Tag Archives: scootertowing

Final days, Cassini pictures from Saturn

Last weekend we did the final high flights of the course, where the students towed up high and did the full landing round. Very good conditions, and even some wind on Sunday (Which gave a few weaklink breaks) Next weekend we’ll do the footlaunch if conditions permit, and then some high flights from mountain takeoff.

NASA’s Cassini space probe reached Saturn in 2004, and is kept very busy gathering science data and pictures. The images of the moon Enceladus are really cool! Here’s one shot of Enceladus, with Saturn in the background. You can see the shadows of Saturn’s rings on the surface of Saturn.

Enceladus with Saturn in the background

More pictures here;
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/enceladus_up_close.html

And from JPL directly;
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/index.cfm

Saturn approach in 2004

Saturn
Saturn

Tandem flight on kids TV

I flew a tandem aerotow some weeks back, it was filmed for a kids TV show, and broadcast yesterday morning. You can find the clip at the production company web site http://www.fabelaktiv.no

Klick on “Hut I Heita” on the right on the front page to view the clip.

It was fun to make it, and we had perfect conditions with sunny fall weather and calm winds. I hope we gained some publicity, and maybe some kids will grow up and want to become hangglider pilots in the future!

Fall summary

So, it’s been a rather long blogging hiatus for me, sorry for not updating much lately. I’ve been working, not doing much flying after the nationals, but we’re starting a new hanggliding beginners course now so I finally have a excuse to get out and get airborne again.

A short summary of flying related stuff since the last update;

The last day of the nationals was very good, with epic conditions and many happy faces in goal. We got a 91km task, with a FAI 50km triangle to start with, then back SE to Aasarbrua, via the bridge in the centre of Vaagaa and to goal. Conditions were a little slow in the beginning, typical late summer and not extremely unstable, but we got to 3000 meters towards the end of the task.

I got 6. place overall in the competition, I was not too pleased with my performance at the time, but in retrospect it was a fun competition to fly in since I was finally free of the organization, and could just concentrate on my own flying, then again maybe I was too relaxed and did not really push hard enough.

I also received my new Moyes Malibu hangglider, and I got to test it gliding down from Vole one late evening during the nationals, and I flew it at Tronfjell toplanding 9 times. The Malibu is a great glider, flies like a dream and handles even better. It’s extremely forgiving, landing and talkeoff characteristics feels superb. I just wish we had costal soaring site with top landing nearby. I should probably go looking for one…

Some photos by Stein Edgard Strandli.

After the nationals I was back in Vaagaa arranging a 4 day comp for the paragliders. It was fun, we got unstable conditions, but 2 days of very good flying. I flew the course with the paragliders, looking out for overdevelopment and filming a bit from the air.

Back in Oslo the weather was great, but was swamped in work and could not get out and fly much. The meet at Tronfjell was as aways in late August, and this year the conditions were super nice. Fantastic top landing conditions, 40-50 pilots, great thermals, cloudbase at 2500m, just perfect.

This week we started the next beginner course, so I will be getting out a lot more to fly and teach hanggliding.

Work in progress on the 125cc towing rig

I went out and got some building materials to mount the scooter on a small trailer, while Steinar produced the drum that will hold the towing line. So far so good, now we just need to test it, hope the weather will allow it tomorrow.

Here’s the scooter mounted on a trailer. I made the supports and mounts from some 2 by 4, steel angles, and bolts. Feels quite solid and it should hold the scooter in place for towing and transport, at least until we can test if it works out ok. We fully recommend looking at the latest dirt scooter reviews to find out which one MyProScooter recommends the most. If not we can just put the wheels back on and sell it as a normal scooter.

Go go go!

Steinar will bring the rear wheel/drum tomorrow, and the rollers for the line.

Strapped down

Almost ready to go.

Needs some rollers for the line in front still

Scootertowing news

Our scootertowing project have been a great success so far, and we are committed to continue training students with the big Condor and the 50cc scooter. The low power in the scooter makes it perfect for training, and low altitude flights while keeping it as safe as possible.

The low power is also the limiting factor for high altitude flights, and more general towing needs. Tandem towing is also high on our list, as we can get some income to pay for running the rig. So last week I bought a new 125cc scooter, to be converted into a towing scooter.

Here is a picture of our new ride to heaven. It’s a cheap Chinese made bike, but for our purpose it should be perfect. It has twice the power of the old one, and a faster gearbox. It will be interesting to see how it pulls.

Our new ride to heaven

Since the scooter is new we needed to run it in first, and putting licence plates on it would cost the same as the price of the scooter, so we had to find a closed area to do some laps. (The garage at my job soon became too boring, but we did 3 km there :-) )

Steinar and I did 50 km on a very cold evening at a local racetrack, and Steinar did 100km more the next day (With some more clothes this time) It was mind-numbingly boring to do the 2 km laps, but thinking about the cools flights we can get with the new scooter made it worthwile…