Category Archives: Competitions

Competitions, Hanggliding

Forbes 2010, briefing day 5

149km out&return, but to the old Worlds paddock just south of Forbes. The airport complained that we were crossing the runway too low all the time, and we have to move to another goal field. As long as we get to fly back home I’m happy with it.

Weather looks good, forecast for base up to 3000 meters, and NW winds, low chance of overdevelopment.  Should be a good day again. Yesterday the thunderstorms stayed to the north of us, it was actually very blue on the course line.

Olav is sick today, he thought it was the seafood from a few days back, but it’s still not OK.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Forbes 2010, day 3

1 Comment

This server was down due to some power problems in the datacenter, hope it’s fixed now.

Yesterday was pretty good again for me, got in as number 5 across the line, and got 7. place. We saw heavy rain on course, and it was a lot of shade from towering clouds for the last part of the course. Olav landed about 30 km out from goal, and he got to wait under a tree while the storm cam over and dumped wild rainshowers.

When the gustfront from the storm his us at goal it was extremely strong and violent. Check out Jamie’s pictures at http://naughtylawyertravels.blogspot.com/2010/01/wild-day-at-goal.html

Sorry for short updates, no time to upload pictures as we have to get some food and go to the briefing.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Happy new year, Forbes day 1

Lars Olav, Georgia and I spendt new years even in Sydney, watching the spectacular fireworks in the harbour, with 500 000 other specators, I’ve never been in such a big crowd before.

The next morning Olav picked us up at the hotel, and we drove to the Moyes factory to pick up gliders, and then to Forbes. My bag did not arrive with me at the airport, so I had to buy a helmet at Moyes so I could fly the next day. My harness with some of my flying gear was already at Moyes, but helmet, clothes, shoes, and lots of other stuff was still missing with the bag.

At Forbes it rained, so we just slept and got up early the next day for a test flight. It still rained in the morning, but soon enough the sun cam out and we could tow up. I had a nice flight quite early, and landed after about one hour happy that everything worked out.

The next thing that happens is that one Australian pilot parked his kingposted Malibu in from of my glider, and just walks away leaving it there in the wind, the glider gets picked up and the kingpost land on my top surface, making a nice hole and stretches the sail. I must be cursed af Forbes, last year I had a similar expirience. I could tape up the glider, this year so I can still fly, but it’s annoying to say the least. The responsible pilot claims he has no money and cannot buy me a new sail. Funny that since he has a new Malibu, all the hanggliding gear, and can afford to travel and Aerotow at Forbes. We’ll see what this ends up with…

Anyway, yesterday was the first comp day, after some changes we end up with a 140 something task, over quite wet terrain. I took the first start, and struggled to stay up for most of the day after that. I’m very rusty after no real competition flying for a year, and almost no flying at all last season. I quickly lost most of the pilots I flew with, and got very low at the first turnpoint. We never got more than 1100m AGL, so it was short glides and much thermalling in weak conditions.

From the turnpoint towards goal the terrain was very wet, it looked like flying over swamplands at times, and the roads were flooded in places. I did my best to stay up and get to goal, but I did not find the last thermal I needed over a tractor plowing a field, and had to land around 30 km from goal. I was extremely tired and not very focused by then, after more than 4 hours in the air.

On the way back to Forbes we stopped in Parkes to pick up my bag that finally arrived, 4 days late.

Competitions

At LHR, waiting…

2 Comments

The fog was dense at OSL airport yesterday evening, and the captain of the SK 737 we flew in from Northern Norway aborted the landing and did a new approach due to problems with the ILS instruments. The second attempt was good and smooth in very poor visibility.

This morning we got up and Fredrik drove us back to OSL in the -13 degrees and fog. The flight to Heathrow was on time, and we are currently waiting at LHR at the Bridge cafe. We have a Singapore Airlines flight on an Airbus 380 via Singapore tonight, it’s going to be interesting to fly in the A380.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Bassano day 3 and 4

Good weather and good conditions, still a little low cloudbase at times, but good thermals and nice

Yesterday we had some major drama – First Nils Fauske had a midair with a paraglider on the ridge between the takeoff and the observatory. Nils was established in a thermal with a few other hanggliders, the paraglider basically flew straight into the gaggle and Nils hit his lines.

Nils tumbled and fell upside down, he threw his chute, but it did not open due to the slow decent. He was less than a 100 meters above the ground when they hit, and he landed in some low bushes without major damage to himself or the glider. Luckiest man today!

The paraglider apparently flew on, missing some lines…

Here’s a picture of Nils after the accident. He got a small wireburn from the rear wires when he tubled, he was very glad to have a full face helmet, or the wire might have taken off more of his face.

Nils with wireburn
Nils with wireburn

Olav Opsanger came into goal, turned around to land, and got hit by turbulence from a glider landing in front of him, it was windy so the wind gradient probably amplified the problem. He hit the ground face first, and had some bleeding in the face. He was taken to hospital for a X-ray of the neck. It was fine, and he walked out a few hours later with just a stiff neck and swollen lip. He broke the basebar on the glider. I filmed the landing, but I was too far away for the footage to be useful.

Here’s a picture of Olav after the X-ray.

Olav X-ray
Olav X-ray

I had an uneventful but short flight, as the paragliders were infesting the rigde, and it was a bit stressful to have so many clearly unexpirienced pilots around in the thermals. So I flew out on the flats to enjoy the nice air with more room. I filmed most of the flight, but I can’t upload it until I get home, the internet link is way to slow here.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Bassano 2009, day 1 and 2

Three weeks ago I hurt my shoulder, by throwing a snowball of all things, I stretched some muscles and a got an infection in a tendon. I’ve been on some drugs that have helped me get movement back and the pain is mostly gone now. I only did a few short flights on the training glider, and I was not sure if I would be able to fly the comp in Bassano.

We traveled to Milano on Monday, and arrived at the Garden Relais hotell at the landing site late Monday night to meet up with the rest of the Norwegian team that is here. I had already booked and paid tickets, so I might as well take it as a vacation if I could not fly much.

The weather has been really nice the last two days, sunny and warm with good lift. I flew both days, the first day I could not fly more than 30 minutes, today it was around one hour before the shoulder started hurting too much.

I will not enter the competition, as it means more aggressive flying and more traffic – not good for the healing process, but I hope to freefly where I can take it more easy and not overload the injury again.

We’re around 15 Norwegians here, and the forecast for the rest of the week is great. Looks like the comp will be well attended too, many top pilots are here.

Setup area

Competitions, Hanggliding

Bogong Cup 2009, Day 7

The forecasted winds came through, and the day was cancelled at the morning briefing. We did some glider tuning, and packed up to head back to Sydney. The forecast for the next few days are not good for flying.

So 2 tasks out of 9 the way it looks now, not very good for an Australian comp. My flight from Sydney is Thursday afternoon, and I’ll be in Oslo Friday afternoon local time.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Bogong Cup 2009, day 5 and 6

Yesterday looked like a very good day, no winds and good thermals. We went to Mt. Buffalo and set up among the rocks there. The takeoff is a ramp off a cliff with nothing under it for a 1000 meters. Spectacular! I was number 3 to take off, as we have reversed the top 1/3 for the takeoff order. I did not think about the steep cliff launch until i looked back after I had launched and saw the vertical dropoff.

The task was 140 something via a new turnpoint on top of Feathertop(?) mountain, back to the top of Mt. Porepunkah at Bright, over to the Kiewa valley north end, and back to Mt. Beauty.

The air was rough again, and it was hard work in the start gaggle waiting for the start gate to open. The day was totally blue, with strong turbulent lift at times, handling the big RS4 was not easy. The air was just as turbulent when gliding as thermalling. Going with the gaggle would be the strategy for racing. I had a good run towards the first TP flying with the lead gaggle, but as I glided in towards the TP in sink we spread out, I was on top and went to the right and found the sink, bigtime. I was flushed off the ridge in 5-6m/s sink, and had to struggle for a long time to get back up high. The TP was at 1700 meters, and the inversion started at 1600, so it took 3 tried before I could get in there and get the TP.

I glided off back to Bright with 2 other gliders, the lead gaggle was long gone by then and nowhere to be seen. We struggled low at Bright and had to take some crappy lift to get back up over the mountain. The 2 other gliders landed at Bright, and I suddenly felt very alone in the air. Gliding back to the last TP in the Kiewa valley I finally spotted some other gliders, but they were low and struggling, I made the mistake of doing some turns over them instead of going straight for the TP that was 3 km upwind, from where I could have glided back to the small gaggle. I lost 200m there, and took the TP very low and started slowly drifting back towards goal stopping in every solid feeling lift. But the day was shutting down and I was low in the middle of the valley, so after 15 km I had to land, 20km out from Goal. Just one more thermal would have brought be in, and into the top 10 overall. But hindsight is easy…

Today we went to Mystic, in hope that the forecast strong northerly would not be too strong. We waited on the hill for a while, as the gusts got stronger it became clear that it was not very good. The day was canceled at 14:30, and we went to a nice spot in the river north of the Porepunkah airstrip.

Competitions, Hanggliding

Bogong Cup 2009, day 4

Finally some flying! The winds were really strong during the night, but calmed down and was quite light in  the morning. We drove up to Mustic at Bright, and set up in the dustbowl there. (Some lucky bastards got to set up on the carpet :-))

We got a 120 something task, back to Mt. Beauty airstrip via 3 TP. The air was rough at takeoff and I was dead tired before the start gate. Taking the first start gate I got stuck low on a ridge just after the start circle, and lost a lot of time, but I was lucky to not land there. I watched Olav and Robert Reisinger land under me, just as thought I was doomed too I found a nice core and got back up again together with Gerolf and Lucas. It was headwind and difficult to the TP, the inversion stopped us at 1400 meters, and it felt like the 20 km to the TP took forever. From the first TP it was OK and I stayed high until the last TP where we had to cross the valley and came back low on the ridge.

Working up from there with Davis Straub and a few other pilots I had a OK run, and as usual found all the best lift while on final glide. 11. place, not too bad, and I’m happy to not have landed at the start.

Today we go to Mt. Buffalo, looks like a good day again.