Sunday, July 18, 2010

2010 Europeans, task 4, 196 km!

On friday, we had a beautiful day and the task committee decided to give us a really big task. 196 km were to be flown. The day was really good and I surpassed my own expectations. I made goal, with a new personal record for distance and speed.
The final glide to goal was probably the most nerve wrecking thing I have ever done in hang gliding. I started the final glide about 25 km from goal, into a headwind. The compeo said I would have 600 m above goal and after a few kms glide, the instrument only gave me 200 m. Luckely the glide got better then and I rounded the last turnpoint with a predicted 400 m above goal. And with the wind in the back! Time to get some speed. I started gliding at 90 km/h and sped up to 115 km/h just before goal, overtaking Larry (USA) in the final kms. That was true racing :-p
Many happy faces at goal as an unbelievable total of 62 pilots made goal. The organizers never expected that.
And ofcourse, Jonny made a movie about it:


This flight put me in 39th overall, but yesterday's flight was a little disaster for me, landing after 45 km. So I dropped to 49th. But I'll write about that later. Time to get up the mountain for task 6!

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