Happy days

Ivan and I on the opening ceremony with team India.

Geoff over Avila

Lots of pilots are still here in Piedrahita, conditions are really good. Today some pilots set a task around the valley and others went cross country!
I had 5 1/2 hrs flight out and return to piedrahita - Avila and back. around 100kms. Geoff and I flew most of the time together and just before the pass we separated and I lost contact with him.


Everyone is really chilling out, the mood on launch is very relaxed. A lot of camaraderie. I liked to see the Chilean flag blowing by the gentle breeze on take off today.

Ivan Anissimov - As the comp ended...

Spanish beds are shorter. I can reach both ends when stretching in the morning, but in evening I shrunk somehow. I haven’t seen fly screens in Spain yet. May be mozzie that I killed few days ago was the only one in whole country? Or may be it arrived in my baggage somehow? I hope mozzie is not endangered species in Europe…

As comp ended, that would be end of the blog, I guess. I am thinking about keeping writing, may be in more serious form about Killing the Bastard and other flying tips. For that stuff I might use blog that Martin created for me. I want to thank all of you, who support us with you positive comments. It does mean a lot to us. Usually I’m only checking my email once a week. But here I start doing it twice a day! I haven’t seen negative comments yet, and I like it that way. May be putting them in “deleted items” folder directly would save time, money and good relationship. Life is like pedestrian crossing, and right now I am not on white. FFAI is something dirty and bloodsucking, stacked to the bottom of healthy body of pilots. Now it rules it. It make its own rules and imposing it on us (see section 7b etc). Some of them is good, some ok, some is just common sense and a lot of them is plain bulls#¥t. FFAI also provides comp sanction and WPRS ranking. Comp sanction is needed mostly for WPRS ranking, as comp organisers looking after safety, etc. It is quite obvious, that WPRS ranking is not working for Australia, as well as for the most of non European countries. Our pilots have to go overseas (if they can afford it) to improve their ranking. Of course they are getting experience as well, but what happens to their ranking in next couple of years, if they only flying in our comps? Where all this experience disappeared? How is it reflected in their ranking? The very fact that our pilots have to fly overseas comps to improve their rating is a good indicator that WPRS ranking is not working properly.

Why do we keep paying FFAI and CIVIL? Mostly because we don’t care. All it takes to make them disappear into thin air is take control of our money and stop waisting it on bunch of bureaucrats with very poor safety record. First revolution was birth of World Cup about 20 years ago. The only mistake was that FFAI and CIVIL was left intact, they weren’t replaced with organisation, respected by most of the pilots and working for the pilots. Now we have this chance. Cut them off our money and they will die. Internet based ranking systems are available now and could be design to be fair for all pilots. Wouldn’t it be nice, if after FFAI/CIVIL statement about closure of 12th World Championship, pilots come up with statement about opening of The First Non Sanctioned by FFAI/CIVIL World Championship and keep it running with implementation of upgraded safety measures, offered by pilots working group. Most of the pilots were ready to continue this competition. Even if organisers weren’t ready to take the risk, organisation of the comp could be taken over by new group of people with assistance of current organisers. That would have been real World Championship and possibly last nail for FFAI and CIVIL coffin! By the way, FFAI is not spelling mistake, you can work it out. Unfortunately, time is lost, chance is gone, we got what we deserved. Two pilots died doing what they loved. FFAI and CIVIL will keep going with their terrible safety record. Hungarian pilot collected about 50 signatures for suing FFAI and CIVIL for retracting their sanction after pilots comply with all their requirements. Frustration and disappointment are suitable words today for me. Most people went flying, it is a beautiful day. I need to get my head straight first, I can’t fly yet… This is, as usual, only my point of view at this point of time. It is not my intention to upset any person, especially fellow pilots, who volunteered their time and energy for improvement of our safety under current system. Their efforts are greatly appreciated by all of us.

Ivan & Dave's proposal for alternative comp format

Just to let everyone out there know that Ivan and Dave, after discussion with the rest of us plus some Kiwis really tried to rescue the comp by contributing to a working group and coming up with a way of task setting that would improve safety. I'll leave it to either of them if they want to explain details. As you've read, it was to no avail, the comp is over, but Ivan, Dave, your efforts were much appreciated, and I do think the proposal was a good one.

Antje

Thanks to Dave, our Team Manager

A big thanks to Dave for doing a great job as a team manager. Not only did he sacrifice his own time, money and opportunity to fly, but he kept us organised, helped launching, briefed and debriefed, and went to a series of meetings that I would have really struggled to put up with.

And he complied with Ivan's request and was always positive :-)

Thank you, Dave, you helped me a lot, shame it's all over already.

Antje

and more.

Civl have suspended the certification of competion class gliders, this means that the worlds 2011 is over. In another statement by the organiser's, they said that the 2 tasks will score and this championships is valid, so there will be a prize giving and closing ceromony tomorrow.
I would like to thank the organiser's for there extreme hard work through the recent difficult days, they have done an amazing job, i would also like to thank all those that have supported the team and of course i would like to thank the team themselves, they are great guys ( and gal ), they showed themselves as great sportsmen and as great ambassador's of Australia.
The organiser mentioned somthing of a serial world championship here next year, i feel the history of competition paragliding has turned a corner, one that i have looked around before ( those old enough will remember the serial class days ). I only hope this new direction is a safer one.
Thanks
Dave

It's officially over

Comp is over/canned/stopped, look for official wording at Piedrahita2011.com

I'm going freeflying next week and a bit, hope the rest of the team will join me, and I hope there will be retrieves of some sort.

Antje

and more

Civl have stopped the competion on a temporary basis and may resart when a safer format is put forward. Many pilots ,team leaders and organisers are deep in disscussion about an xc open formular that has been suggested. Much disscussion to be had and any decissions will be aired here.

Day three

The Australian team would like to express our condolances to families and friends of those who left us unexpectently yesterday. Rip

Today is a day off in respect for those pilots.

Task 2

Both boys in goal.

1st task

All Aussie pilots are back in Piedrahita, safe. Ivan made goal despite flying with a faulty tracker, Felipe was about 37 k short. Geoff and Antje were somewhat short too !!! There should be a few get pinged for airspace violations and are now wishing they uploaded the airspace file. results will be up later.

Task 1 - Goal at 154 km - the view from the ground

Task 1 is running as we speak, and Felipe at 95 km seems to be in the 2nd Gaggle - go Felipe. Ivan's last live tracking point (see piedrahita2011.com) is at 45km out, I think he's on the ground, Geoff seems to have gotten washed off the pass at 31 km out (known Piedrahita difficulty #2 - sinking air behind the pass for several kms) and yours truly sunk out right at the start, scratching all the way to the ground (known Piedrahita difficulty #1 - it is after all a North facing, shallow slope, and I can verify that this is not conducive to thermal formation). It was windy on launch, but not as bad as yesterday. Good luck to those still on course. And for myself, I guess I'll be well rested for a new day tomorrow.


Antje

congested goal

Yesterday was a practise task which was short and succsessful with most reaching goal, ( all Aussies made goal ). Today is the official first task . The forcast looks good for a few days so expect some ever changing results to come flowing in.

Dave

The opening ceremony finished with most pilots tucked up in bed ready for the practise task with the exception of 50% of the kiwi team. at least someone is making use of the 2 story mobile disco .

Dave

Opening ceremony

Great opening ceremony, done in a typical Spainish/Piedrahita style. Its now 11:20pm and the town party has just started, the 2 story mobile disco thing is pumping out euro pop at an head splitting volume and i belive is suppossed to go on till 3 am. world champs Spanish style, Nice.

Dave.

Were here

Antje testing the new fai approved harness

The complete Aussie team are now here in Piedrahita and ready to do battle. All 3 blokes and 1 sheila have succsesfully passed all the very strict rego requirments. Additional to the team is myself as team leader and general dogsbody. My logistic skills were tested this morning at rego, helping some of the guys with there paperwork, there is so much paperwork and checking to be done it took about 2 hours to complete, then you had to go to another building to have your gear checked. The organisers seemingly had it all under control until the fai guys stepped in, and then the system all fell apart and instead of having your glider/lines, harness and helmet checked they just checked helmets and pilot weights !. All in all, cat 1 rego = organised chaos . Some have gone flying before having to return this evening for a mantatory pilot breifing and opening ceremony.

Dave Gibbs

1st day in Piedrahita

After a 10 hour flight 3 days in Shanghai another 10 hour flight 3 days in Germany one flight of 2 hours and 1 day in Madrid, I finally arrived in Piedrahita after a short bus ride. Got my accomodation sorted and a lift up the hill straight away in a BMW, it was good to arrive in style. hehehe
The french team is here and several other pilots are training for the worlds, yesterday we had a light westerly breeze and we set a 100km task out and return.
I was so excited to try my mew wing, I received it at about 6 weeks ago but the crap winter in Sydney didn't allow me to try it out. The sky was full of Ozone wings, and the R11 are really the best wing around.
we had a gaggle of about 10, 15 pilots and the only non R11s was myself with the new Tracer and a polish guy with the UP XR and and the black icepeak 5 of Jean mark Caron.
Piedrahita is amazing, powerful thermals and big air. it only gets dark here at 10:30 and yesterday at 6:30 we still had thermal of + 5.
Our task started with a ridge run, a turn point over the flats one turn point 44 km at west and them goal in Piedrahita.
The R11 are the wings to be beaten but the Icepeak and the UP are not too far behind. I think the Icepeak 5 climbs really well. My wing is completely different from last years, it's heaps more stable and easier to fly, more collapse resistant and when on glide I didnt feel the R11s had an advantage.
We flew for almost 4 hours and I was always with the leading gaggle, the begining of the flight on the flats we had super rough stuff, I think the thermals weren't well defined and I just couldn't find a good core, I think no one could really do. On the way back it was a differnet history, nice big well difined climbs.
It was hard to go down and land due to the abundance of lift.
All in all it was great to be in the air again and having the cofidence I have a good glider, from now on the plan is to train a bit more, rest and concentrate and be ready to the real deal.
We still have a few more days of training to get to know the area better and get to know the infamous convergence lines of Piedrahita.
The rest of the Team will arrive in Piedrahita today. It will be good to catch and hear the stories from the Nordic Open where they did really well.

Stay tuned.

Felipe Rezende

Ivan, the blogging machine !

28/06/11, Ivan

Morning is clear with blue sky, some cirruses high up (I should ask for right spell, as they seems to be here every day). Forecast for light wind, so we should go places.

I start getting use to routine: up at 7, pack instruments, batteries and water, go to breakfast with WiFi, check the messages, carry very heavy bag to headquarters about 300 meters (gosh, I missed my Lightness harness so much!), find shade, wait, jump on bus, get up, find shade, get launch pack, wait, punch coordinates, check map, wait for lull, get in bus and go for swim in cold river...

That was scenario for yesterday. After that we went on bus tour, courtesy of comp organisers. Local trout farm, sulfur hospital, which make me consider to quite smoking, beginning of the river, which is also highest point of Potugal, almost 2000 meters. They build it up to make it to 2000 meters.

After 9 o'clock they organized a party in Monteigas, which is about 10 km from headquarters. I missed it, too much local cheese make me sleepy.

Midi is back, he carrying his back with great accuracy, just like me on bad day. After receiving great deal of advices on what to do and what not to do from bunch of us, he went to rest for few days. Hopefully he would be fine for world.

Time to make this 300 meters walk...

28/06/2011, Ivan

Back from flying. Long retrive with changing buses and waiting for people to fill up big bus. I was first on both buses of course. All gliders transported in green track. Not many pilots keen on separation from their gliders, but we don't have a choice...

Today 80 km task suppose to be with down wind last leg, but predicted wind was from other direction, so we were pushing into head wind all the way. At the end wind become stronger, thermals were trashed on flats, pilots were struggling to get 1600 meters. I don't think anyone made goal with leaders just getting over 50 km mark. I think Matts Eliasson and Michael Bass get over 50 km, Geoff, Dave and me got over 40 km. Would be interesting to see what scoring system would do to results.

One Hungarian pilot had accident on top of the ridge on the way to last turn point. Suspected spinal injury, doesn't look too bad, that's what they saying anyway.

Geoff got cascade with twists, stall the glider, sort it out and managed to catch up and overfly most of the field by taking back route over high ground. That's the way to do it!

My tracker was beeping every 10 seconds like bloody microwave. I couldn't switch it off, buttons doesn't work. It has mind of its own and I was seriously considering to drop it. It was really frustrating when we playing yo-yo on flats pretty low in brocken with head wind over 25 km/hour.

And I appreciate my old harness without seat board even more now! Wet shorts from consrant shifting from side to side, back and forward become every day reality. I was tired and sleep in the bus again after only 3 hour fght.

Now I sounds like Negative Dave. We are trying to convert him into Positive Dave by the end of this trip. He still refuse to use right terminology, like "extremelly ridge soarable" instead of "too windy". So hi is in denail so far, but we'll keep trying.

Portugal is slate country. Most of the houses, retaining walls, stairs, mountains, launches and even some of the roofs are made out of slate. On launches they luckily have shade cloth pinned down, so our lines are still in good shape.

Local people are very friendly, unlike flys. There are quite a number of them on ski slopes covered with white carpet. They just baking there under the morning sun and don't even trying to kiss you all at once, not like in Australia (I mean flys of course).

Locals are also very interested in politics. From what I understand, Portugal political system working pretty much like front loading washing machine in our accomodation: once you put detergent and your cloth in, it start pumping water and make all the right noises, but it doesn't turn or spin. And then you have to spend next tree hours trying to get you cloth back and wash it by hands...

29.06.2011, Ivan

Morning routine was dominated by yesterday's score news. Michael Bass done brilliant job on such hard day and come first, before our oun Matts Eliasson. Well done!

In first dosen we have now 4 Australian pilots, which is not bad at all. Other ways to look at it is all our pilots are in first dozen, or one third of the first dozen are Australian. Dave look at it slightly differently, he was beaten by pilot who been flying only just over year. We have to fix it, I mean turn him into positive Dave.

Would be nice to keep same placing during next comp:) Not likely though...

But if we'll raise few more Mikes in next five years, who knows, it might happens. Always good to have a dream.

Hungerian pilot is stable, no nerve damage, just fructure, so we expecting full recovery. Midy walking around, he should be all right for the World.

It is interesting to see discussion on acro maneuvers and comp gliders. I even might send some thoughts. Not sure how it wiil be taken but... Mike was laughing on Gavs email, he is appreciate support. Who doesn't?

Today we went up lower launch, wait untill thre o'clock and came back to spend the rest of the day next to river. It was noticeably colder day (of cource because I decided to leave my jumper at home) and extremely ridge soarable... Wind came down a bit as day progressed, but with cloud base of 2000 meters and only few thermals organisers canned it. Few people flew and even got up, but all agreed that with mountains around it was not safe for too many pilots in this comp.

Couple of Russian pilots decided not to wait for buses and went down by goat track. It would be about double size of Beechmont, but they negotiated it in 29 minutes. Considering that in this Slate Country there is no Australian Building Code, so when they buid these mountains, they put every piece of slate vertically. And it is sharp. Geoff's knee come second best against retaining wall other day. But Russians came down without scratch.

Tomorrow is final day of this comp, I still fiddling with my (sorry, it's actually Simon's) harness. Hopefully I should be good for Piedrahita.

Ivan

26 June 2011, Ivan

Just finished flying second day of Nordic Open. Today was windy, hot day without cu's and with a lot of cirruses (I am sure I spelled it wrong, but it was the onky option on my PDF). Termals were going only to 1700 meters and we were pushing into wind. With 60 km task, most pilots landed before 20 km mark. I heard that only couple of guys made it to goal, so they would be the most unpopular tomorrow :)

Midi got dusty on landing at first turn point, and hit the ground after collapse pretty hard. Ambulance took him on stretches to hospital with suspected compression, but we all hope he would be OK. Midi was calm and didn't complained much. We'll check him tomorrow in hospital.

Yesterday was much better day.

27.06.2011, Ivan

Breakfast was very good as usually. Still wondering how they can do it for 3 euros. Midi is OK, not even compression they can see on Xray. Still in pain, but might be out of hospital soon with bag of illegal drags. So we will take him to our house from his tent. I am sure other 3 Russians wouldn't mind. It is only house in whole park, with thick walls out of slate. On ground level it is always cool like in cellar, even in day heat.

Today looks clear so far, but they expect stronger wind. Yesterday results are out. 3 pilots in goal and Mads 200 m short. Winner got 160 points, so everyone love them now. Guys deserve medals at least!

ivan's dream come true

Put on your best Russian accent

Dream come true.

I got these nightmares for the last two weeks before trip to Europe: I am late for my flight, I am missing connection flight, my tickets, passport and money were stolen, my glider is too heavy and they wouldn’t take it, my bag have been lost and combinations of the above.

So I wasn’t really surprised when baggage belt in Madrid airport went empty, crowd disappeared and I was still standing there without my glider. I guess it even out the fact that I didn’t miss any flights, money or documents, despite the real chance of being late for departure in Brisbane. Road to airport was parking lot and after half of hour sitting in it, my wife took service road and scenic route.

It still made the whole trip pointless, as I can’t fly without glider. I am trying not to think about Simon’s harness and Hollywood’s radio, it is just a bit too much for me at the moment.

I can’t buy local sim card in airport, so I don’t have a chance to find Geoff Wong with his car. I still need to let him know that I am sleeping in here for the next week or until my glider arrive, whichever comes first.

After getting rough direction to closest shop which sell sim cards (apparently you can’t get there by foot), I discovered that Spanish language is actually quite different from English. To my surprise you couldn’t understand not just most of it, but mostly all of it. Needless to say, that despite friendly attitude, locals could not work out my accent and sign language either.

I recon if anyone would open sim card shop in every major airport, they would become a millionaires. And they can open money exchange inside of Chinese airports, so you don’t need to apply for the visa, if you want to buy drink or food (that two are royalties applicable).

Paris was rainy in the morning, but Madrid was quite pleasant 27 degrees, with a fresh wind. A bit strong for flying, not if I need to care.

On the way out I suddenly stumbled on Geoff and Dave Gibbs. Boy, I glad to see you guys! Dave’s glider didn’t arrive from London either. And the van he bought for traveling and living in it blew up 5 minutes into his trip.

So it could be worse after all…

By the way, maps here are in Spanish too. But because we don’t have any, we don’t need to worry. My GPS don’t have maps of Spain, so it is useless as well.

After weighing our options, we decided to go to Piedrahita, which is only 1.5 hours away, rather then trying to find accommodation in Madrid. I left Dave phone number and my email address for lost baggage office and explained to smart looking women as best as I could importance of finding my glider. Letter from HGFA office did the trick.

Roads in Spain looks pretty much like our highways and well signed. Wind is on fresh side, so landing would of been vertical. If we would of have our gliders that is. Ground seems pretty dry btw few patches of green here and there. We are driving along fairly sizable ridge line about 1500 meters with some bigger mountains behind it. It looks like old rounded hills, similar to Bright landscape with Spanish flavour. Flats looks rugged, cut by deep little creeks, littered with big rocks, not unlike area around Armidale. Sky is pretty clear with few small cu’s, some lenticular and cirruses.

As we come over notorious pass about 15 km before Piedrahita, it does look complicated. Wind getting stronger and blowing along the valley. I am not keen on getting low in this area.

In Piedrahita we try to get accommodation in famous La Residentia, but at 6 o’clock it was too early, so we have to come back after 7 o’clock. I wouldn’t understand that ever, but Geoff does speak Spanish! And he understand it as well! From now on I have to stick with Geoff no matter what. I still don’t have SIM card, address or internet connection, but we got Geoff, so, we should be OK!

Finally we settled in La Residentia and even done some shopping in local supermarket. Prices a bit better than in Australia, so we will survive.

By 8 o’clock we could see a dozen gliders above the launch. Mostly parked, they didn’t go anywhere in a hurry. By nine they all came down for beer in local pub. We recognise few faces, good to chat to people you met 10 or so years ago.

Piedrahita is something hard to describe. If you been to Manilla (who hasn’t?), it is nothing like it.

Buildings, roads and even fences build out of rocks. Some big rocks! About 800 years ago! Some of them anyway. And they looks that way as well. Tiny wiggly one way streets between stone walls. Big timber doors with century old handles. Most of them need adjustment (it’s renovator speaking). And a lot of storks, probably more than ibises on Gold Coast or flying foxes in Logan. And their nests are huge. And they are everywhere, including mobile tower.

All these baby stories are lies after all, otherwise Piedrahita would be at least size of New York.

I was told that storks are crap at termalling, but their nests are pretty good termal markers…

Spain is good place to be. Especially if you like beer or coffee. Not so good with tea. Most of the time people don’t understand why would someone want tea.

La Residentia is empty and echoed at the moment. View out of our window is much better than you would expect for 10 euros, including breakfast.

Dave got phone call. His glider arrived. Lucky Dave! Today is Wednesday, they promised to deliver it on Monday, in 5 days time. Apparently tomorrow is national holiday. I love the way they think and count! I also love Siesta. We have to have it in Australia!

At midnight we check my glider on internet – no traces of it. In my nightmares that night my glider deliverd to my home.

At 6 o’clock in the morning good news arrived. My glider in Madrid as well.

We drove back to Madrid, picked both gliders and got to Portugal without much drama.

On the way Geoff got us into camping shop in Salamanca, so Dave got his home now.

Training - of sorts

So the Schmittenpokal (which was also the Austrian Nationals) didn't happen - it got cancelled on the first day, without a briefing, due to the bad weather forecast. No flying in Zell am See, despite being there for four days :-(

I did finally get a flight on the way back to Munich, in Koessen, thanks to Axel and Anna (and Luis!) who very kindly stopped for me to race up the hill and have a 20 min boat around complete with spirals to try out the M4 - flies beautifully. Bit of a problem landing, though: It glides so well that I ended up using most of the rather large landing padock before touching down - will have to work on that one. But all in all, so nice to be in the air again, and how light is that speedbar, and how easy does that wing turn! :-)

So, that was a bit of an unexpected end to 4 days of non-flying, where I took all sorts of other opportunities to train for Piedrahita:
Carrying small children to train for carrying my bag
Carrying my bag to train for carrying my bag
- up to launch, twice, and down again
- looking for another launch in the clouds, and up again
- onto trains, cable cars etc
- entertaining small children all day to train endurance - I'm exhausted!
- walking down from launch in Zell am See for fitness - turns out what I actually need to train is walking in my flying boots, my feet hurt!

Anyway, off to work for another week, and hoping to fly in the Harz mountains near my parents place (Rammelsberg, Goslar) next week.

Antje

Five things ...

Thanks to the Captain for chiming in!

Recently on the Paragliding Forum, Tom Payne listed the five things he'd learned the hard way in competitions. So I thought I'd do the same here:

1. Making the start gate in the best position is crucial to a good race.
Virtually all tasks in paragliding competitions in Europe are single start race starts, typically using entry starts. If you're not at the start, usually on the up wind side of the start gate near the top of the gaggle then you may as well not be there.

2. Controlling distractions is important to performing well in a task.
Being distracted means you're not flying in the moment and not concentrating on the task. Being on the Comp Committee and doing a lot of scoring means I get a lot of rules questions, it took some time to learn to put off these questions before tasks and to shut out this kind of distraction. My flying improves significantly when I do this well, when I don't I make stupid mistakes. Other common distractions include work, fear, other pilots, your instruments, and oxygen thieves on launch.

3. Going alone early in a task isn't going to win you a race.
High quality competitions have lots of good pilots, and sticking with a good gaggle is the key to pushing through the mid and early sections the race. However, if you drop behind sometimes you have to give up the gaggle, landing early as a result of pushing on too hard can be be very costly.



4. You "make" your own luck.
Different opportunities to improve your position arise during a task, being open to those opportunities enables your take "lucky" opportunities when they arise. If you tighten your focus and observation too much you miss those opporunties.

5. Being indecisive usually results in a bad decision.
Backing your own judgement gives you confidence and even making your own mistakes means you've learned from the flight.

This is your captain speaking

so someone had the brilliant idea to register me as team leader (Geoff!), now I'm getting emails from the organisers about bringing an Australian flag to the ceremony etc, and no, apparently it can't be one that doubles as a bath towel.

It's all suddenly starting to get a lot more real, and I am planning to head to Austria to the "Schmittenpokal" http://www.ikarus-pinzgau.com/schmittenpokal-1/schmittenpokal-2011/
to finally fly my brand new M4. Wish me luck with the weather!

Antje

Flying Piedrahita

Piedrahita is just flat-lands flying over a desert isn't it, how hard could it be?

I've flown two competitions previously at Piedrahita: a round of the British Open in 2009 and the Pre-Worlds in 2010. Piedrahita is undoubtedly a tricky a site to fly consistently.

It all starts with the launch. While it's a massive take-off (apparently to be astro-turfed for the Worlds too!), it's a north facing launch which is weird in the northern hemisphere. It works consistently because it's a reasonably shallow slope in front of launch which generates anabatic flows up the face, but there is no mistaking it for a lee-side launch. Dusties regularly rip through launch, both comps I've seen gliders flying around by themselves. Once you're in the air there's no mistaking the lee-side feel of the flying.

Tip #1: don't leave your glider lying unpacked on launch.



People regularly fail to get away from launch, and the start gate is generally after quite a few kms of running up and down the ridge to spread the field out. The tasks start early to avoid the really strong anabatic flows up the face, perhaps a little too early on some occasions last year. There is no rush to get away, make sure someone is climbing before you launch, and head straight to your first climb! If you are getting flushed off the ridge, the towns below (including Piedrahita itself) actually work reasonably reliably and earlier than the face, sometimes it's best to head directly for them rather than getting a lee-side flush to the ground.

Once you've reached the start-gate, there's still more difficult ground to cover before you can really get flying. Generally the winds seem to be from the west in July, due to the heat low in the Mediterranean, which means you'll need to cross the infamous "pass" on the N-110 at Casas del Puerto. The first time I flew over it was at 3900m and I didn't notice it was there. The next few times I wasn't so lucky. Generally the start gate is before the pass, so it's important to set up with a good gaggle because the thermals out in the valley tend to move around. Choose a side (north or south) to cross the valley and find your next climb, I've had to ridge soar right into the pass, which is best avoided on a windy day because of the venturi effect and the lack of good landing options. Going across too low can easily see you getting flushed on the lee of the pass.

Tip #2: cross the pass as high as possible, and exercise caution to make sure you can to the next climb.



Tasks tend to head out to the east and generally run up to Avila. This can be a very quick section, with a convergence line regularly setting up on the north side of the valley leading to Avila. It's a great time to really push-on if the day allows it. It would be great to continue to follow the convergence if you could just follow it along the range, but airspace intervenes around Avila and the tasks I've flown generally head north across a plateau from there, although some tasks will end around Avila or head back into wind towards the aforementioned pass. It's likely you will have to leave the convergence onto rising ground and then get away from the convergence to your next thermal, it's easy to find yourself and your entire gaggle on the ground wondering wtf happened. I wish I knew a consistent way to escape convergence, but the best advice I seem to be able to find is don't fly to the end of the convergence, exit well before the end. So that often means heading north a lot earlier than Avila. Again, a good gaggle is key to getting across this section, there is good terrain on the other side of the plateau.

If the task continues to head into the flats to the north and north-east then it's because it's a windy day. Clouds and thermals can be regular, or they may be streeting with local convergence. Obviously you need to fly the day, getting low is probably best avoid due to mechanical turbulence. It'd be great to top out all the strong climbs, but airspace is around 3000m, and with thermals exceeding 5m/s and over 1km in radius it's easy to get caught out. Flying is more typical of flat lands flying; features work, especially all the small villages. Later in the day it's possible to encounter mountains again, even though they may look enticing, my experience last year was the flats are consistent until very late in the day and it's probably better to stick with them. One key thing flying in Spain is the large number of soaring birds really help out, although none seem to climb as well as wedge-tailed eagles.

Tip #3: keen observation of the birds will help immensely!

I've heard of competitions where the flying has been completely in the other direction, but I've only ventured out there on a few occasions, so I'm not sure my advice would be helpful :-)

Going to the Worlds 2011 ...

After some good flying last year and some average flying at Bright and Corryong this year, it looks like I'm to lucky to sneak onto the team heading to the Worlds. Felipe, Antje and Ivan accepted places ahead of me. So all the pressure is on them :-).

About 6 weeks until the competition starts: some of my gear is still in transit. Thanks to some arbitrary rules changes by CIVL, I'm waiting on a new set of lines and some extra harness padding for this one competition. Allowable harness/protector combinations are still not clear and CIVL haven't bothered to clarify their rules. Typical bureaucrats: make some rule changes and then wash their hands of any responsibility for compliance. You only find out if you comply when you turn up at the competition. It really begs the question: why aren't new rules implemented and tested at lower level competitions before being implemented in Cat-1 competitions?

Anyway, enough ranting, back to my gear. Sticking with what I know: R10.2, Kanibal Race, and the 6030. I'd like to be out there flying regularly in preparation, unfortunately the weather in Victoria is looking good for a snowy start to the ski season. I had to wipe ice off my windscreen last Wednesday, in the afternoon! It looks like I won't get in any meaningful flying until the Nordic Open in Portugal. So, that means my preparation will have to be more on the mental side of flying. Some of which I might regurgitate here as a way of consolidating my thoughts and making me spend some time on it. At the moment I'm back to flicking through 'Secrets of Champions'.