Stable conditions, blue and inverted. I really feel out of competition shape, the first day I landed at the main landing without getting up. I did not fall through, but decided to land down. Today was a little better, and I did my first XC since last August… The task was 56km to the NW, with two TP in between. I landed halfway after forgetting the golden rule of not leaving the gaggle in blue conditions.
So far Olav Opsanger seems to be in a strong lead.

The Vågå Open 2006 competition starts on Saturday, and last for 8 days. It’s the Nordic and Norwegian championships, as well as an open competition. I’ve not had much thermal training this year, and I feel quite rusty. It will be interesting to see how it feels to get back into competition mode again. Last year I was organizing and running the scoring for the comp, it was too much and my flying suffered from it. This year I will help out doing the weather, but that’s all. Forecast for the weekend is very good.

We drove to Vågå last night, since the forecast was OK and I wanted to get at least one flight before the competition starts. But on the way up from Oslo I had to slow down many times because of very strong winds, and after arriving in Vågå I woke up because of the wind shaking the house. Still today looks like it will be flyable later in the afternoon. There’s quite a few people here already for the competition. I’ll try to go up even for just a sled ride down tonight.

Saturday Bjørn and I tried tandem towing for the first time. We got a wheel assemby with tailboom on a WillsWing Falcon tandem. I was pilot and Bjørn passenger, Alf towed us with the Tug. It was almost no wind from the south, and we rolled for a long time before taking off. The flight was quite uneventful, and landing on the wheels very easy.

We did two tows, and the only problem seems to be that we climb a little too slow to get acceptable clearance to the powerlines to the south of the airstrip. A little more wind, or towing to the North should eliminate this problem. A new stronger engine on the tug would also be a good solution, anyone know of a used Rotax 912 for sale?

We will try a few more tows before concluding anything, but it seems like a very convenient way of getting tandem flights. It’s probably not as thrilling as running off a mountain for “normal” passenger, but it’s so much more convenient that I think it’s the better option. For training new pilots it seems to be the way to go, doing tandems first and then solo aerotow.

There will be new competition at Forbes this winter. Check out the invitation from Moyes. I’ll be there for sure. Last time was in 2001 I think, then we towed from a burnt out paddoc, this time we seem to have an airport as base, great! http://www.moyes.com.au/Forbes2007/

Might be good for soaring in mountain wave?

The weather did not permit much flying on Thursday and Friday. I towed up behind Truls two times on Thursday evening from Spydeberg. It was very wet on the airstrip, but we got a OK tow into some good thermals. I flew into rain on the second tow, and stressed on landing with the wet glider, resulting in some bendt aluminium. I have not flown the Litespeed since July last year, and I was all over the sky on the first tow. I’ve never had so few hours for so long before, and I feel I need many more hours to get back into tune with the glider.

The strip at Trøgstad was too wet to use until Friday afternoon, I tok the tug over and towed Johnny for a late flight. Saturday was a very good day, 14-15 pilots showed up, and the thermals were quite good in the afternoon. Only Ingar went for XC, but I think it was very good conditions more pople should have used the opportunuity. I did 8 tows in the tug after Alf had been tow pilot for most of the day. Many pilots got their first aerotows, and we had no incidents.

Seems like most pilots had enough after one day, as only Ove, Bjørn and Terje S showed up on Sunday. Truls towed us up, I had forgotten my vario and found it difficult to stay up over the flatlands without it. I borrowed one from Terje S for my second flight, but fell through in a weak period. Very nice conditions to fly and tow in.

At Quest the pilots have had 4 days flying in the worlds so far, conditions have been variable, but good as far as I can read from the blogs. Corinna is leading Womens class 1, Robert Reisinger Class 5, and Manfred Ruhmer leading Class 2. No big suprises so far…

The amount of comment spam on my blog has increased a lot lately, I’ve received 3000 spam comments this weekend alone. Thank god for Akismet that blocks 99,9% of it, still a few get through now and then so I have to manually delete them.

Quest air have the upcoming Womens and class 2/5 worlds. Corrina wrote to me about her blog that will cover the Worlds. Check it out at http://corinnaflies.blogspot.com/

Saturday was quite windy in Oslo, I did not think it was very good for flying at Trøgstad, and did some shopping instead. I now have garden furniture and a grill (!)

Sunday looked a lot better, I planned a few tasks, including a long goal flight into Sweden at 250km, as it was forecasted westerly winds. I met up with Finn at Spydeberg, and picked up some fluel and towing gear before driving to Trøgstad. The conditions seemed strong, and we had local OD at 12:30 already.

I started setting up my glider, only to figure out that the new fibre tips I bought after my old set was stolen did not fit into the leading edge tube. It was a mm too wide. We did not have any sandpaper at the airstrip, so I just had to pack up again. I drove to Finn and he sanded them down for me so that they fit the glider.

The conditions got quite hysterical later in the day, with lots of local OD, so maybe it was just as well that I did not fly. Still – at cloudbase it was snowing, which makes it easier to go through small showers without ruining the performance of the glider.

Yesterday we met up at Trøgstad for some Towing practice. I flew the from Spydeberg while Bjørn got the fuel, towing gear and gliders in his car, and Truls met us at the airstrip. It was 90 degrees crosswind on the airstrip, and a little too strong to take off when it was that much cross, so we set up our gliders and relaxed in the sun for a while.

Around 6 it calmed down enough to be launchable in the crosswind, I had a two aborted launches with the Falcon before everything was set up correctly, and then two nice tows in a row behind Truls. Bjørn towed up twice on his Litespeed. And I took over the Tug and towed up Truls two times on his U2, and Bjørn once on the Falcon. Georgia was groundcrew for us.

It felt different having someone behind the plane, but no problem in the calm conditions. I landed the tug back at Spydeberg at 21:30 in silk smooth condtions. Wish I had brought the camera, as I flew over 3 elks grassing at the airstrip.

More pictures 

The weather daemons wone 3-0 this weekend at Frya. Rain on Saturday, wind on Saturday, and snow on Monday. I drove up on Sunday morning, but it was way too strong to fly a comp, some freefliers got good soaring late at night, but that was it.

Hedemarken have rescheduled the comp to 20-21/5, I hope we get nicer weather then. Forecast for this weekend seens quite good. I hope the airstrips at Spydeberg and Trøgstad dry up so we can go towing.