2011 has started

Today I had the chance to test the new sail. I was a bit nervous because it was the first time I disassembled and assembled a glider and it had to fly of course. But it was looking good and it also felt good during a run on the grass.
And, it flew straight with VG of and VG full on. And that is very, very important. So that's a big relief. Now let's hope it also glides as well as the previous sail.
It was the first flight with the Combat after 4 months of inactivity and I definitely lost some of the feeling for it. 2 Nice landings and one rather sloppy landing. Not the landing itself, but the approach wasn't nice. I was overcorrecting a little. Will be fine again after the next serious flight ;-)
Here's the revamped bird:

Not very daily yet

I retitled my blog to 'The Daily Thermal' because I was anticipating very frequent flying, starting from mid december in Australia. I had already booked my plane, but I was unable to get my 9 sabbatical months from mid december. I have to be patient until April.
So, I missed the Aussie comps. But, apart from one 300 km task, they didn't have the usual (for us Europeans exceptional) Oz conditions due to a strong La Nina. You all know about the floods...
I didn't miss to much. And I guess they'll be organizing the worlds in Forbes in 2013, so let's hope our planet goes completely berserk and we have a strong El Nino in 2013, because I plan to be there then!
We must survive the legendary year 2012 first of course... Belgium might even have a government in 2013.