Wednesday 29 September
TODAY was another odd XCT day in that the first half was spent going to the mayor’s office to have tea with him and smalltalk in his downtown office. We managed to move to the TO at around 11.30am, and the conditions were already on.
So we waited for another hour or so for the lunches to arrive – if I’m potentially flying for six hours I need some sustenance – and then took off in quite strong, turbulent conditions with what would prove to be A LOT of wind.
Pal, Dmitri and I were first to leave, catching a good climb from TO to around 2,000 m, where it then got weaker but still worked so we could drift over the plateau behind launch in vaguely lifting air. Once over the valley the climb took off again, and took us to 3,300 m, and there the ground speed was up to some 78 km/h on trimspeed.
We crossed the wide valley behind launch in this west wind in no time, and started climbing again over the foothills of the opposite side. I relatively quickly made base, turned downwind and found that my ground speed had gone up to 90km/h – and I was heading into mountains.
Didn’t like that idea so I turned around, aimed for a wide open valley, and landed safely but with negative ground speed. I was joined shortly thereafter by Ulli and Olivier, and I think we were all happy to be on the ground.
We were in a quite remote, high valley, so even just getting from there to the road took a few hours, and then the special Murat Chaos theory took over. So we had a long but friendly retrieve.
It seems Elena has flown 105 km and Pal has flown 130 km, so people with more guts than me could surely get something out of the conditions – and Max had a crash and is being treated in hospital, seems he’s OK considering.
Now there is a big confusion regarding what happens next, Murat wants to go around midnight, pilots want to go after dinner, I dunno what will happen as every day has new surprises, but we’ll take it as it comes,
Cheers from Beysehir, Turkey
