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.

Nice clouds over Brasilia today, it’s getting close to the end of the rainy season here. This was at 15:30 local time, earlier today it overdeveloped and rained from some cells.

I had a two day stopover in Rio on my way to Brasilia, Fritz and I went to Pepino beach, to see if it was possible to fly. Fritz had brought his lightweight paraglider and harness, I rented a hangglider and harness from one of the local tandem outfits. They set up the glider, you just preflight and take off, and after landing you just park the glider and they will pack it up. Nice to be a tourist sometimes :-)
Conditions were not strong enough to soar, but it was a nice flight down to the beach anyway. Rio is set in quite spectacular nature, with huge granite peaks and green valleys ending in long beautiful beaches.

Fritz tooke some pictures, but we did not have a card reader to put it on my computer yet. I’ll update with  pics when he gets to Brasilia.

The new instrument range from Brauniger and Flytec seems to be aimed at the pilots buying their first instrument. The instruments have the most basic features, and looks more user-friendly than before. There is not much info on the websites yet (Flytec only have a picture, no info)

The display is as usual different between the factories, Brauniger have the traditional round vario indicator, while the Flytec version have the stacked bars. Judging from the fields visible in the display there is no GPS functions, the logger funtion seems to be a barograph only. The Braunigers are called One and One+, where the + version have an extended memory for logging up to 130 hours of flight data. Check out the Brauniger IQ One+ product page at the Brauniger website.

Oddly enough the Flytec version is called 6005 GPS, it does not look like a GPS enabled instrument, judging from the size and display. The Flytec version (Pic below) does not have markings on it – I call a marketing bluff from Flytec!

The market for a non-GPS enabled instrument cannot be that big, every pilots that I know like to look at the tracklogs in Google Earth or SeeYou after flight, even if it’s a sled ride or boring ridge soaring. But if the price is right (as in low enough) it might be a good idea. The electronics and housing should be much cheaper to produce now than when the IQ basis and 4005 was launched.