Today turned out to be exceedingly stable and totally blue, and the 87 km task all around the local area was possibly a bit optimistic. As it turned out there was an accident after a few hours, and the task was stopped/cancelled. This means that yesterdays result is now the official end of the event, with some very very worthy winners called Andi Aebi, Stefan Wyss and Aljaz Valic. I’ll be reporting more when I get home, sort of rounding up the whole event, for now this is the last blog entry from Valle, an amazing event where we have flown more hours in 10 days than I usually fly in a year!

I’m flying home tomorrow morning, will be back on Sunday or Monday,

Best,

Mads Syndergaard

Sorry to be so tardy in my reporting, we had a long day yesterday and I was simply tired… It is now almost 8 o’clock AM here, the sun is peeping over the hills over yonder and we’re almost ready to go up to launch for the last task of this 2009 Worlds event. (more…)

Another long task today, using some of the same turnpoints as previous days but in a different order. The day was very different to the previous ones in that the wind was stronger and from the North, and the cloud base was also higher, up to around 3800m. (more…)

Yesterday’s blog entry was headed, ”if only it were always this easy”, and today I can ascertain that this is not the case. We had a 6km exit cylinder around the launch, and there was great cloud suck up until around 5 minutes before the start gate opening – then it died on me, and on lots of other pilots. This proved decisive today, we simply could not get back into the race after being 500m below the more savvy start gaters. This was expensive for myself, for Ronny and for a great many of the ”top” pilots in this comp, but I cannot really tell you who and how much ’cos I was late and chasing all day. (more…)

Some 97km race to goal today, with a 1km exit cylinder around B03, the little volcano SE of launch. Not many clouds today, so the start gate waiting was less stressful, with less people suffering reduced visibility. After the start we had to come back to the piano landing, then straight out into the flats SE of launch and to the B27 (Santa Maria). (more…)

The smell of dope in the morning.

Or, as it were, in the evening…Am writing this out on the little terrace in front of our team apartment. On the terrace below is the landlord and his police-officer friend, sharing a doobie, and the smell is pleasantly wafting up my way so I can pretend that this, and not flying fatigue, is the cause of my dizzyness! (more…)

What a day (or did I say that yesterday???)

Today was the best flying day we have had so far, with real thermals originating from real thermal sources, nice cu’s popping overhead and not QUITE as dense airspace as yesterday. (more…)

The organisers have gotten their act together today – we’ve been issued maps with turnpoints on them, and I now have a list of the turnpoints too so I can tell you guys where we have been!

Task was 94km around the launch, with a 2km entry cylinder around Maguey and the Maguey turnpoint after that. In reality the day hadn’t actually started when the window opened, and even getting to an altitude where you’d feel like crossing over to Penon and Crazy was hard work. It got really hectic while we waited for the start gate, since there was so little usable lift and so many pilots. As soon as the gate opened we made the move, only to find ourselves in even worse traffic  on the Maguey side of the valley. It got so hectic there that many pilots opted to just glide on without having comfortable altitude for the crossing back onto the Penon ridge, but it worked out surprisingly well all the same – not that the lift was strong, but there was clearly enough of it as in the end 92 pilots made it into goal! (more…)

The task setters had a challenge up their sleeves today – 91.7km of bumpy racing with 3 turnpoints and a 6km exit cylinder around the Penon launch. I had something of an epic today, was all lined up to launch in the ”free for all” 10 minutes window right after open window, inflated the first time only to discover that my backup gps came undone, so I killed the wing, reattached and secured GPS, reinflated and was promptly lifted into some trees off to the side of launch. (more…)

So, today being the 25th we finally got the first task off our minds, and what a task it was. We’ve cleverly managed to put Ronny on the task committee, he’s likely to be one of the foreigners who knows this place best, and he’s always good for a dose of reason when everybody else goes down a path of excessive bureaucracy and schnitzelführer’ing. (more…)