Great flying in Vågå, too bad I had no glider. Got some some nice pictures though.

My old server is found again, now I have all the date from the old website that went down this summer. Great! I’ll gradually be adding and copying over the old data. Check out the new photo album for now.

We have started a new beginners course in Oslo, we had a very good first day today, where all the students got in the air from quite high up the hill. They did go through a lot of uprights and one leading edge though.

Erik is “on the run” again, he’s writing an online diary. Check it out at http://www.hacom.nl/~nico/evic/evic2001/current.htm

The rain season have started in Oslo, strong winds and rain all weekend. Last year it rained from August to mid December.

The Sunday before last we did some aerotowing from Trøgstad south-east of Oslo, good conditions but it’s clear that fall is here. The cludbase was at 1450 meters, and climbs were slow and quite far apart. I flew around the area using the cloudsuck, between the good glouds there was only sink. It was nice to be in cloudbase so late in the season. I have sold my glider and will use the next months working to make up for time away from work. I have to save enough for a new trip to Australia to fly the comps in Dec-Jan.

We are planning a beginner course in hanggliding in Oslo this fall, if you are interested, or know someone who is, please contact me by email for more information. oyvind@ellefsen.net

We will arrange a introduction day to try it out before the course starts.

It’s not been much flying lately, I’ve had a few nice flights from Brandbukampen north of Oslo. We have gone after work, and it’s been too late for really good conditions, but it’s been ridge soaring and weak thermals. The weather have been unstable, and it’s been good XC conditions some of the days I have been at work. Flying really is like a drug, I have withrawal symptoms when I have to stop flying for a while.

I’ve sold my Litespeed, and will probably not fly much until I go to Australia again this winter.

I’m still waiting for a few results before I can put the totals on the web. Check back in a few days.

Last weekend we flew the Milslukern XC comp. The weather vas not the best, with overdevelopment and grey sky on Saturday, cancelled on Sunday. Frode Halse won by flying his Paraglider! 24 km to Garmo. Trond Olsen flew to Dombås and came second. Tor Erik Moen and Erik Bergseter on a split third. I rained down near Dombås to come fifth.

In the Nationals we had much better conditions, and we flew 4 of 6 days. Kjell Chr. Krane won, only two points ahead of Thor Erik Moen. Olav Opsanger on third. I came tenth, not happy with that. We won the team comp by a big margin for the third year in a row.

The Norwegain Cup was won by Sverre Bjølgerud, I came second, and Olav Opsanger third.

I’ll publish a link to the complete results as soon as I have them.

Oh yeah – Manfred Ruhmer flew 692km in Texas yesterday, crushing Tudor’s record with almost 200km… Davis Straub flew 651.7km to set a new class 2 record. Check out the Oz report for the full story soon.

Sorry for the downtime! This server was moved the same week I left for the Worlds, the server with all data was lost during the move from one location to another in Oslo. This is based on an old backup, all updates the last year are gone.

The site will start to come back to life, but it takes many hours of work and I have no time until after the season is over. I’ll have the main news page (you’re reading it) and the mailinglist for norwegian hanggliding up tonight. Tell all your friends they should re-subscribe to the mailinglist, you can re-subscribe here.

The worlds in Spain sucked. It was stable, windy, and overcrowded. I had to skip one day with hurt knees after landing in horrible conditions. I broke both new uprights and carbon speedbar. (Long story…) Results at www.algodonales.org

The Pre-Europeans in Slovenia was better, nice place for flying with green valleys and high mountains. We had quite unstable weather with 4 out of 9 days cancelled, and low cloudbase the rest, but really good conditions when we flew. Full results at http://events.fai.org/eurohg2002/results.htm

This weekend is the “Milslukern” XC competition in Vågå, and the Norwegian nationals are from Monday to Saturday in Vågå also.

Algodonales, Spain. World Championships 2001. Day 3-4
Day 3 arrived with 35 knots from the east, and no chance of flying competition. We drove to Gibraltar and went up to the rock to have a look around. Strange place, the wind was blowing straight up the cliff and wathcing the seagulls trying to land on the vertical cliff was funny and impressive.

Day 4 and we finally get some flying, the wind had calmed down, but it was still quite stable and weak thermals. I got very high over takeoff in a 4 m/s thermal straight to 2250 meters, never got over 1600 after that. I followed a gaggle on a glide to the second TP straight to the ground, I was highest but got too low before any thermals took off. Landed 16 km before second TP with about 40 other pilots in the area. Including Robin, Ingar, and Olav. Nils-Age came 7 km from the TP and Tor-Erik 10 km. 11 pilots made goal.
Today looks the same, I hope we get a task in the mountains instead over the flatlands like yesterday, as we get higher and better thermals over the mountain tops.