We flew a short test task yesterday, and went to the opening ceremony and mandatory safety briefing. It’s around 100 pilots here, and the weather forecast is pretty good for the coming days.
Setting up at launch we can see the first cumulus clouds forming in the valley to the east.
Task today is 107km via 3 TP.
Yesterday turned out to be a fairly good day, it was quite weak thermals early so we all hung out in big gaggles waiting for the second start gate at 1340, for the 84km task.
I flew with Erland until the first TP, while Olav took a different line and met up with us after turning around at the TP. The altitude limit was 2745m GPS height, as the lift got better during the day we had to pull out of lift a few times. Unfortunately Olav had not set up the GPS altitude field on his instrument and went too high and got penalized for it.
Briefing today
Today is very windy at takeoff. We hope it calms down a bit. Otherwise looks like a good day with lower cloudbase.
The task is 91km today.
Yesterday turned out to be very stable and difficult for flying, nobody got far and there were some very late retrieves from the valley below takeoff. We got picked up early by our excellent driver Felipe.
Today should be better conditions, but it feels like yesterday at launch, with some high clouds moving in over us. No task has been set yet.
Yesterday wasn’t flyable due to a front passage, so we had a day for rest and relaxation.
Today looks very nice, temperature had dropped 10 degrees over night, and winds should be light.
Team Norway in fluo colours.
84km task, but the weather demons said NOPE! Day cancelled.
A bit cross wind at takeoff today, we hope it will be launchable.
Official tracking
Flymaster Brasilia Pre-Worlds
Follow us on Airtribune;
Øyvind Ellefsen
Olav Opsanger
Erland Åmot
Olav Lien Olsen (Only Pre-Worlds)
Bjørn Joakimsen (Only Pre-Worlds)
SPOT tracklogs;
Øyvind Ellefsen
Olav Lien Olsen (Only Pre-Worlds)
Olav Opsanger, Erland Åmot, Georgia and me are in Brasilia to fly the Brasilian Championships and the Pre-Worlds here. Two competitions in a row to get plenty of practice and experience for next year’s worlds.
We are traveling with our hanggliders shortpacked and without sail, packed in some really nice travel bags that Skyline provided us just in time for the travel. Checking in the gliders at OSL went fine, but we saw the gliders were not loaded onto the Luthansa Airbus 321 that we had booked the first flight to Frankfurt. We had paid extra and got confirmation from Lufthansa that they could take our hanggliders, so we were not happy, and the SAS agent that handled the gate was not exactly helpful, telling us it was our problem to get the gliders to Frankfurt ourselves…
Lufthansa saved the day in the end and got the gliders on a SAS 737, so when we arrived in Brasilia after a layover in Lisboa we had 3 undamaged gliders going through customs.
We have rented a house with a big garden and pool, so it was nice mounting the sails back onto gliders and getting ready on the green grass on an overcast day.
The first day with Task 1 got quite stressful when we went to the wrong takeoff at first, but the weather conditions was good for a late start, so we all got off and almost made the race start and all 3 got to goal. Lots of pilots infringed the airspace limits, but none of us went that high.
Results task 1 – https://www.cvlb.com.br/compes/competicao-42/#
Task 2 saw more sun, but more wind, so we struggled with weak lift in strong winds once we got towards the end of the 109km task and the clouds shaded the ground. I landed 30km from goal, with Olav and Erland behind me at the last TP.
No results yet for task 2.
Weather looks good tomorrow, and a bit iffy sunday, with great forecast for the rest of the week.
We had a few good days of flying but not that many taskable days because of unfavorable weather conditions. Yesterday was the best day so far, with a 90 km task down the valley. Conditions were OK with 2500m cloudbase, but quite broken and difficult thermals.
A snapshot from yesterdays task, on top of Norway;
I got stuck at Otta with Kjell and Erland, and lost quite some time there, after I finally got up we still struggled in the broken lift, but slowly got aorund the first and second TP, and to goal as 3. for the day.
Today was gray and with no lift we had to cancel the task, but we got to fly and do the spotlanding.
Results and live tracking are here;
https://airtribune.com/vaga-open-hg-2016/
Tomorrow is the last day, it’s been raining hard all afternoon and night, but the forecast is optimistic, so hopefully we get another task in.
I got a short but nice flight last weekend, landing on the frozen Steinsfjorden. I did not expect to be the only one flying this day as it was super nice. Walked across the fjord to Vik and back with Georgia to get a waffle with strawberry jam and sourcream.
