I am now back home after driving through the whole night. As you all know the last task was cancelled after less than one hour of flying. That means Charles is THE Champion, with Russel close on his heals. They both deserve to win. Congratulations with amazing flying and for showing to the world that Ozone is leading the performance development.
In the end I made 18. place overall and am very satisified with my flying. It is my best overall result in such a big competition, and it was hard to try and catch up with the new high performance wings (the Gin Boom 7 proto also goes very well). Thanks to everyone for a nice time! Here are some photos from the last task and the prizegiving.

So I try again to have the internet working so I can write this blog and upload some pictures. Unbelievable that the organiser still after 9 days have not fixed the slow internet…
We have had a task where the results became a bit mixed up. Lot of pilots landed in the shade after about 40km, while a selected few got up and flew to goal. Once again the Ozone Baby HPP gliders proved to be the best and Russel and Charles came in 1. and 2. place. They are now leading the comp and maybe hoping we don’t fly anymore…yesterdays task was cancelled due to a thunderstorm developing behind launch. Today is again sunny, but windy and humid. Guess we are going up to wait a few hours on launch again. We have been very unlucky with the weather, but at least we have a valid competition.

Photos

Ok, I am not the most patient one. Internet is really slow here, so I usually try early in the morning or late in the evening. Sometimes it works ok then. Anyway after the last task in Norma got cancelled we went to the beach for some swimming. Unbelievably we could also soar and play around with our wings in the sand…well only those of us who like to change wings ofte. Mine was in the bag the whole time

Sorry for being late with the updates but it’s been a lot of moving lately. Anyway we are all housed in a great hotel here in Norma. Very nice atmosphere and cool that everyone is in the same place. Makes it more social. The task yesterday was great and fast! If you had a bad start (like me and many others) you had to push hard to catch up, since many pilots flew the 72km task in well under 1h50. Russel Odgen and Charles Cazaux proved that their Baby HPP protos are going good also in strong speeding conditions. There are also some Mantra R10 protos, although not finished, for next year there will be something to look forward to.

Just a few photos, too busy pushing the speedbar to take more…

Yesterday we had another task here in Italy. It was a 76km task, but unfortunately it was stopped after 46km of flying. I made 2. for the day, but everyone get almost the same points as we were close together. Another beautiful day here so we are going up soon. So unless the forecasted strong Northwind doesn’t come, we are flying later today.

Here are some more pictures.

Looks like we finally have internet for more than 5 minutes, and also some time for writing. It’s been a busy start but everybody is happy to be here and to be flying. We are enjoying the excellent Italian coffee, pizza/pasta and of course wine. So far we have only had one 80km task, with more than a 100 pilots in goal. Yesterday we went to L’Aquila where they had the big earthquake a few months ago. The organisation wanted to fly from the Gran Sasso mountain range, but ufortunately due too much wind and dangerous takeoff conditions the task had to be cancelled. Many top pilots like Russel Ogden, Thomas Brauner etc. and also myself chose not to take off because of the dangerous lee side conditions on launch.

Here are a few photos of the Ozone R10 proto, a nice toy to be looking forward to for next year.

This weekend we had the Swiss Championships happening again, after the first attempt didn’t get valid. This time we were in Fiesch, one of the most spectacular places to fly in the world. We had two good tasks of 102 and 52km, and one 30km task where most people either bombed out or made goal.

Stefan Wyss became Swiss Champion for the first time, continuing his row of excellent performance. I was the only Ozone pilot there with my Mantra R09. On the last day I came in 4. place and thus ending up in 9. overall. I am very happy with my result as it is a hard game trying to keep up with a bunch of former World Champions and World Cup winners.

Photos

Here is my favorite pictures from the season so far. Some are taken by Martin Scheel, the others I dont know who took.

We had a 58km task on Saturday, the last day of the Nordic Open. The task was stopped after about 1hour of flying which means the points were not enough to have a valid Nordic- or National Championships. Total points after the two tasks were 1.110 and we needed 1.500 points. However Susanne flew great in the 2 tasks we had, taking home the overall ladies position as well as winning the serial class, and in 9. position overall. I ended up in 6. place overall.

About stopping the last task. The Nordics used a system where when a task is stopped, your position will be 10 minutes back from the time it was stopped (it was actually said on a briefing that we were not using this system, but later put back in the rules without anybody knowing).  It is not often I complain about fairness, I think mostly pilots fly fair and safe, but what some pilots did on this task I do not like. I was with 2-3 pilots only 1-2km behind the lead gaggle. It had been shade for a while and we were gliding at best glide to find something to stay up in. Up ahead it was a small patch of rain, so I stayed in 0-0.5 lift to make some altitude and observe it was growing or dying out. The so called lead gaggle were much lower than us and kept gliding into the rain. They had almost landed when one pilot said Level 3 on the radio as well as other nasty language like cancel the task and bla bla. He could have flown left and away from the rain, but of course the wanted to maximize the distance, knowing the 10 min. rule. The rest of us stayed behind in the weak lift and could fly around the rain, getting only small drops on us. After passing the rain there was no wind, no thermals and very safe conditions. I tried to report this but not long after the task was stopped. At this point we were also low, but would have made it at leat 7-10kms further than the task winners who landed in the rain. The 10 min. rule is supposed to be a safety rule, but in this situation some pilots used it to maximize their distance flying into rain hoping the task would be stopped at the right time.