread cumulus everywhere.

The task was out and return over 81 km. I started early and was rewarded with 7 m/s lift directly to cloudbase. It was easy on course to TP but I lost 50 meters too much taking the TP, and had to scratch back up with 3 others. Came back with way too much height, and dived from 3000 meters to cross the goal line at least 500 meters too high. It felt really good to cross the line for the first time, although I was shaking from the cold glide. 11 pilots to goal, I was #6 more than 1 hour behind Werner on the Exxtacy.

We won the club team contest with more than 1000 points. I ended up as #11, Robin Nilsen won.

The next week was mostly rain, and little flying. Olav and I then drove 1000 km to Bodø, to fly the Midnight Sun Cup. The weather demons made it difficult, but we did get to fly between the fog patches condensing in front of start. The comp is pylon flying, and spot landing for all classes, HG and PG. I took pylon 6, and came back, no one else made it past pylon 4.

Bodø is north of the Polar circle, so the sun shines all night midsummer. Lots of pilots flew at midnight to enter the ranks of “The midnight sun squadron”. The party had started long before midnight, and we had to drink all the beer, and then some. Saturday arrived with strong winds and rain, so no flying but a even bigger party, with more beer, and contests including sand caste building, song writing, and skiing! I flew Sunday but there was not enough wind to stay up on the ridge, so I glided to pylon 4, and back to win the comp. Olav was sleeping out the hangover, and did not fly, he still made 2 place. Back in Vågå after 2000 km in a car in 3 days I’m quite tired of driving, still have a week of my vacation left.

Summer flying part II

Back in Vågå from the Midnight Sun Cup, I decided to use my last vacation week there. The forecasts were quite good, but high pressure produced multiple inversion layers, no clouds, and generally made it hard to get high. Great for local flying though. The first day we were very optimistic, and drove west to Bismo, where most of the long flights in the area have started. Olav and I started, while the “Old” guys never rigged. We busted, not a chance to get up, while back at Vole other pilots got high and flew XC. At least we did try…

The next days conditions stayed the same, but the inversion layers were getting thicker and lower. Lots of pilots did fly for as long as they wanted in really nice conditions. One day there was more than 30 gliders on launch, and that’s a lot in Vågå, everybody having a great time. In the evening the winds usually pick up, and it can be quite turbulent and strong on the main LZ, a few pilots ended up in the trees.

I now had the chance to test and play with my CSX, and also test out the Vario/GPS combo. I got a new Brauniger IQ/Comp/GPS to the nationals, but never had the time to play with it until now. First I mounted the propeller type speed sensor on the GPS so that it stuck out in front. I keep the GPS and vario mounted on the bottombar in front of my face. This did not work well, the instrument never showed speeds above 45 km/h. We tested the sensor by sticking it out the car window to compare with the speedometer and it worked great in the car. I then moved it to the left downtube, so that the sensor is to the left and in front of the nosewire, this worked well. Olav then made a permanent arrangement for his sensor, by drilling a hole in the DT, and using some parts from a TV antenna. The sensor can be aligned with the DT when packed, and just turned out in front when setting up. I want a system like that, but I’ll use the winter to figure out a cooler device than something made of an old antenna and glue :-) Lots of pilots here fly with the sensor on the bottombar, and everybody is complainig about the sensors breaking. Now we know that mounting on the bottombar is a bad thing.

With the speed sensor indicating the right speed I entered a rough polar, and tried the final glide calculator and also the “glide to next TP with so and so height” function. It worked! You still have to anticipate sink and lift along the route, but found it useful while flying a known route with turnpoints in the GPS, as well as on final glide. I like the speed to fly function on the Brauniger, but I usually turn it on manually when I’m starting a long glide, and turn it off again when thermalling. The instrument does this by itself, but the default 7 seconds of sink before switching to s2f it too short. I know this can be changed, but I have always forgotten it while setting up. I confused the s2f sound with the vario sound while searching for lift, and started to turn in sink. Think I’ll set it to 20 sec, and see if it’s better.

I have been unable to make the CSX fly straight, even after adjusting the divestruts to their limits it turned right on hands off. Yesterday I took the glider to Finn, our excellent Moyes dealer, and we disassembled the glider. It turned out the left leading edge was bent. I had not spotted this while replacing the right LE, it had no dents in it. Strange that the glider turned right when it was the left LE that was bent. Hopefully this will make the glider go straight again, my wrists used to hurt after flying/fighting the glider in 30 minutes.

The weather in the rest of July was wet and windy, and I had to get back to work. Back in Oslo it was good to sleep in my own bed after 3 weeks in a sleeping bag.

Blue conditions in Vågå

I drove to Vågå one more time to fly the “Milsukern” competition in mid August. It’s a pure XC weekend comp, the pilot who gets the longest distance win. Saturday was grey and windy. I did not fly as I thought there was no XC potential. I was wrong, a few pilots got away and quite far. The forecast for Sunday was even worse, so we had a party that really took off. Sunday came with what looked like good conditions, but no one got far.

This comp usually marks the end of the XC season here, but last weekend Erik and I drive to Ringerud north of Oslo with XC on our mind. The conditions were very unstable, it overdeveloped quickly, and by 12:30 it was overcast and switching to the back at take-off. Erik took off first and found some lift, but he flew too far out from the hill, and ended up scratching low. I took off a few minutes later and turned right into a broken weak thermal that took me 100 meters over start. Erik had to land, and yelled WHACK! on the radio before I could reach the PTT :-)

After getting trashed in lee-side turbulence I got to cloudbase at 1350 meters, and started a glide south. The whole area was now in shadow, and I did not find a trace of lift anywhere. At cloudbase there was good 30-40 km/h tail wind, but below 1000 meters it died to 5 km/h. My only hope was a few sunny patches of lift on the other side of the valley, I aimed for those, and like a miracle there was lift. I gained a few hundred meters but the sun soon disappeared again, and I aimed for a hilltop behind a shooting range further south. Scratching low over that hilltop I heard shots from the shooting range, and I was in the ricochet path low over the targets! Now I know how a fighter pilot feels under ground fire. I stuffed the bar to get out of there while shouting obscenities at the shooting range. Hope they heard me.

I flew on further south, drifting slowly with some weak stuff, but getting lower all the time. Landed on a field, and called Erik on the mobile so he could pick me up. While waiting for Erik I spotted the largest caterpillar I’ve seen here. It’s head looked like the “Brainbug” in the movie “Starship Troopers”. I picked up with a stick to have a better look, and as I looked at it the damn ting sprayed some really stingy stuff in my face. I was so surprised I fell on my back. Later Erik and I agreed it had to be a butterfly caterpillar, jealous at me for flying XC while he was still crawling on the ground.

It was a very short XC, but it was so good to get up and away this late in the season.

Sundvollen, our nearest site outside Oslo is closed all summer as the LZ is a cornfield. It should be harvested by now, so we’ll go there tomorrow. The forecast is weak VNV and unstable conditions witch should be perfect. I’ve never flown XC there, but maybe tomorrow.