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Published: August 18th 2008
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My B&B place
Pension Laber downtown Greifenburg After a little more than one week at home doing some work and seeing my family and friends, I drove to Greifenburg on Tuesday to participate in the DHV Junior and Ladies Challenge. That is a competition for female and young male pilots (not older than 28) that is made up to introduce them to competition flying.
I arrived in Greifenburg late on Tuesday night and met the other pilots on Wednesday morning. There was only one more girl, Tina, and three more boys, Jakob, Moritz, and Peter. Matthias, the organizer, had decided to fly in the comp as well, so we were six pilots altogether. That is not much - the paragliding Junior and Ladies Challenge usually has around 80 pilots!
I had brought my little Club 15 with me and was really happy that I was not the only one to come with a single surface glider. Tina had brought one, too, an Icaro Mars. But it turned out that she could not fly in the comp because she had broken her thumb just one day ago riding her mountain bike. What do we learn from this? One should not do dangerous sports during the hanggliding season
The Fliegercamp
Camp site in Greifenburg from where you can catch a taxi up the hill. 😉.
The plan was to do two training days, Wednesday and Thursday, and then do three days of competition, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. It had been raining all Tuesday, so conditions did not look too good on Wednesday. We drove up the hill quite late and unexpectedly got good flights. I stayed up in the air for around half an hour. It was not easy, and I did not manage to get above launch, but still, it was a nice flight. I was very excited about my landing as the landing field here is surrounded by two powerlines and one hedge, and my last landing there had been a crash with my Sunrise. But I concentrated, remembered what I had learned, and made a perfect landing with a beautiful flare in the end.
On Thursday, conditions looked a lot better, so we set a little task of 39 kilometres that went up and down the Drau valley. But our flights were as unspectacular as they could be. None of us caught a single thermal, we glided more or less straight to the landing field.
Friday was the worst day of the whole week. We had rain and
My Clubbi
My little single surface glider at the Greifenburg landing field. thunderstorms, and it was just freezing cold. I was glad I did not have to stay on the camp site as all the others. Poor Tina was almost washed away with her tent. Her clothes and mattress got all wet, and she had a little river in her tent. But she was brave and stayed in the camp site. I had booked a room in a Bed and Breakfast place in Greifenburg and used the day to do some more work.
On Saturday, my day started with trouble. I noticed that my vario did not work any more. Apparently a battery had lost its fluid, and the vario was just dead. Help!!! Fortunately, I could borrow Tina's as she could not fly anyway. I was really grateful. So we went up the hill, and Matthias set a task for us: 49 kilometres, again up and down the Drau valley. Around noon and also in the early afternoon, the area around launch was still very shady, so we had to wait in the cold (it felt like November, not like August) for hours and hours. Finally, we launched. There was only one thermal that was close enough and that the
Launch looking straight to the Drau valley
As you can see, the weather was not very nice at all. others with their high performance gliders were in. I arrived there so low that I thought I could not get into it as it appeared to be very small. Trying to find something else above sunny meadows, at the border between sun and shade, and at the border between meadows and trees was not successful.
I flew away from the mountain when I was very low. Knowing that I would not reach the landing field, I tried to at least cross a little forest that lies on the way. But because of the strong valley wind, I had so much sink that I had to turn around and land on the other side of the forest. Tina picked me up. The guys did quite well, none of them finished the task because of really difficult conditions, but they flew around 30 kilometres.
When we did the GPS downloads in the evening, it turned out that my GPS is not working properly. All the tracklogs were dated to 1953. We had been wondering before why the GPS did not give the correct date. Now we knew something was wrong with it. No one could explain where the mistake came
Launch looking west
... towards the city of Lienz from. So I think I will need a new one, might keep this one as a backup. The fact the tracklog was not correct did not matter, though, as I had been within minimum distance (which is 10 kilometres) anyway.
The weather forecast had said that yesterday it would be a good day. That was not true. There were clouds in the morning already, and the valley was shading more and more during the course of the day. So our task was a gliding angle competition (i.e., fly straight, do not turn): one turnpoint at an antenna on the other side of the valley, and goal at the official landing field. I managed to get to the antenna easily, but then again I was not sure whether I had enough altitude to cross the forest on the way to the landing field, so I decided to land in the same field that I had landed in the day before. Matthias told me afterwards that I would have been high enough, but it looked really scary to me. Tina flew the task in her paraglider and did quite well, and the boys all made it to goal. So Matthias won
The little cafe at launch
When it is cold up there, you can have a nice hot soup. the competition in front of Jakob and Moritz, Peter came fourth, myself fifth, and Tina sixth.
Almost everyone went home after the comp. I stayed for another night and will drive back home today.
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Carsten
non-member comment
english
Hey Karha, as we can see everything seems to work quite well. Your are using your old easy going hangglider again? That is the same like I do. I have bought a new Kite from Bautek, but I'm flying the Funky. That's funny, isn't it? Where and when do we see again? Last weekend I was flying in Uedem and just emagine, Funky Harald joined us. That was very funny. Keep in contact and hope to see asap (as soon a possible) again. Carsten (by the way, Ivonne passed some of these test, I might have invented. Do you remeber this question with the see and the 5000 or 50.000 fishes? See u