La Meuse does it gain

Last Thursday, I had high hopes because of the forecasts, but when I woke up, cirrus filled the sky. Nevertheless, I set of early and had my glider rigged in Maillen by 10 AM. Maillen, our towing site, was on the edge of the cirrus field:

Little cumi's this early. Definitely a good sign. Sadly the cirrus drifted our way and covered the sky. Many people needed more than one tow to get a first thermal. Except for Rudy, he started second and immediately climbed to cloud base and was gone. I was already back on the ground at that time and waited for the next tow. A good hour later, I was towed up in smooth air and glided away from the field because there was nothing there. I was awarded with a surprising 3 m/s thermal. I headed for the river (named La Meuse in french) and cruised around there for an hour, meeting up with Rudy and Jean. Thermals where plentiful along the river and it got pretty cold at 1700 m. After an hour of playing around, the cirrus had thickened and the thermals got less powerful and broken up. I decided to head against the wind and away from the river. This resulted in drifting twice in zero lift and having to land soon after. Anyway, it was good to have this flight, because the season has been very poor until now...

While rigging, Tom spotted a pretty large wasp. Or is it something else? We're not used to this size in Belgium...

Busy weekend

Finally, we had the possibility of XC weather this weekend. On Saturday, Rudy and I left early for Beauraing and launched around 11h30. I had some light thermals (Rudy got them better), but never got really high, while the sky was turning completely overcast. After an hour of trying, most of it scratching low, I was tempted into the valley (everything is relative on a 80m high ridge) by three birds and had to land soon after. Rudy also had to land a bit later.

I was pretty annoyed with the behavior of some of the paraglider pilots. Some of them had no respect for the priority rules at all and close to the terrain that's even more dangerous than up high.

But, the sky was predicted to clear up in the afternoon, so we decided to go for a second flight. Soaring was easy now, because the wind had increased, but again, it was not easy to get any altitude. I was constantly looking for thermals and whenever I started to turn, I was immediately engulfed in paragliders. Usually, that's not a problem, but just like a few hours before, quite a few of the pilots did not bother about anything else than their own flight. People were switching turn directions without looking around them at all or decided to soar right through a circling gaggle. People did not give way to pilots who were climbing faster and the result was two near misses for Kurt and one for me. I guess I've never been that angry in the air before. A loud shout in French was the result. I left the thermal and decided to look elsewhere on the ridge. I really hope people were not paying enough attention because they were doing their first flights of the year (not an excuse though!) and not because they don't realize what annoyance and danger they are to others.

On the west end of the ridge I finally climbed after searching a while in cooperation with two other paraglider pilots. Not wanting to need a retrieve, I decided to try to go upwind, but it was a bit early to do that. I hit some very light lift a few km's out, but it wasn't enough and I was on the ground. A bit of a shame, as the conditions were improving. I should have been a bit more patient I guess.

The weather predictions were a lot nicer for Sunday. A cold night and day promised some serious thermals although the air pressure was very high. The sky was active very early on, but the clouds were low and pretty flat. A 90 km triangle was set. Tom launched behind the trike for a tandem flight and I planned to launch immediately after. Planned, because the trike's engine stalled on take-off. Tom turned around and landed on his wheels, the trike landed in the field behind the runway. That didn't look good!

You have to know that a Belgian guy ordered a Dragonfly in January and that the German Dragonfly dealer promised us to deliver it early March. The container arrived in Germany in February, but the fully paid aircraft is still in his workshop 3 months later. This now resulted in us maybe losing this nice day of flying and that did not make me happy. It's not the way things should be.

Anyway, after retrieving the trike, some mechanical checks and a static test run on the ground, everything seemed OK. William had the courage to do a test flight (he had bent the steering bar with his belly on landing!) and around 2 PM we were ready for towing again. The tow was nice, with a few bumps due to the active sky. I released and had good thermals, but with an initial working altitude of 800 m, I was quite careful. I flew 30 kms south to Beauraing and spotted a lot of paragliders on launch. Two were soaring low on the ridge a one was maybe 300 m above the ridge. Cloudbase had improved and I reached 1200 m AGL above Beauraing. However, everybody else was low there and the sky was absolutely blue south and east of Beauraing. Not good. Again, I wanted to avoid retrieve so I headed back north, against the 15-20 km/h wind. After two blue thermals, I flew straight into a known sink hole, as I was told later. That was a pity. On the ground at 3.30 PM, while the day was flyable until 7 PM...

But, it was good to finally have done a XC flight in Belgium again. And the colors were sublime. Green grass, yellow flowers and a blue sky with white fluffy clouds. I enjoyed it very much. This was true free flying :-) Sorry I've got no pictures for you.

Thanks for the tow, William!

Poor weather continues

I should have gone for a weekend in the UK. It's the 4th consecutive bad weather weekend in Belgium. And, oh yes, just like the other weekends, the weather is going to be much better on Monday... When is this season ever going to start?

Just checked it: my last flight with any distance in Belgium was in June 2010. That's almost 2 years ago. ****!

Special Falcon Footage

Davide Carraro posted this video on Facebook. I just saw this video after having drunk two Tripel Karmeliet during a late evening talk in a bar (at least something which is really good about Belgium). Anyway, I think many people will be surprised by the footage:

Flying the Aeros Combat 13.5 GT - a review

I have about 15 flights now on the Combat 13.5 GT. During those flights I've experienced weak and strong conditions, well organized and turbulent thermals and slow and fast glides. So I think I'm starting to get a nice picture of how the glider handles and performs :-)

First things first. Launching. No problems there (under normal circumstances). Using 0 to 1/3 VG and using the backward position for the CG, the glider gives me a nice feel and has plenty of pitch, which helps finding the right angle of attack during the run.

Next is thermaling. This is where the 13.5 differs most from my previous glider, the 14.2. In well-organized thermals, it feels like the glider can be high-sided a little. It's not quite high-siding as I remember it from the Spyder, but the glider does seem to turn flatter and slower than you expect to be possible. Push it a bit too much and you immediately feel the loss of efficiency, but as long as you don't overdo it, the glider feels extremely well coordinated and efficient. This was a big surprise for me during a late afternoon flight in Bassano, my first thermal flight with the 13.5. But it was a very pleasant surprise.

In turbulent thermals, I can correct the glider faster than I could with the 14.2. I believe this already helped me during 3 low saves. Once in the first task during the winter race and twice during the first task in Bassano, not that it mattered there... But, during competitions, a low save can make a lot of of difference! And I guess that was my weakest point with the 14.2.

When I considered buying the glider, I feared I was not going to climb as well with it as I did with the 14.2. To make things worse, I put on 5+ kg during the winter and wasn't able to run them off due to an overstressed knee, so I arrived at the Aeros Winter Race expecting not to climb well at all. Now, after some practice with the glider and some tasks under the belt, I think, overall, I climb better with the 13.5 than with the 14.2. Maybe not in nice, light conditions - the big 14.2 was excellent for that - but definitely when things get more alive.

On glide, with full VG, the 13.5 handles noticeably better than 14.2. This was not the case when I flew Matjaz' glider. And I cannot say what causes the difference (settings, full technora?), but the glider is definitely less stiff with full VG, while performance is excellent. A 10 km high-speed glide next to Christian Ciech in Slovenia proved that.

It's also clear now, why Aeros put the moveable hang point in production. The 13.5 has a lot of pitch and it would just be tiring to glide without being able to move the CG forward. So, if you buy a 13.5, buy it with the moveable hang point!

Landing the 13.5 is considerably easier than landing the 14.2. The glider can more easily be corrected, especially at the lower speeds just before flaring, even with quite a bit of VG. This might very well be due to the higher wing loading. The loading surely also helps with clean flow separation when flaring.

So, I like the glider, now I just want the Belgian weather to show off in the coming months!

It's official

We have a Belgian in the top 20 :-)

One week ago - flying in Austria

One week ago, we were on our way to Bassano. We drove from Belgium to Kössen. A cold front hit us at night and we woke up with a bit of snow in the valley. I expected nice post-frontal weather for a few days and was keen to fly. The cable car took us and our gliders to launch. Great service by the way! An 11 euro ticket and no surcharge for the gliders.

Launch is at 1400 m or so and it was pretty cold up there (-7). Looked like we would need some good clothing.

After I launched I had to work a little bit above the valley to climb to base at 1700m. With a dripping nose and cold hands, I flew to the south-facing slopes and hit two 3 m/s thermals on the way to the Inn valley. I planned to fly there, return and do a second out-and-return to Chiemsee. My plans were cut short however when I didn't manage to find anything on the leeward south sloped returning from the Inn valley. I was surprised to have landed after such nice thermals just a few minutes before. And being on the ground with nice clouds everywhere feels very stupid... Even more so because I slid through the mud after being surprised by a pretty strong gradient on landing and pushing out too late as a result. Luckily there was still plenty of snow to clean the harness :-)

The day was nice indeed, many people flew and the thermals lasted for a few hours. Toni Raumauf did a nice 77 km triangle to the Chiemsee, returning via the Inntal and the Wilder Kaiser.

The day after, we continued our journey and headed for Zillertal. My expectations were 3500 m ceilings on the second post-frontal day. However, as soon as we entered the valley, things looked very stable. Indeed, we launched late because we felt very little motion on launch. I had a hard time making any height, so I crossed the valley looking for lift on the west facing slopes, but I never got any higher than 1500m. Not high when the valley is at 600 m. The 2 hours in moderately turbulent thermals, mostly pretty close to the terrain were very good for my confidence in the glider though. It just handles the turbulences better than the 14.2 did. And it lands better too. Except for the landing the day before, all my landings with the 13.5 have been really nice. Long slow ground effect, slowly increasing the angle of attack until flaring gently. I'm a bit cautious about flaring too aggressively because I don't want to damage the tail. This results in 2 or 3 steps after landing, but that's no problem.

We stayed for another day in Mayrhofen and waking up the next day, the sky looked more unstable. But, we got warned that the Föhn was coming in. The launch looked nice and more active when rigging. The distant Föhn clouds which were visible earlier on had disappeared, but the local paragliding school warned us that winds were picking up in the valley. What to do? The first cumi's started to develop and they didn't look turbulent. But, as I was getting ready, more and more lenticulars appeared. No good sign, certainly not when the valley already had some gusts and the wind on launch shifted south as well. We derigged and left for Bassano.