At last a report...

So far, the holiday has been a great success. We've been away since saturday and have been flying every day. One day in Greifenburg, one day in Zillertal (flying over the slopes where I used to ski) and then we travelled towards Bassano.
We had two interesting 'training' days with nice flights over the snow covered Monte Grappa, before the competition began yesterday. The first task was a complete disaster for me. My flight only lasted a good 15 minutes while everybody else was in the air. I felt deeply embarassed...
Today was a completely different situtation. I started last and had to work hard to find some list along the slopes towards the first turnpoint. When I finally found something decent, I was joined in 'my' thermal by the leading pack. Quite a view ;-) I then could glide to the first turnpoint and got very low returning from it. I was only 200 vertical meters from landing when I got some lift again and slowly, very slowly could make my way up again. It took me 1,5 hours to do the first 15 km... After that I had some nicer thermals and worked the ridges until I landed after 2h45 flying time. I have probably gone further than 50, which is definitely a new personal record. I'm happy about today and about the week so far and we'll see what happens the next few days.

Bassano, here I come!

Tomorrow I will be leaving for Bassano for my second hang gliding competition. I'm all excited ;-) I haven't done any cross country flights since my first ones in July and August, but I'm very keen to test how my thermalling skills have improved.

So I'm heading for Bassano. And I will be flying there with the European top pilots. That is, I will see them start and they will quickly leave me behind ;-)

I'm competing to test my own skills and I hope I'll manage my first 50 km flight. Ofcourse I'm dreaming of reaching goal once, but I would probably need a very good day which is completely underestimated by the task setters to be able to do that...

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to it and hope to do some great flying in the next few days. And I'll try to keep you posted!

March is over...

March was spent with a variation of short flights (winching, towing) and a few still relatively short, thermal flights. The most beautiful flights were 2 fourty-minute long fligths, one in Hinterweiler on a stable but sunny day and one in Beauraing on an unstable but almost overcast day.

In Hinterweiler I reached a height of 900 m AGL with the first real thermals of the year for me. I was impressed by the surroundings and the hospitality of the local crew. I'm certain I will go there again to spend the weekend :-) Here are 2 pictures from Hinterweiler:

The flight in Beauraing was in very unstable conditions and I was sucked upwards to a cloud street at 3-4 m/s. The cloud base was at 1100m AGL and I was able to ride the street for a full 15 minutes. Only managing 7 km's by doing so due to the strong headwinds. I guess around 40 km/h...
Finally some pictures from an overcast flight in Maillen which ended with some raindrops: