Practice days

Unofficial practice today. A task was set but most people just did the start and one or two turn points. At least the north wind has died down a bit so it was a thermal day, possibly a bit of wave but not the major factor. This really is a pretty place to go flying.

Today they put up flags of the competing pilots' 

home countries. The "Australian" flag is flying

proudly.

Tomorrow is official practice, complete with scores, penalties and so on. Then in to it!

Graham

31 May

Historical Events

Historical events from Mark ( it's historical cause I'm slack)

 My first time across the English Channel, or more correctly under it. For those revheads here's a shot of Graham's GPS tracker as we cruised over the French countryside heading for Brussels in Belgium.

Other than in a Qantas "rice burner", I've never been this fast before!

 On the second line of data, far left side, you can see our km/h speed. 

Graham has already  mentioned the work vehicle that we had been allocated. Never had a loaner with only 33ks on the clock before. Well we certainly changed that!

Langres over night.

In OZ we get a bit excited when we see some old stuff like buildings and chattels.

In Europe they don't seem to get too excited about how old things are cause there's plently of them.

In Langres the Cathedral Cloister still stands quite sturdy after being rebuild in 1748. The Cloister was originally built in 1230!!

 I recon the boys spent a fair bit or time doing the pattern work in the roof tiles!

Sunday 26^th.

Sunday was a big day. 11hrs in the car rolling south from Langres in central France the 800km to the Spanish border. A very interesting drive. Last visit to France ( 4 years ago to Sisteron) saw us coughing up Euros relentlessly at toll booths during the trip south. Very different this time, when you entered the Tollway there was a ticket to be collected and when you exited you paid up for the distance of usage. This trip has been markedly less in fees.

The freeway took us through the center of Lyon, a very large city indeed.

Reaching the southern coast of France it was now time to head back inland as the last 100kms of the trip was to encounter the Pyrenees mountains. Our average ground speed markedly reduced as we began to wind our way up into the mountains on a very twisty and most of the time narrow road. Regularly we would encounter a small town perched on the side of the mountain, very old and usually a bit of a challenge to drag a 9mt glider trailer through the very narrow streets original designed to provide thoroughfare for a horse & cart. The locals seemed quite comfortable flitting along at interesting speeds. Not me! With a the trailer in tow, discretion was the better part of valour as the gutter alongside the road was deep enough to swallow up the entire wheel if the trailer ventured too close.

As we wound up through the mountains Graham read off the GPS elevations, topping out at 5,100 ft above sea level before we began to let down into the plateau of  Cedanya which is 3,600ft above sea.

Yep a log day after hitting the road at 6.30am we made our arrival in Alp, Cedanya, Spain at 5.30pm.

A bit more later  - Mark

Flying again

Back in the air today. Yesterday a few tried it but promptly fell down.Today wasn't great either, blue thermals to nearly ridge height. The wind was all over the place but mainly from the north which is not great around here. There was obvious wave over the top but I chose to persevere under it and figure out how all the ridges work.

 Makes for better photos down low too.

I guess low is a relative term, these mountains are all around 10000 ft

And here is the airfield on the far left. The town in the middle is Alp, where we are staying.

We are expecting the weather to start improving from tomorrow.

Graham
29 May

Cerdanya

We had an uneventful trip down to Spain, arrived last night and parked the trailer at the airfield. This morning we rigged the glider and went for a little familiarisation flight. Reasonable conditions, with thermals to 3000 metres and wave over the top to the airspace limit of 4000 metres.

This does seem a dauntng place to fly. A lot of the valleys look pretty unlandable and even in the good valleys there is often a long way between reasonable options. No matter, I will just take it quietly until I know what is ahead,


So, after a few hours of exploring it was back to our hacienda (actually more like ski lodge)

With the wave still pumping as shown in the photo.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is pretty rubbish but Pete Temple reckons just ignore that, the forecast is always rubbish and there is usually some flying to be had.

We shall see.


Graham
27 May

Still getting there

It's been a busy couple of days since arriving in Europe. We had to make our way to Brussels to pick up car and glider. The car turned out to be a brand new Volvo, only 33km on the clock when we collected it. An ideal way to run it in we thought, plonking a glider trailer on the back and hauling it to Spain and back. Once we got the car it was off to Saint Hubert airfield for the last day of the Belgian Nationals.

St Hubert is the main centre for gliding in Belgium. Somewhat off-putting is this derelict Blanik on blocks at the entrance. But the rest of the airfield

is nice; big, flat and green.










Overnighting in St Hubert was a treat. Mark and I wandered into town for a beer and a feed and come across this nice little bar.

We thought OK, that's reasonable, Eur 2.75 for a beer, lets go.

Yeah... no. That sign reads 275 different beers on the menu. For Morgy this is a challenge. But we only had one night so we had to be a bit selective.








Today we got to meet Francois, owner of the 29 I will be flying in Spain. Francois was flying the glider in the Belgian Nats. Fortunately for us, and I guess unfortunately for Francois (who was running third in the comp) at around midday it started raining heavily, the task was called off and we were able to de-rig the glider and take it away a few hours earlier than anticipated.

The glider looks good, very neat and tidy and instrumented almost identically to TF at home.

So, we have managed to beetle off a few hundred Kms to the south, pulling up stumps at a place called Langres, an old walled town which looks like it would attract a few gazillion tourists.

So far everything has gone really smoothly. We should get to Cerdanya by tomorrow evening, a day ahead of schedule.

Graham
25 May

Singapore Airlines business class. It's a tough gig
but Morgy looks like he is up to the task.

And... it starts.

Qantas club, Adelaide.