Category Archives: Hanggliding

More meetings, Oz 2009

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.

Arbeidsmøte
Workshop

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.

Shortpacking the Litespeed RS
Shortpacking the Litespeed RS
Ready to go
Ready to go

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.

Nordic meeting in Iceland

The annual Nordic hang and paragliding committee is meeting in Iceland this year. We are rotating between the member countries in order, so next year we will meet in another country. The meeting is helt in November when it’s not very flyable in the nordics.

Here we have just started the meeting at Agust’s office, and the sun is rising at 9:45 (Iceland is 12 degrees west). Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway are represented in the meeting.

Nordic meeting 2008
Nordic meeting 2008

The goal of the meeting is to coordinate the work of the committee through the year, and evaluate and approve bids for the Nordic championships, approve Nordic records. The committee also work with accidents and training matter, as well as environmental issues and coordinate these matters within the member countries.

I have a business meeting with one of our software suppliers on Monday, so I will stay until then and hopefully get time to see a little of Iceland on Sunday.

Final days, Cassini pictures from Saturn

Last weekend we did the final high flights of the course, where the students towed up high and did the full landing round. Very good conditions, and even some wind on Sunday (Which gave a few weaklink breaks) Next weekend we’ll do the footlaunch if conditions permit, and then some high flights from mountain takeoff.

NASA’s Cassini space probe reached Saturn in 2004, and is kept very busy gathering science data and pictures. The images of the moon Enceladus are really cool! Here’s one shot of Enceladus, with Saturn in the background. You can see the shadows of Saturn’s rings on the surface of Saturn.

Enceladus with Saturn in the background

More pictures here;
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/enceladus_up_close.html

And from JPL directly;
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/index.cfm

Saturn approach in 2004

Saturn
Saturn

Tandem flight on kids TV

I flew a tandem aerotow some weeks back, it was filmed for a kids TV show, and broadcast yesterday morning. You can find the clip at the production company web site http://www.fabelaktiv.no

Klick on “Hut I Heita” on the right on the front page to view the clip.

It was fun to make it, and we had perfect conditions with sunny fall weather and calm winds. I hope we gained some publicity, and maybe some kids will grow up and want to become hangglider pilots in the future!

Ridge soaring season

I had two nice ridge soaring flights the last weeks. Last Thursday Gunnar and I went to Sundvollen backed up by a nice forecast. As we arrived a Paraglider started and stayed up for some seconds before gliding out to land. (A student by the looks of the flying position, feet wide, arms locked :-))

It was forecast less wind during the day, and we set up quickly. Gunnar borrowed my Malibu, and got off before me. He did not stay close enough and fell through. I took off with my Litespeed RS, and slowly got up in front of launch, before gliding to the right and hooking up on the main ridge. Very smooth, lots of 0.1 m/s lift. The RS is very sensitive to the air, and seeks out be best lift almost by itself.

Malibu hiding it's kingpost, no need to be ashamed!
Malibu hiding it's kingpost, no need to be ashamed!

After about 1 hour ridge soaring I usually get bored, it was nice conditions still. But Gunnar was waiting, so I spin down to the landing to drive him up for a second try. He did much better now, but the conditions were just too weak to stay up in front of launch.

Yesterday it was too windy for our beginner course, but Steinar convinced me to try Grefsenkollen. It’s a site in the middle of Oslo, and I’ve never flown there before. The landing zone is a footballfield for kids, full of obstructions, goals, and not safe for a high performance hangglider. Just right for the Malibu in other words :-)

It was windy and gusty, more than 10 m/s in the gusts, and quite turbulent by the looks of it.  So we quickly set up while the paraglider pilots packed up. Steinar got off in a lull, and seemed to find nice and smoot ridge lift. I got ready, but had to wait through a period of strong wind and gusts before I could get off.

The landing zone
The landing zone

A short video from the takeoff below. We did some very nice close passes, but both of us had dead batteries in the camera. It was super nice light, so that was a shame. Next time perhaps.

[media id=3 width=640 height=480]

Fall summary

So, it’s been a rather long blogging hiatus for me, sorry for not updating much lately. I’ve been working, not doing much flying after the nationals, but we’re starting a new hanggliding beginners course now so I finally have a excuse to get out and get airborne again.

A short summary of flying related stuff since the last update;

The last day of the nationals was very good, with epic conditions and many happy faces in goal. We got a 91km task, with a FAI 50km triangle to start with, then back SE to Aasarbrua, via the bridge in the centre of Vaagaa and to goal. Conditions were a little slow in the beginning, typical late summer and not extremely unstable, but we got to 3000 meters towards the end of the task.

I got 6. place overall in the competition, I was not too pleased with my performance at the time, but in retrospect it was a fun competition to fly in since I was finally free of the organization, and could just concentrate on my own flying, then again maybe I was too relaxed and did not really push hard enough.

I also received my new Moyes Malibu hangglider, and I got to test it gliding down from Vole one late evening during the nationals, and I flew it at Tronfjell toplanding 9 times. The Malibu is a great glider, flies like a dream and handles even better. It’s extremely forgiving, landing and talkeoff characteristics feels superb. I just wish we had costal soaring site with top landing nearby. I should probably go looking for one…

Some photos by Stein Edgard Strandli.

After the nationals I was back in Vaagaa arranging a 4 day comp for the paragliders. It was fun, we got unstable conditions, but 2 days of very good flying. I flew the course with the paragliders, looking out for overdevelopment and filming a bit from the air.

Back in Oslo the weather was great, but was swamped in work and could not get out and fly much. The meet at Tronfjell was as aways in late August, and this year the conditions were super nice. Fantastic top landing conditions, 40-50 pilots, great thermals, cloudbase at 2500m, just perfect.

This week we started the next beginner course, so I will be getting out a lot more to fly and teach hanggliding.

Vaagaa Open 2008, Day 4

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.

Vaagaa Open 2008, Day 1 – 3

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

New glider ordered

So I just ordered a new hangglider, the new Moyes Malibu. I bought it to see if I like to have two gliders, the Malibu is just for pure fun flying when I do not need the performance of the Litespeed RS. If I do not fly it much I can always sell it without much loss. The market here needs more gliders like the Malibu, Fun, and Falcon, so that beginners can get a modern and easy glider after learning to fly.

I think these are the same colours as I ordered, looks cool with the “inlaid” design.

The Malibu