Tag Archives: video

Bassano last day

It turned out to be a sunny and nice day, but the wind was NE and a bit strong for good flying conditions. It would be turbulent leeside, and not very safe for competition flying.

Manfred won the competition, Gerolf second and Robert third. Great result for the Austrians, and a solid comeback for Manfred.

Monday is the big day out for Italians, seems like everybody from babies to grandmothers are out driving, biking and walking in the mountains. Georgia and I got a takeaway number 42 from Tilly’s and had a nice lunch on the ridge below the mausoleum overlooking the plains around Bassano and Asolo.

In summary we were very lucky this time in Bassano, with fantastic conditions, sunny and great conditions every day exept the last. I’m not too upset about not beening able to fly the competition, I had a good time freeflying a little and just enjoying the sun and vacation.

Here’s a video I made from the ride up from the Hotel to the tourist takeoff, with a pitstop for Gatorade and a banana for lunch. I just taped the camera to the mirror, and later speeded up the video around 10x. Look out for the donkey!
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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!

Ridge soaring season

I had two nice ridge soaring flights the last weeks. Last Thursday Gunnar and I went to Sundvollen backed up by a nice forecast. As we arrived a Paraglider started and stayed up for some seconds before gliding out to land. (A student by the looks of the flying position, feet wide, arms locked :-))

It was forecast less wind during the day, and we set up quickly. Gunnar borrowed my Malibu, and got off before me. He did not stay close enough and fell through. I took off with my Litespeed RS, and slowly got up in front of launch, before gliding to the right and hooking up on the main ridge. Very smooth, lots of 0.1 m/s lift. The RS is very sensitive to the air, and seeks out be best lift almost by itself.

Malibu hiding it's kingpost, no need to be ashamed!
Malibu hiding it's kingpost, no need to be ashamed!

After about 1 hour ridge soaring I usually get bored, it was nice conditions still. But Gunnar was waiting, so I spin down to the landing to drive him up for a second try. He did much better now, but the conditions were just too weak to stay up in front of launch.

Yesterday it was too windy for our beginner course, but Steinar convinced me to try Grefsenkollen. It’s a site in the middle of Oslo, and I’ve never flown there before. The landing zone is a footballfield for kids, full of obstructions, goals, and not safe for a high performance hangglider. Just right for the Malibu in other words :-)

It was windy and gusty, more than 10 m/s in the gusts, and quite turbulent by the looks of it.  So we quickly set up while the paraglider pilots packed up. Steinar got off in a lull, and seemed to find nice and smoot ridge lift. I got ready, but had to wait through a period of strong wind and gusts before I could get off.

The landing zone
The landing zone

A short video from the takeoff below. We did some very nice close passes, but both of us had dead batteries in the camera. It was super nice light, so that was a shame. Next time perhaps.

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The European Championships 2008, Day 6

Our hotel is at 1800 meters, and we woke up inside cloudbase this morning. It was not raining, but lots of high clouds stopped any sun from drying out the valley. We went down to takeoff at 10:30 expecting to see few other pilots, but the organization believed it would be taskable, and everyone was set up. We had a chat with some of the pilots, and went back and got our gliders and harnesses in the very unlikely event it would clear up, but we left the gliders on the car.

Waiting at takeoff reminded me of Bassano this year, but at least we could buy hot Goulash soup and hot chocolate at the cafe. At 14:30 I gave up and went back to the hotel for a hot shower, while the rest of the guys waited until it started raining 30 minutes later and the organizer finally canceled the day.

Forecast for tomorrow is OK for the morning, but a warmfront will move in early and shut us down around noon, and for the next days.

I’ve updated the video with some more footage I found on my PC of Sindre’s flights. Check it out!

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Video from Greifenburg – Day 3. Day 4 and 5 rained out

Lots of rain cancelled day 4 and 5. We drove to Skyline in Germany, where Bjørn and I had a few upgrades and maintenance done on our harnesses. The Skyline crew is very helpful and worked overtime on finishing off the work so we had everything done in one day. I had my rescue repacked, replaced the hangloop and reserve loop, and added a better locking screw to the extension plate to make the harness easier to pack.

There’s lots of new features coming for the Skyline harness. I really liked the new automatic slider lock, that locks the slider in the back position when flying. This releases all pressure from the feet, so the pilot can relax the feet even in very upright thermaling position.

Here’s a short clip from Day 3 that was cancelled due to storms. We flew the gliders down from the takeoff before the storms came through. Audio commentary by me in Norwegian only. I’ll do it in English the next time. (I talk about the day beeing cancelled, clouds building, nice nature, and the landing site)

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Rain, bassano video

It’s been quite unstable weather the last weeks here in Oslo, and not much flying. Today we went out with the Scooter to Ekeberg, and did a few tows with the remaining students in between the showers.

I spent the easter in Bassano, I did not write much here on the blog as the internet connection there was shit. I did however make a short video from one flight Ove and I did in the afternoon in Bassano. It was almost dead air, and we just glided down. The landing was quite interesting though – as you can see in this video.

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Ove had landed just 10 seconds before me, flying the same path, and I’m pretty sure it was the wingtip vortex turbulence from his glider that made my right wing drop so suddenly. There was almost no wind, no turbulence, and I had plenty of speed. Without enough airspeed it would have been a rough landing after dragging the wing. That sideways slip upwards was a quite interesting expirience…

Videotest

You do need the latest Flash plugin to view this video, get it here. This is encoded with x264, mp3, from my Canon camera, about 13 MB in total, and 640×480, progressive scan. Looks very good, and size is not horrible. Tell me what you think, and if it’s to slow to play.

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