I always tend to forget some important stuff when it’s been a while since the last competiton. During the season all my gear is packed in the harness all the time, or charging in very close proximity. I have not been competing since July, so now much of my comp gear have been packed away and I need to make sure I found everything again.

Since I’m only allowed 23kg and one bag on the plane, I can’t bring much extras. I’ve assembled everything I need on the living room floor, and started picking out the things to leave at home.

I made a list for myself, and here’s the result with “must have” gear;

1. My Skyline ZDFR harness is the main thing (Big black bag on the right), it also contains aerotow releases + small glider spares like batten tips and pip-pins not in the picture. All the stuff on the floor goes into the harness bag, minus laptop, ipod, camera, GSM phone, and vario that go in the carryon.No – I am not bringing the Skyline beanbag in the top of the picture! ;-)

   From top left;

2. The “Travel pillow” was a gift from my wife. It’s super nice – Weighs less than 200 grams but very fluffy, great for the close to 60 hours on the plane to Oz and back, and all the hours in the car for retreive. We spend a lot more time traveling around, than actually flying hanggliders.
3. Moyes caps, essential in the sun. I guess Vicki will have a new for me when I get there, this have been with me a few years now.
4. Ancle protectors from Australia. Essential to keep dry grass, thistles, spiders, snakes, and other sharp and painful objects out of the shoes when walking through the setup and goal fields. I learned this the hard way in Manilla 9 years ago.
5. Mosquito net from Australia. Essential to keep the millions of agressive flies out of the face, you need this in Oz.
6. Helmet from Italy.
7. Summer flying gloves. My regular Skyline gloves are way to warm for Oz, I got these at Wal-Mart in Big Spring, Texas during the last Worlds. Very good leather that takes the abuse from the VG rope.
8. Sandals from Mexico. Cheap, comfy and packs nicely into the harness.
9. Flying shoes from Brazil. Very light and thight shoes, fits in my very slim harness boot. It amazes me, the boots and boot equipment that are available today, If you just go to retail stores locally, you really are missing out on the present online movement, let me suggest www.workbootsnerds.com for boots.
10. Skyline Sella flying jacket.

    Second row from left;

11. Camelback, essential, I will dehydrate without it.
12. Hood to keep the sweat from running into my eyes and drip onto the inside of the visor while waiting for the tow, and when struggling low. (Not that I want to do that…)
13. Two pairs of sunglassses. I seem to break one pair in every comp.
14. Sunblock for the lips. Essential for my very pale nordic skin.
15. Mini variometer, for backup in case the Compeo quits unexpectedly.
16. Superglue. Fix everything from broken battens to cuts in the skin.
17. Radio, headset, and charger.
18. Backup GPS and charger for NiMH AA’s.
19. Powerball. Great for training and avoiding RSI in wrists from too much flying in short time. I’ve not done a thermal in 4 months, and will be hurting after a week in Forbes.
20. LED flashlight.
21. Multitool.
22. Wire antenna for radio.
23. Spare quick-links for the bridle and weaklinks.
24. Passport with the Australian tourist visa and FAI licences inside :-)
25. Nokia E71 GSM phone with charger and blu-tooth headset. I will blog from this while on the road.
26. Nokia CDMA phone from Telstra, charger. This works where there is no GSM (At least two years ago, maybe the coverage is better now. Last time we had very poor GSM just 20km out of Forbes)
27. Compeo+ instrument, mains and car charger, carbon fibre tube to make a pitot speedsensor.
    
    Third row from left;
    
28. 6 pairs of boxers, 6 T-shirts, 2 shorts, 1 Loki softshell pants. All microfibre to save weight and keep cool in the heat. I have to sacrifice clothes for weight.I’ll buy socks as I need them in Forbes, and we always get some nice shirts in the competition. Both Forbes and Mt. Beauty has a laundry. I’ll travel in jeans, and since I’m leaving a cold place I’ll wear something with long sleeves and fleece.
29. Maps of Vicoria, and NSW. Notebook to keep tabs of costs in the team.
30. Permanent marker to mark the VG rope. I asked for a new rope on the glider, Moyes never markes it, and I always forget to bring the marker to the airfield the first week after getting a new glider. Not this year!
31. Small bandaid to keep in harness.
32. EU to Oz powerplugs.
33. The speakers for my Ipod was a christmas gift from my wife, nice on days with no flying. Runs on AA’s, also has a mains adapter.
34. Ipod with the good headset from Shure + a Sony noise-cancelling headset for the 2 long flights.
35. Camera and charger. 4 + 2 Gigs of memory cards should be enough for a day or two.
36. TomTom GPS with Oz maps for the car. We’ll have local drivers, but sometimes they get lost too :-)

    Bottom row, from left;

37. USB sticks, RSA VPN keys, etc. Essential for a IT dude like me.
38. Laptop charger, Lenovo T61 laptop, and APC external Li-Ion battery. The extra battery keeps the laptop running for about 8 hours on the plane, enough for a Civilisation-IV game, or 3 DVD’s in case the inflight stuff is boring. The APC battery also have a USB port that give power, so I can run the Ipod continously for 2 weeks off that battery.

In addition I have small bag with toothbrush, toothpaste, soaps, etc.

So what did I forget this year? Setting up this list helped me remember quite a few items like the flying jacket, mosquito net and the CDMA phone that I do not use at comps at home or in Europe.

Can’t find my speedsleeves anywhere, hope I can find them before I leave. I can manage without the speedsleeves but it would be nice to be able to choose between the jacket and just T-shirt and speedsleeves.

I just noticed that there’s 10 different chargers on the floor! Can we have universal chargers soon please?

It’s that time of the season where we mostly just get to talk about flying. This weekend is the last board meeting in our federation, and we do a combined meeting with both the operational and political leadership of hang and paragliding.

Here’s the participants, from the left – Bjørn Hammer – rules and airspace, Olav Kant – safety, Arne Hillestad – operations and Daily manager, Knut Nygaard – Chairman, Arne Kristian Boiesen – Boardmember, Kjell Chr. Krane – Training, Lene Markeng – Boardmember, Ronny Helgesen – Operations, Øivind Rommen – Boardmember. Christer Bonde could not come to the meeting.

It’s also the time to go to the right side of equator, I’ve just packed up my Litespeed and sendt it to Moyes. I’ve asked for a new sail on the glider, as nobody wanted to buy the glider this fall. The frame is all carbon with all the nice bits anyway, so there is no big reason to replace the frame.

And all packed up ready to go. The size of the box means I have to pay for 76kg, so I decided to ship it with the old sail on to protect the frame in case some dude with a forklift have a bad day while handling it.

I’ll arrive in Sydney at 06:30 on newyears day, after spending the 31/12 inside a Boeing 777 enroute from London. I think it crosses the dateline somwhere over India, but that’s OK, at least there will be free drinks courtesy of British Airways :-)

I’ll fly the comp in Forbes and Bogong, but I’ll have to leave Bogong a day early to make my flight back home, and then on to Barcelona to the Cisco Networkers conference.

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