I needed to take the theoretical exams for the microlight licence to get my full licence, so I signed up for a full weekend theory course in Kløfta Mikroflyklubb, to get it over with. It started 9 Friday morning, and went until sunday night. It was long and sometimes boring days, we got some good sessions now and then. Navigation was new to me, the rest I knew quite well. The scope of meteo and aerodynamics taught is a joke compared to what we learn our HG students. We did exams after each subject, and I finished with good scores. Of course the weather was really nice the whole weekend when I had to sit inside.

Today I went out to Kongsvinger in the afternoon and flew the tug in very nice, but cold weather. Some pictures;

Low sun over Odalen

Self portrait in the towing mirror, yeah it was cold, should have used my full-face helmet with visor.

Sandbanks in the river.

On final glide back to the airstrip, strip is in the shade from the trees. The hangar is next to the white plastic hay bales in the lower middle of the picture. The tug glided from here with good height to spare.

The Machine!

Steinar Sverd Johnsen’s band Arcturus have released their new album, Sideshow Symphonies. I had a quick listen to some of the material in the studio, while they were recording this summer, and now have heard the whole album a few times. I really like it, guess the symphonic black metal is not for everyone though.

Arcturus homepage

Today I was at Kongsvinger and finally got the Rotax engine on the tug working again, it was drawing false air because of a broken rubber flange. We suspected the fuel pump and ignition problems initially, but after some troubleshooting and a cancelled towing day we discovered the broken part.

I got new flanges from the Rotax dealer in Drammen yesterday, and replaced the flanges today. I also replaced the fuel pump, and mounted it better than the old one. According to the docs it should be mounted horizontally and higher than the vacuum nipple. Last Tuesday Alf and I replaced spark plugs, caps, and wiring. I dicovered a small coolant leak last time that that I also fixed today, and I remounted the intake silencer so that it would not stress the new flanges as much from vibration.

Now the tug is working real good, and climbes much better than I ever felt it do. I did three test flights before it became too dark and cold. Tomorrow is probably too windy to tow, but we might go towing on Sunday if the winds die down enough.

Here’s a short flyby I did last weekend, video by Fredrik.

The hangar project is moving along, slowly. But we now have the materials we need to make roof and walls. We just need a few more hours of work to complete it, and get the tug down there. From then on it’s going to be a lot more towing activity from Trøgstad. Stay tuned.

Jonny Jr. is flying the Brasilian nationals in Brasilia, check out his blog. Seems like he is having a good time with late nights and good flights…

I’ve bought a share in the Dragonfly tug, and now only need some more hours to start towing practice. We have done some work on a permanent hangar project at Spydeberg. Last Saturday Finn, Bjørn and I finished preparing the roof for mounting the corrugated steel sheets Terje Solberg have donated. As soon as the hangar is ready we fly the Tug down to Spydeberg and start our course at Trøgstad. It’s only a 10 minute flight to Trøgstad, Spydeberg is not suited for Aerotowing because of the noise restrictions and other activity at the strip.

The Worlds will be at Big Springs in Texas in 2007. There have been a comp there for the last years with exeptionally good weather and flying conditions. This year the weather was not perfect with some cancelled tasks, but still it seemed to be a good comp.

The Litespeeds dominated on WillsWings home turf, the top 6 pilots all flew Litespeed S 4.
Andreas and Joakim from Sweden were the only scandinavians participating, Andreas did good with his new Talon 2 on 7. place, this one seems to go better than the one he had here in Vågå. Joakim made 23. place.

Total results and pictures at http://www.flytec.com/big_spring_05/scores.html
More coverage in the RigidReport, Jonny, Kevin and Tom’s blogs. (Links on the right)

Finn Spjeldnæs was tug pilot and towed up pilots today. We met up at Kongsvinger at 11:00 and did some maintenance on the tug, the engine still did not run well so we have to work some more on it. It was very nice conditions, with weak northerly winds and sunny skies. Johnny Reichele also showed up today and did his first tow, he did well and stuck on the line all the way up.

I wanted to test towing the Falcon, and hooked in behind Finn for the last tow of the day.The glider was easy to tow, but we need to hook in a little more forward to reduce the bar pressure. I tried to induce some turns away from the tug, but the glider just tracked back by itself. It should be a good glider to use for training new pilots.

I took the tug up for 4 rounds in the nice air, to get landing training.

Me taking the Falcon 2 up.

Alf, Truls, Bjørn, Petter, Steinar and I went to Kongsvinger to do some aerotowing. I wanted to get some more hours and landings on the Dragonfly, and only brought my harness in case I could borrow a glider. I was there first and took the tug out of the hangar and set it up. Alf took the first flight, and then I had some flights while the others set up their hanggliders. Condtitions were good with weak northerly winds and cumulus clouds around us.

Alf towed up Petter who was learning how to aerotow, he did pretty good and managed to hang on all the way up on his third attempt. I took a test flight on Steinar’s Litesport to check the trim of the glider. It was very nice to fly, and handled much like the older Litespeeds but with better roll rate. Towing it up on 1/2 VG was no problem at all, and I towed behind Truls with my arms hanging over the basebar. The glider needed some work on the trim, we tuned out a left turn and slowed down trimspeed a little.

I logged 2:30 on the tug, and had 12 good takeoffs and landings. The engine developed a problem during the day where it would stall on idle and when throttling up from idle, a little annoying when taxing, but it worked fine once above 2000 rpms.

Looks like we go back tomorrow to tow with Finn. I hope to get a few hours tomorrow too if the weather stays nice.

Bjørn has a link to some video from Vågå open.

It’s not been much flying for me lately, I’m in the middle of selling an apartement and moving to a new one. It takes quite a lot of time and energy, and the weather have been crap the last weeks anyway.

We have plans about starting a new beginners course based on aerotowing this fall, but it’s been delayed a little because of other activities.