Last training day - 2013 Worlds start tomorrow

Today was the last training day, practice day in fact, where everything should unfold like a normal comp day. A 140 km task was set, but I was never going to fly that today, saving energy for the real comp days to come. The task committee consists of Jonny, Attila and Zippy, so, knowing the first two, we'll get loads of hours under the belt. They obviously have a lot of experience here, but as a side remark, it is my opinion that the task committee should be balanced. Anyway, I should have opened my mouth about that yesterday, as I did during the first meeting in Sigillo, when 2 Italian Icaro pilots were nominated for the task committee. Lots of people agreed back then that that was not desirable. We've all seen in the past how politics can get involved when the stakes are high...

Don't get me wrong, I have confidence that the task committee will do a good job. And I just know for sure it's going to be an endurance battle, looking at the weather forecasts.

So, I just flew for 1,5 hours today, enjoying the air, being surprised by the large sink area's and having some GoPro fun in between. I'm also very happy with my pair of Adidas Evil Eyes. It's nice to be able to recognize the competition from far away!

Tomorrow's the big day. Another 43 degree forecast, first comp day, everybody hoping that the towing operation will be smooth and efficient. Start order will be random on the first task, so I hope I have some luck with that.

From now on, it's for real. Good night.

Adapting the Combat to the heat

The first few days in Australia, I was surprised how tough hang gliding was. The glider was really hard to steer and I originally thought that was caused by the turbulent air and the lack of flying in the past 3 months.

It took me a while to realize the heat was causing it. Our sails shrink with increasing temperatures, so you have to decrease the batten length (it took about 3 turns on my inner battens and 1 or 2 on the outer to cover the 20 degree difference between last setup in Belgium and here). As important is what happens along the wing span. The Combat has rings (shims) which can be used to extend the leading edge. Mine was delivered with 4,5 mm rings. That's quite a lot, but when my glider was test-flown in January, temperatures were -30 in the Ukraine. That's 70 degrees difference to the 40 degrees we've got here. The result is that my glider became very slow in roll control because of the high lateral tension in the hot temperatures we experience here.

I made a drastic change and removed the 4,5 mm rings. The glider now has a surprisingly light handling, but bar pressure on fast glider has also increased significantly. Too much of a change. Luckily Paris went from 3 to 2 mm on his Combat and I'll be able to use his 3 mm rings on mine. I think that will provide a nice compromise.

So, anybody who's having a different glider between summer and winter: think about adding/removing rings to the leading edge. It does make a difference.

More free flying

Although yesterday was very windy for pretty much the whole day, a few of us did get to fly late in the day. I launched around 16:45 and had great climbs flying into the headwind. 5 m/s to 3000 m, cloud after cloud, easy :-) Until I got overconfident and made a 3 stupid decisions in a row and landed out 30 km N of Forbes. Probably the best looking sky I've ever landed in. Damn!

And without cell phone signal, it made me miss most of New Year's eve. Couldn't find any food anymore, so it was just drinks from there ;-)

2 Days of local flying

Yesterday I had quite a lot of work on the glider and in particularly getting the old harness attached correctly to the glider. My fingers are not made for hard-to-reach safety rings... So it was quite late until I launched. Being pretty windy, I flew for an hour and had my first taste of Australian air after a three month non-flying break.

Today was less windy and Trent, Blenkie and others decided on a 180 km triangle. I launched with them and soon after we had a group of 7 or 8 at start height. I noticed that my elbow was rubbing the handle of the reserve chute and had a quick look to check it. One pin was almost loose! Trying to put it back in place, I almost unlocked the second pin. No way I was going to continue flying with the risk that the parachute would fall out. So I landed and went to the supermarket for a quick solution to the problem: rubber bands.

Did a second launch around 2:30 PM and flew for 90 minutes. Felt like 1) there were quite some turbulences and 2) the glider was quite sensitive to them. Sprog measuring tomorrow...

And to top it off, I blew an upright on landing. First one on the 13.5. Didn't plan on using half of my reserve upright on the 2nd flying day in Australia!

Arriving in Australia

Just a few interesting days. Upon arrival I headed for Glen and Jamie's place and where we celebrated christmas with Heather and Mart and I was able to shake off most of the jetlag. Some walking, slacklining and Xboxing filled those 2 coastal days. Can you think of a better setting for a slackline?

Yesterday was quite an international make-it-all-come-together day. It started by driving the Kiwi-car to the Sydney airport to pick up Canadians Rob and Leif and hand the Kiwi-car over to them. From there, we picked up my glider from the shipping company and the headed to the Moyes factory, because Michelle was going to take my glider to Forbes and I was asked to drive Vicky's car there. At the factory, I met Polona. Polona was supposed to stay the night at Vicky's and I was going to stay at Kath's place. Since that was quite an organizational overhead, we decided not to stay in Sydney any longer and head for Forbes immediately. And yes, we did do the tourist thing and stopped at the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains:

All in all, it was dark when we drove the last 150 km and yes, you do have to watch out for wildlife. After cruising around for a while, I had to hit the brakes quite hard when a Wallaby suddenly showed up in the middle of the road. We were warned for the rest of the trip.

Arriving late in Forbes, where the Australian Jazz convention is going on, meant that we didn't find a place to sleep, so Forbes airfield was the place to go. And this was sunrise:

My glider should be here tonight. Let the games begin!

Received the Adidas Evil Eyes

I've been flying with the Evil Eyes for 3 years now and they've been the best corrective sunglasses I could find. They've proven strong, provided good vision and have swappable glasses for varying conditions.

So I'm very happy to announce that Adidas provided me with the newest model of the Evil Eye. Many thanks to Optiek Vandeweghe for helping me out in finding the right glasses, 3 years ago and now:

Damaged landing gear

Slipped on the stairs yesterday. Hope the damage is only aesthetic, but I'm not sure about that.