Aeros Winter Race, day 2, long wait, short flight

Woke up with beautiful sunny spring weather this morning. It looked stable and there was no wind. Driving from Nova Gorica to Ajdovscina however, Matjaz and I saw Föhn clouds over the mountains. That spelled nothing good. Indeed, near Ajdovscina, the wind gauge along the road showed 73 km/h... Damn, Bora wind.

Against our expectations, the organization decided to go to Kovk instead of Lijak which is known to be wind sheltered in Bora conditions. Upon arrival on launch, there were 80 km/h winds blowing over the back:

Yet, the weather predictions said the winds would calm down, so the waiting game started. It took a while until the winds were not too strong to rig the gliders and everybody got into action, with just a little hope of flying:

The bora finally gave in, but a light wind over the back remained. The task was canceled at 15h30. All of that was a little frustrating since we saw paragliders and hang gliders who had launched on Lijak fly by.

The thermal winds on our ridge were battling it out with the light wind over the back and for a short period of time, it was launchable. Gerd, Christian and I managed to get into the air. Although I immediately flew into a nice, gentle thermal, which gave me an extra 200 m, I was not able to do anything decent with it and landed after 25 minutes. The Italians free-flyers who launched on Lijak flew high and had long flights.

But anyway, it was good to be in the air and I love the way the Combat 13.5 flares on landing. The high wing loading gives it a very distinct flow separation. I had troubles with that on the 14.2, especially when I landed with just a little VG. Today, I feared the same scenario, when I accidentally released all VG instead of just reducing it in the last seconds before landing, but, as mentioned before, the flare was nice and clean.