Long time ago already...

I notice I haven't posted anything since Australia... So it's still ok to post the last view I had of Forbes airfield. Stunning, right?

Bye bye Australia, hope to see you again!

19th HG Worlds - Day 10 - Task 9

A 240 km task was set, starting a little earlier than the previous days (1:50 PM). The day was beautiful with cumi's and associated strong lift everywhere. Cirrus caused some shading for a 20 km stretch near the second turnpoint, but other than that you couldn't have asked for more. This was the Australian weather we came for! It finally happened :-)

Unlike yesterday, there was plenty of time for launching today. I had time to reach and optimal starting point and there was some true racing going on for the first 140 km. 80 - 90 km/h glides between 4 - 5 m/s thermals. It felt good to be racing with the leaders, haven't done enough of that this championship.

I lost some time at the edge of the cirrus band, where things got slower and I missed a thermal that seemed to shoot Christian Ciech into the sky. Than I took a wrong course line under a dying cloud, but saw Primoz or Paris again at the 3rd turnpoint. They made it in and I should have as well, but I feared the day was dying and wasn't patient enough. I landed at 6 PM and saw gliders flying over my head for the next hour. 213 km out of 240 is not bad, but it is only good enough for 51st place. Such is the level at this World Championship.

17 made goal, but most remarkably, not Manfred, missing goal by 5 km. This significantly reduces his lead over Alex Ploner, now down to 15 points. The winner scores close to 1000 points a day, so the battle for victory is extremely tight between these two. It's going to happen today!

19th HG Worlds - Day 9 - Task 8

Finally a less windy day and a 192 km triangle was set. Rest day for the drivers as the task committee put it. No Belgian has ever flown a 192 km triangle, so I was pretty keen to make goal ;-) The task committee wanted to make it a race (single start gate), but they did include later start gates for those unlucky with launching.

Because I'm quite far down in the standings and launching was slow yesterday due to the turning winds, I was launched 25 minutes before the start gate opened. It was 9 km from Forbes and I was going to be hard to get to the start in time. I found a good thermal 3 km behind the start gate and when I flew back to start, I was 5 km behind the others and had a height deficit. Not good, when everybody takes the first start.

Initially, I raced hard and started catching up with pilots. After 40 km, I raced for a field which had 5 dusties, sacrificing a lot of height, but the resulting thermal by far wasn't as spectacular as expected and I had to take the relatively slow climb now. No chance of catching up with the leaders anymore.

It was good flying, but I had to make all the decisions. A bunch of pilots followed me, but they never went out into the blue. So, I took the risks and got low and slow on 2 more occasions. 15 km from goal, the day faded and I had to be extremely patient in a thermal that drifted more than it went up to avoid an outlanding.

Anyway, I made sure I could get to goal and enjoyed the evening colors:

As expected, lots of people were already in goal, as gaggle flying does pay off on those blue days. It took me 5,5 hours and the leaders were an hour faster than I was.

Biggest triangle flown by a Belgian :-)

I enjoyed flying it a lot.

19th HG Worlds - Day 8 - Task 7 - Over and out

A 200+ km task and I only managed 30 km. I guess the next worlds are in 2 years time...

19th HG Worlds - Day 7 - Task 6

Safety issues yesterday. Loads of wind in the afternoon were predicted, yet a task was set and accepted. I told Zippy (task committee) I was concerned about it and he told me he was happy it was out of his hands. He was right about that.

During the first hour, the winds picked up from 15 km/h to 45 km/h. And the forecast was for way more wind, so I decided to land. Sure enough the task wasn't going to last much longer and I was nauseous anyway. To my surprise, it took another hour before the task was stopped. With that amount of wind, the others flew another 70 km, so I lost a lot of points yesterday. I'm pretty pissed that I didn't have the motivation to keep going, but very much also because I think that any reasonable thinking would have stopped the task way earlier.

I walked the glider to the edge of the field with my hands on the base bar. About the right time to land, I guess, how much longer do you have to wait? Quite a bit longer if you do not want to risk losing 500 points.

19th HG Worlds - Day 6 - Task 5

Interesting day it was, as predicted by the task committee (In-Tree-Esting). Pretty string winds, 2 forest crossings, a bit of wave on the first glide, a 7 m/s thermal to 4200 m and a 50 km fight against a 40 km/h wind.

Nobody made goal as the task was stopped when the winds increased even more. I was happy to be on the ground. The local farmer checked and offered help to every single pilot landing in his field.

19th HG Worlds - Day 5 - Task 4

A 170 km dog-leg task was set yesterday, with a 35 km exit circle. While trying to go upwind in the start circle, I found myself pretty low, without signs of lift for a whole while or other gliders, on yet another blue day. It didn't look good and got my nerves going. After struggling a bit, I got to a decent starting height with a few others around me.

We took the second start (15:00) and the gaggle stopped in pretty weak lift. I wasn't satisfied with that and glided on. Twice. This got me really low and I had to work whatever lift I could find. It was strong but turbulent lift and I felt more like a leaf in the wind than a pilot in the sky. The gaggle passed me and I was on my own again. I was low on 2 more occasions before we hit the turnpoint at 70 km, but got strong climbs and flew with the gaggle from the turnpoint.

When the day started to calm down, I took it easier than most others and played safer for final glide. It cost me a few places, but I really wanted to ensure that I made goal. It was beautiful flying, with the sun getting lower already, changing the colors and mellowing the thermals. I had lift when I arrived at goal and if we wouldn't have to do the drive back to forbes, I certainly would have taken it and enjoyed the rest of the day flying as much as possible.