Flying in Nova Gorica and heading to the Croatian Nationals

Yesterday I left a very wet Greifenburg and headed for Nova Gorica. I picked up the Ukrainians in Tolmin, where conditions were sure to overdevelop and we headed for Lijak. We launched at 2 o'clock and everybody had a great flight. The conditions were magnificent and so was the view. We were just a little late to fly into the flats, because the south winds took the marine air very far inland.
So I ended up doing probably the most classical flight there is when starting from Lijak, flying up and down the ridge. 75 km in 2 hours, it was fun :-) Although I knew it wasn't going to work, I tried to go into the flats, but had to land soon after. The last little thermal came from a garbage belt, and smelled like it...
Tomorrow morning I'm driving to Buzet, Croatia, to participate in the Croatian Nationals. At last a competition with a good weather forecast:

Plans for the summer

Here's a map with the agenda for this summer:

B: Croatian Nationals coming up soon (June 27th until June 30th)
C - D - E - F: Free flying in Greifenburg, visit family in Salzburg and head to Fiesch for the Fiesch Open (July 7th until July 11th).
G: World Championships at Monte Cucco, very, very much looking forward to that, 3rd and 4th week of July
H: Belgian Nationals in Laragne, immediately after the worlds (1st week of August). That will be a trip...
I: Postponed Austrian Nationals at the Diedamskopf (August 13th - August 15th)
J: British Nationals in St. Andre-les-Alpes

Greifenburg, finally some flying again

The bad comp weather continues. The Austrian Nationals are postponed to mid-August. So I headed to Greifenburg, because it showed at least one good day of flying there.

While setting up, Gerolf and Zhenya arrived and Gerolf had a plan :-) And the plan included some sightseeing. The flight indeed started with extremely nice flying. It's very sad that I failed to turn on the GoPro (it only took 1 picture)!
Later, the thermals were broken and very turbulent. It was good to be flying for 3 hours. And as usual, I struggled in the turbulences. It's hard to manhandle my big glider in them. Gerolf suggests carbon leading edges ;-) I guess he's got a point there...

The second day resulted in a short flight for me. After almost an hour, I got drilled down like never before. 4 to 5 m/s down until I almost hit the deck...
In Greifenburg, I also met Juergen Pasker again on launch. He invited me to join his club and I had two very nice evenings with them. They introduced me to 'plattln', which is a lot like horseshoe throwing. Quite an interesting affair, when everybody has had his fair share of beer and schnapps. It's always good to hang around with the Austrians :-)

A few days 'dohoam' in Salzburg

After Tolmin, I drove to Salzburg for a few days, knowing that the weather was bad all over the Alps. I stayed at my grandma's place, visited some family and hiked up the Untersberg. The latter was impressive because of the low clouds which were blown by the wind. I stupidly decided to run down instead of walking down, resulting in the worst muscle aches I've had for quite a while...
The days in Salzburg ended with a visit to Primoz, with a faint hope to fly. We did not do anything more than a sled ride, but Primoz had an inclinometer, so we checked my sprogs. And surprisingly, they were low. We corrected them and the glider does feel better, especially on landing. The last landings, in Europe, I really had difficulties to flare. That's solved now. And it probably also explains why I found the flights in Tolmin to be rather turbulent, while Regina and Matjaz did not experience that at all. It's a fine line. One turn on the inner sprogs makes a big difference!

Tolmin, part 3, Fly with us!

When flying in Tolmin, Regina, Matjaz and I all had camera's with us. Matjaz used the footage and made a really nice video about the flying in his home valley. Thanks a lot, Mat!

Next time, we also need to provide camera's to the eagles :-)

Tolmin, part 2

Regina sent me some nice memories from Tolmin:

Tolmin

I had 2 days of flying in Tolmin with Matjaz and Regina. Matjaz was the perfect host. Sadly both days looked menacing and we decided to land soon on both flights. But look at this picture, Tolmin is definitely one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen:

The birds in Tolmin were flying remarkably close to us. They really seemed to like to have some friends around :-)
After we decided to land, Matjaz and I did some formation flying to get some pictures. And I tried my first wingovers again after last year's incident. I slowly started some minor wingovers, because I didn't have any confidence to try them again. This time I only pulled 2/3 VG and that made a lot of difference. Less VG gives the glider a lot more pitch and handling and still a lot of speed. It almost has the same effect as turning the sprogs up for aerobatics. The improved handling quickly resulted in some confidence and I did a few proper wingovers. I missed them, it was a lot of fun!