07 September 2012

Task 9: 72km around 1tp

We were sitting at the briefing, the weather man said his daily sentence: "There will be only sun today" and we were laughing, when suddenly a dust devil on launch flipped some gliders over and broke battens, even one keel. I was lucky that Mischu´s glider did not hit mine too hard, but everybody was tense after that.
A long time of NE cross wind let us sit down and wait. Finally the wind turned around, but it looked like a lot of people had already tuned into the "after show" - TV-Interviews, photos... I frantically looked for Hakan but just found Adem and told him we need to prepare a new task and start now if we wanted to get into the air today. And I wanted to, as top of the lift was predicted for over 4000m! The best day of the two weeks.
After an hour of discussing, finally a new task briefing. From 110km they scaled it down to 72km, as we could not go earlier than 3.35pm with the first start window. Great views from up high, it was quite cold. I turned away from the thermal below 4100m, as I did not want to risk a penalty. Many pilots went higher, the scores are not out, it will be interesting to see how the local rules will be applied.
I landed 14km short, as I tried the direct way, but the flatlands didnt work at all today. About 18 made goal, and Alex Ploner is the new European Champion, also the Italian team is on 1st place in the team ranking. Slovenia on 2nd place, and probably Spain on 3rd, we made the "potato medal" on 4th place - even though Gerd and Christian got to goal today, the Spanish also had 2 pilots in goal and one very close.
When I got to the turnpoint, I was maybe 150m above ground. I turned around and started a glide of more than 10 km in nearly no height, just soaring the hills like a bird. It was a lot of fun, even though I didn´t make it. I flew 3 hours and Im really exhausted now, but more because it was quite challenging to get the organizers to start a last task today.
Tomorrow we will have the award ceremony in the morning, and then maybe go for one last flight above the vulcano.

Keine Kommentare: