24 April 2011

Bassano Day 4

The forecast was for rain in the late afternoon, so today we flew a shorter task of 85 km around Paderno, Rivit and Caerano as turnpoints. Base was only up to 1700 m at the most, so it was not easy to get across potatoe country without too many landing options. As there was plenty of shading too, sometimes the day was really slow and you had to patiently circle in some cm per minute, while at other times there were nice 3m/s thermals.
Alex Ploner won the day, and Primoz must have been in as well, but I don't know who else and the ranking yet, as I was the last one in goal. When I circled in a huge cloud of paragliders at Asolo, our top gaggle came already back from the last turnpoint. It was amazing to thermal with the top guys flying these huge aspect ratio paragliders. Very civilized, very beautiful to watch them in front of my nose ;)
I got quite low after the last turnpoint, but as there were plenty of possible landing fields around, I did not give up. Really nice air today, as the thermals smelt like a bunch of spring flowers. It got unreal when 4 buzzards showed me the better core of the thermal that saved me and eventually got me to goal.
Most people had already packed up when I arrived there, but I was happy not to need a retrieve. Also I heard that Elio had touched a tree on landing, Linda told me, apparently he has dislocated his shoulder and went to hospital. Coming in late at least has the advantage that there was nobody in the air anymore and no wind at all, so that made my landing pretty easy. It can get extremely crowded at times, with so many comp pilots and free flyers in the air.
Four days of valid tasks is a record I haven't seen here in about 10 years of flying the Bassano comp, and if we are fast, we might even get a last round in tomorrow. No storms or rain today, so maybe the conditions stay stable tomorrow as well, even though the prediction is for rain from 11 am.
No new results out yet, but retrieve can take a while in this area. Sorry that I could not post any photos yet, but I can't work on my computer here to upload them.

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