Category Archives: Hanggliding

Competitions, Hanggliding

The European Championships 2008, Day 1

First day was cancelled around noon due to rain and low cloudbase. We had ofcourse set up and had the first showers soak us and our gliders. Most pilots tried to glide down between the showers, I packed up and went to the hotel to work and do some emails. Long term forecast look bleak to say the least…

Long term

I really hope the forecast gets this wrong.

The most annoying thing about days like this is to have to go through all the motions, briefing, driving up, setting up, and waiting half the day in rain before we finally can give up. Feels like wasting away days for nothing.

Most pilots are here, Seppi is missing from the Austrian team, and Olli pulled out from the German team. Oleg still hangs in there, and showed up there to fly the comp. Scott from Australia is here, but was not allowed into the competition because it was full and we have very limited space on takeoff.

The organization seems OK so far, with a chaotic but nice opening seremony last night. No parade in the streets due to the rain, everything was indoors, with a local drum band and kids from the local primary school entertaining us.

There will be a sprog-measurements talk this afternoon by Dennis Pagen and Gerolf will probably have a few words to say too :-)

Hanggliding, HG Course

Work in progress on the 125cc towing rig

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I went out and got some building materials to mount the scooter on a small trailer, while Steinar produced the drum that will hold the towing line. So far so good, now we just need to test it, hope the weather will allow it tomorrow.

Here’s the scooter mounted on a trailer. I made the supports and mounts from some 2 by 4, steel angles, and bolts. Feels quite solid and it should hold the scooter in place for towing and transport, at least until we can test if it works out ok. We fully recommend looking at the latest dirt scooter reviews to find out which one MyProScooter recommends the most. If not we can just put the wheels back on and sell it as a normal scooter.

Go go go!

Steinar will bring the rear wheel/drum tomorrow, and the rollers for the line.

Strapped down

Almost ready to go.

Needs some rollers for the line in front still

Hanggliding

Rain, bassano video

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It’s been quite unstable weather the last weeks here in Oslo, and not much flying. Today we went out with the Scooter to Ekeberg, and did a few tows with the remaining students in between the showers.

I spent the easter in Bassano, I did not write much here on the blog as the internet connection there was shit. I did however make a short video from one flight Ove and I did in the afternoon in Bassano. It was almost dead air, and we just glided down. The landing was quite interesting though – as you can see in this video.

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Ove had landed just 10 seconds before me, flying the same path, and I’m pretty sure it was the wingtip vortex turbulence from his glider that made my right wing drop so suddenly. There was almost no wind, no turbulence, and I had plenty of speed. Without enough airspeed it would have been a rough landing after dragging the wing. That sideways slip upwards was a quite interesting expirience…

Hanggliding

Videotest

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You do need the latest Flash plugin to view this video, get it here. This is encoded with x264, mp3, from my Canon camera, about 13 MB in total, and 640×480, progressive scan. Looks very good, and size is not horrible. Tell me what you think, and if it’s to slow to play.

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Hanggliding

Weak thermals at Sundvollen

Today looked like a OK day on the forecast, so I decided to go flying. When I arrived at Sundvollen I went out to check if the ice on the fjord was still save, it made some bad noises when we were walking on it, but it was still tick enough.

There was lots of pilots at takeoff, I met up with my students Sindre and Gunnar, and sent them out in nice conditions. I set up on the upper takeoff, and waited for the sun to heat the ground a little more, but the cirrus became thicker and conditions slower. Earlier some paragliders had a few turns in weak lift, so it seemed like a good day if we only got some more sun.

I did not want to get stuck in tailwind from the bora effect, so I got ready and waited for a weak cycle to come in. I popped the nose a little on takeoff, but pulled in again and got off safely, need to get a few more foot launch takeoffs and flights to get back in flying shape.

Terje Brønstad, Werner, Petter and me had decided to glide to the cafe at Vik. It’s a nice 4 km glide from the takeoff, and a good test of glider performance. On my old Xtralite I never came close to making it, but with the today with the Litespeed RS I came in with plenty of altitude to spare, and did a 180 degrees over the cafe to land out on the ice. The conditions got even weaker, and Werner was the last to take off and came in to land as we were packing up on the beach. Not your average sunny beach this, but it was nice to pack up on the grass. With coffee and waffles on the cafe to round things off this was a nice day.

Hanggliding, Non flying

CIVL meeting in Mexico, Brasilia, Italy

This years CIVL meeting was in Manzanillo on the west coast of Mexico. Knut and I are the delegates for the meeting, and Stein Tore also traveled there to work on the scoring parts. The meeting was OK if a little inefficient, we had good progress on many aspects of competition matters. Knut and I had brought paragliders with us, and together with Esa from Finland we tried to get some flying the day before the meeting. We found a nice inland site near Colima, but the conditions were a little strong, so we drove to the coast to dune soar.

Esa shot the picture of me and Knut groundhandling in the sunset. It was around 20km of perfect beach, and a few beach bars with no guests so we had the whole place for ourselves. I had not flown paraglider for many years and did a few very funny takeoff attempts. Esa filmed it so I guess I will be the entertainment on Finlands funniest home videos next month…

I had tried to book a ticket to travel from Mexico to Brasilia, and then back to Oslo, but this would bee extremely more expensive, so I had to fly back to Oslo, work a few days, and then travel back across the Atlantic for the third time in 4 weeks. Glad I have an extra battery on my laptop, so I can play Civ IV for 6 hours straight on the plane to make time go faster. Brasilia was nice, but it’s rainy season and no flying there. I hope to be able to get there again in August this year, to fly the competition there.

It’s only a few weeks left before the comp in Bassano, and it seems to be very popular, with 140 registered HG pilots. Should be good fun, as long as the weather plays along. We are almost 20 Norwegian HG pilots going this year, great attendance.

Hanggliding, HG Course

Happy new year

I was on call for my job this newyears weekend, so no big party, and good shape to go flying the first day of the new year. I met up with Sindre who had driven 330km to fly, and we went to Sundvollen. It was nice conditions for a sled ride down through light snowfall, and landing on the frozen fjord in quite mild weather for the season – just below freezing. I had one flight, Sindre two.

Setup  in light snowfall

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Sindre setting up the Falcon and his first flight on his new Skyline harness.

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The LZ, Egil Toft in the background packing up the paraglider.

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A week before Christmas we flew at Sundvollen, and saw ice flowers on the frozen fjord. I’ve never seen something like this before. They were fragile like a snowflake, and seemed to grow straight up from the ice. It was very humid and cold, so I guess a small crystal form around some small object on the ice, and just keep on growing in the humid air.

Closeup of one of the nicer ones. There were thousands of these on the fjord.

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This is with flash. Wish I had a better camera with me as the flash washes out some of the details of the crystal.

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The whole fjord was covered, looked like a flock of swans had lost all their feathers.

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There was no snowfall the days before, just frozen fog on everything, notice the huge crystals.

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