One good flight, and a lot of work

After posting my last blog entry on Monday in Greifenburg, I went up the hill for one more flight. The day looked good, it was sunny, and cumulus clouds were growing. There were lots of hanggliders up on launch, but almost nobody went out there. I saw some paragliders going up, and there seemed to be thermals coming up in front of launch. I was sick of hanging around and launched.

This time, I did not make the same mistake as last time - I caught the first thermal I could get. It was not a very good one, it took me quite some time to work my way above launch, and even then, it was hard work to get higher. Nobody followed me. Only when they saw me getting high, everybody else went out, too.

Once I was at cloudbase, it became really easy. The air was very rough, thermals were not easy to center, but still, they took you up to cloudbase. I started flying west, towards Lienz. On my way, I found a lot of thermals that were marked by paragliders, as the paragliding Junior and Ladies Challenge, in which about 80 pilots participated, was still going on. Apparently, their task went the same way. A couple of kilometres down the ridge, at the Scharnick, I had to take a really rough thermal that threw me up and down and that was really hard to work, but eventually, it took me up to cloudbase again so that I could go on towards Lienz. After about ten kilometers, I decided to fly back. Had to take the same wild thermal again. But somehow, rough air is - as exhausting as it can be - fun to fly in. I prefer conditions like that from weak ones in which you have to be really patient and sometimes wait for ages in nil lift. Anyway, I made my way back towards launch and flew east from there, towards Spittal. A little east of Gerlamoos, I started feeling really exhausted, so I decided to fly back.

The air above the valley was rough, with thermals coming up basically everywhere. Landing would be difficult, especially as in conditions like that, the wind tends to switch while you are making your landing approach. As the air above the official landing field next to the Fliegercamp was really crowded, I decided to land on the other side of the river Drau. There is another landing field with a windsock, and I had seen a hangglider pilot land there right in front of me. So after a two hour flight (in which I must have made around 30 kilometres), I landed happily and safely.

After de-rigging, I picked up my car from the Fliegercamp, said goodbye to Frank and Patrick (had met them both at the Hessenmeisterschaften in May), and drove back home.

The rest of the week was quite unspectacular. I had a lot of work to do and had an appointment in Stuttgart. Saturday was really nice, though, as my two cousins Philipp and Alexander came to visit us. Mum cooked a delicious lunch for us. The weather was not good at all, but at least we went for a little walk around the Limes, a wall that the Romans built around 2,000 years ago in order to prevent the Germans from invading their territory.

This week, there is a lot more work to do, and I have an appointment in Frankfurt on Wednesday. Let's see what the rest of the week will bring.

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