The winds were from the North West, and we had to go up to the takeoff on the other side of the valley here. It was windy and some lenticularis clouds on the sky. I’ve never been at the takeoff before, and the walk up there was too far and wet through the marshes. We only brought the harnesses, at the takeoff it was windy and no way the paragliders would fly. We chose to go to Notodden and try to get some aerotowing instead of carrying the gliders 1,5km and flying in what looked like quite turbulent air.

We set up at the airstrip, and Robin made a round with the trike around 18:30, but reported too much wind to tow safely. When we had packed up and left it calmed down to almost no wind. The sailplane pilots reported making 3500 meters in the wave, and turbulent air from 2000 meters and down to ground.

Today was forecasted better, and it looked good this morning. Now the lenticularis are back, with some wind at ground level. We postponed the briefing until 14:00. Forecast for tomorrow is more of the same…

This weekend it’s Hjardal Cup, I will travel there tomorrow morning. It will probably be a good competition unless the wind becomes too strong. The forecast is OK, but might make it difficult at the takeoff if the NW winds become strong.

The cup is for both hang and paragliders, I think it’s fun when we can all to fly together, and the paragliders ususally take off before us and make good thermal markers.

We got some good days flying this weekend at Frya. Hedemarken hanggliderklubb made a well arranged competition, and I think everyone had a good weekend. I drove up on Friday afternoon and met Robin at takeoff. It was clouded, but the sun broke through as we got ready, and I got a 20 minute flight thermalling in marginal conditions. Robin had his trike ready at the Airstrip, I had the towing rope in my harness and landed on the airstrip. Robin towed me up three times so I could play a little with the setup of the glider between each flight to feel the difference.

Continue reading Frya Cup 2004 →

Fredrik sendt this picture of me at Rubbio takeoff the first comp day.

A quick update, more later.

We arrived in Bassano at 04:30, did not get into the hotel and spent the night in the car. Weather was OK, so we got a 70 km task with some overdevelopment around the course. My glider had a nasty right spiral, too much to handle for me after no real flying since the world. I gave up flying the task, and just flew back to the main landing to adjust the glider and fly one more flight at night to try to get it more straight. It’s better now, still need some tuning.

Today is gray, some rain, and no comp.

We arrived in Garmish after about 18 hours on the road through Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Very good test for the road navigation part of the GPSMAP 60CS, it performed very good, and gave us directions all the way to the parking lot outside the expo in Garmish.

The free flight expo 2004 was nice, lots of stuff on display, but no really big news for me. The hangglider makers seemed to focus on the beginner and intermediate marked, the only racing glider on display was the new Moyes Litespeed S with a “smoke” sail. I picked up a new licence of CompeGPS, and talked to the programmers about the features regarding the competition version of the program, the next version will include all RACE parts so we can score a comp with just CompeGPS, very nice! The new CompeGPS version has a really nice 3D engine, it was really impressive to see with good satelite photos as maps.

We spent the night in Küssen, and drove to Skyline in Übersee to arrange picking up our gliders from the airport in München, and I also needed to pick up a new harness as Moyes did not make mine in time to send to with the glider. Around noon we got the bad news that the gliders were not in München after all, but probably on a truck somwhere on the road from Amsterdam. If we are lucky they will arrive tomorrow… Crap, but not totally unexpected.

I spend the day fitting parachute and adjusting my new Skyline Zero Drag Racer harness, I bought one of the demo harnesses from the Skyline stand at the expo so I had something to fly with until my Moyes Matrix arrive. The Skyline fitted me nicely, and it seemed very nice and smooth. I’ll see after a few hours in the air with it, maybe I’ll be happy with it so I’ll cancel the Moyes Matrix. I also got a instrument pod for the Brauniger Compeo, to make it more practical to have on the basebar.

All we can do now is wait and see if we get some gliders tomorrow afternoon, if not we have to get them on Wednesday, and drive straight to Bassano. Probably we will have do the first flight with the new gliders the first competition day, which really sucks… But nothing we can do now…

Nils Åge and I drive south to the thermals in a few hours. The plan is to drive to Innsbrück and see the Free Flight 2004 expo there (and probably buy lots of “nice to have” stuff). Then we will pick up our gliders who should arrive from Australia in München on Monday, and after a stop at Skyline drive south to Bassano.
In Bassano we will freefly the first few days to tune the gliders and get into flying shape again, then fly the 5 day competition. After that Olav, Arnt and I will stay to fly 4 or 5 more days of the Swedish comp in Feltre the week after Easter. There’s more HG pilots from Norway than there have been in a while coming to Bassano, I think 5 or 6 cars are on the way south now.

I’ve loaded road maps of europe into the GPS, and we should have no problem finding our way. The Bassano maps seemed quite detailed, so maybe we can find a better route to Electronic Star (Insider).

If I can get online I will update these pages, have a nice easter!

The Hay Open competition have had 4 days of flying out of 6 so far.. Craig Coomber is in the lead right now, with John Jr. hot on his tail. The conditions seem to be the normal blue and inverted, while the winds have died down enough to make an out&return for task 4. Results from the Moyes website

I have planned next years season, if it all comes through it should be a good one with lots of flying.
I’ve signed up for the US Nationals in Florida in April, and might go to Bassano the week before that if there’s a competition on. After Florida there’s a few competitions in Norway, and then the Europeans in France. The Nordics and Nationals will be arranged in Vågå the last week of July. After that I will have a long break until December when the preparation to the Worlds in Australia kick off.