First days in Austria, German Open task 1

Saturday I drove to Austria to compete in the German Open (Austrian border) and the Austrian Open. I first flew two days in Greifenburg with the guys from Ruhpolding. The first day was difficult and I only had a 30-minute flight. The second day was awesome, but turbulent. I climbed to 3700 meters and had a magnificent view over the Austrian, Italian and Slovenian alps. But, after 2 hours, I got sick and had to land. It probably just was too high, only just having arrived from the seaside lowlands...
Yesterday we flew the first task of the German Open. The first day was cancelled because of wind, but yesterday we had a flyable window. A 50 km task was set, because overdevelopment was predicted. Indeed, halfway I got trapped in the shadow of a big cloud and had to land. Until then it had been a very interesting flight. I got to 31 kms, making me 21st out of 44. Not unhappy about that. It was the first competition flight with the Combat and the glider feels better and better.
Today is rainy and I will head to the Woody Valley factory to have my harness adapted. At this moment my feet always come down when flying, making it very difficult the remain in an aerodynamic position. I hope we will be able to fix it.
Tomorrow could be a very nice day. We'll see.

Thermalling above Bevekom

Bevekom is a Belgian Air Force base where we are allowed to go winch towing during some weekends. Here's a video of me climbing a weak thermal above Bevekom. At the same weekend, motor riders could have their max speed measured (by the police!) on one of the taxiways. Nice initiative!

No-handed take-off

Yesterday we had some fun on the training hill. Just for the fun of it, we tried a no-handed take-off on the big wills wing condor. And it worked! Sorry for the crappy mobile phone video...