Rain refugees

After a thunderous Tuesday night some of us simply had had enough. When Wednesday was cancelled because of the ongoing rains Juha K., Sebu and I executed a wild plan we had researched the previous night: rent a car and drive to the closest flyable place (with dry air).
As we could take turns the 800 km ride to Nice went smoothly and as we passed Monaco just at the right time Juha and Sebu could fly down to the Rocquebrune beach. We then hurried to Gréolières for famous pizza at the Barricade.

Thursday we had some good flying at Gréolières, once we managed to get high Sebu and I flew the ridge all the way to Coursegoles and back. We landed for lunch and in the late afternoon had another, shorter, flight. The next morning we heard that some local heros (David, Luc, and someone else) had flewn a 195 km triangle!
We ourselves on Friday probably took off a bit too early in Gréolières and never really got high; a bit of overcast seemed to dampen the thermals too much. But in the late afternoon we had a fantastic flight in a nice clear sky and strong conditions at Gourdon.
Meanwhile we had met a nice group of Swedish pilots who planned to attempt the classic flight from Col de Bleine to St. André on Saturday. At the launch we went together through the route details and then waited for the thermals to turn on. I took of first soon to be followed by Sebu, Juha and 3 Swedes. At a crucial point all but me and Juha did not attempt the glide north to the next ridge, but continued westwards which is a bit of a dead end. I easily got to the other side and up again but a bit furhter along the route encountered ever stronger headwinds. I probably should have gone over the mountain again a bit earlier instead of trying to fly around it. Nevertheless a very nice flight. Once on the ground I was very lucky to get a ride back to launch. Hence I could make a second flight, now back to Gréolières. There were a lot of clouds now and I could pretty much just glide home, at times having to pull big ears to stay below the clouds.
Sunday morning we had to get up early to drive back to Slovenia, so we could not fly, but our escpade was really worth the effort (and expense): 4 days with good flying!

Rain... and cancelations

Day one of the Nordic Open ended early as the leading group in task 1 flew right into a huge shower that was waiting at the first turnpoint. At launch it had looked liked a quick task seemed possible, and very soon after a short briefing the 130 pilots took off to work their way towards the start cylinder. At launch there was little wind, and quite often from behind, so some of us had to wait a bit. I myself had to wait for some gliders right below me on the hill to get away before I could launch.
Soon the sky was filled with gliders; and clouds as the weather was clearly over developing by now. After that start time a front group glided quickly towards the next turnpoint closely followed by a second group that contained mainy Finns and other pilots that could not get of the hill as quickly.
But within 15 minutes these were flying in the rain and soon the front pilots reported dangerous conditions which prompted the afety director to cancel the task. Many just managed to glide back to the head quarter landing zone but nobody managed to pack before the rain hit that area. Later in the afternoon the hotel area was covered with gliders that were dried in the sun.

On Monday, day 2, the forecasts and sky didn't look very promising but we were transported up to launch nevertheless. Thanks to an extra bus the logistics were even more efficient but nevertheless when we were all there it had become clear that it was impossible to fly a task. At the same time it was decided to also cancel day 3 as the forecasts promised even worse weather. Right when the briefing was over with the friendly folks of the Ljublana airport called in to warn us of a strong front approaching fast so we could not even fly back home.
Jouni (thinks he) needs all the excercise he can get before the X-Alps so decided to run down and then maybe home and I was silly enough to join him. Even though we took an easy pace my legs are of course very stiff, after 25 km of running on sandals.

Nordic Open 2009 ready to start

It's another Sunday morning here in Preddvor, Slovenia. In half an hour we will have the first morning briefing for the Nordic Open 2009 paragliding championships. Most of us arrived here on Thursday and Friday and despite the daily over-development we could get in a bit of practice, yesterday actually allowed for some good thermal flying.
The weather gurus forecast more over-development for the coming days, with showers and the possibility of thunderstorms. So it quite possibly is going to be difficult to have valid competition tasks; but at least we should be able to fly.
And it's very nice indeed to see lots of old friends; last night we had an opening dinner and although the food quality was undoubtedly way below the most pessimistic expectations, the traditional spirit and comradeships of the Nordics was bountiful.

Super Camp

Super! Indeed, it is hard to find the right superlatives to describe the 2009 Finnish Free Flying Camp. As usual the country's paragliding enthusiasts gathered to celebrate and honour midsummer, at Jämi airfield. And as usual the first two days (20-21 June) were rainy. Between the showers some powered pilots managed to fly and when late Saturday evening the sky cleared out Juho tried to fly the Jämi ridge, so despite the weather those days could be bookmarked as flyable.

On Sunday morning we were welcomed by a perfect blue sky and the early hours were effectively used to tow some less experienced pilots and flying students. Soon the air became thermic though and it was time to plan a cross-country flight. We set out to fly an ambitious triangular course, via Lavia to the Hämeenkyrö airfield and then back to Jämi. It turned out that the winds aloft were a bit stronger than predicted and that southwest flow made the task a notch too difficult. I myself almost managed a slightly smaller triangle but bombed out in the last leg, some 5 km from the goal.
Other pilots decided not to fight the headwinds and flew downwind; Mika for example flew a nice 35 km to Parkano.
Several of us had to go back to work then but many lucky ones could stay. The weather only got better all the time and pretty much all pilots managed ever longer flights. On Thursday Jussi and Vesa got clearance to fly through the Pori airspace towards the famous Ytteri beaches on the west coast, and ended up just inland of the beach to be warmly welcomed by the masters of the estate where they had landed.

The same evening I managed to get away from work again and do three nice evening flights, with the last one taking me up to over 1000m AGL, and this at half past 8 in the evening! All evenings were really nice, with such clear skies it really is light throughout the night.

Friday was another good day and we planned another, larger, triangle: via Parkano to Hämeenkyrö airfield and then back to Jämi. I was the first to get towed up and managed to work my way up in the early weak thermals. I waited for a while but it seemed nobody was going to join me so I set off for Parkano. As the thermals were not that strong this first leg took a while, but up to some 5 km before the Parkano turnpoint it had been fairly easy to make progress. There I got pretty low but found good lift over some fields. Once back at cloudbase it was easy to glide to Parkano. The straight route south to the next turnpoint was not an option as there was an enormous blue hole (an area without any clouds, hence presumably with no lift). So I flew back to the same field where I caught the same thermal, now a bit higher.
From there I tried to fly the western edge of that blue hole, but as I was doing that it seemed to expand westwards. It turned out that some time later I actually was back at Jämi.
By now I had been almost 4 hours in the sky and decided to check out if I could get some company at the airfield. I didn't see any other paragliders but did notice that a nice cloudstreet was forming in south-easterly direction towards my turnpoint! So I went for the first of those clouds to find a nice strong, yet smooth, thermal. And then two sailplanes speeded towards me from the north; company after all! I tried to make some pictures, but fiddling with my camera really detoriated my thermalling accuracy and hence the sailplanes were coming up quickly towards me. So put my hands back on the brakes to control my wing and steer into the thermal core. Almost at the same moment the sailplane pilots decided that they were high enough and continue to race southwards (presumably towards Räyskälä, where the Junior World Gliding Championships take place).
A bit later a started to glide along the cloudstreet that took me to within gliding distance of Hämeenkyrö airfield, the turnpoint. But by now this was firmly in the blue hole area and it seemed highly unlikely that I could get up there. As the flight back to Jämi seemed easy and quick I decided to call it a day and fly back. After a whoppy 6 hours landed right where I had started my tow (flight track).

Saturday more people turned up, including hangglider pilot Ville. The predictions still forecasted easterly flows, and Mika suggested we all try to fly to Merikarvia, right at the coast. This time Juho was towed up first and soon was high and started to work his way westwards. I was next and also got up but noticed that the clouds were gathering together in big lumps that caused enormous areas along the route to be shaded. Not good, and not the situation to fly a direct course. I decided to try to southern edge of the cloud constellation to ensure I would have sunny fields within good reach at any time. This worked well. Once I was at the end of the clouds decided to glide furiously towards a largish area with similar fields. The sink on the way was as bad as I expected, or worse. Above those fields I found some boyant air, but no real lift. I tried to scan as much of the area as possible and then noticed some gulls that started to thermal low. They saved the day as I could just get to that spot and join the thermal, that eventually carried me all the way to cloudbase again, now at some 2300m.

From there on it was fairly straightforward to fly to the coast, but it remained important to go around the large shady areas. The equally large clouds only lifted in very few and small spots, so every now and then some serious thermal hunting was required. Using this strategy I actually managed to approach the coast quite high, and greatly enjoyed the very rare opportunity to fly out a bit over the sea! I could see from the waves and foam that there surely was a good seabreeze down there but at my altitude of some 1000 m there was almost no wind at all. Time to take out the camera! Little later I went back to the town and landed in the local baseball field, indeed in a 8 m/s headwind.
Just when I started to pack I noticed Mika approaching from the south. As his radios were without power my attempts to provide him with information on the conditions at landing were useless. In fact he had not noticed me at all and in the end landed a couple of hundred meters north of me. Little later we celebrated our success at the terrace of the local kebab restaurant. This was actually next to the church, a very large wooden construction and apparently indeed one of the largest in the Nordics.
Later we heard that pretty much all pilots had managed to get up and away and many broke personal records for time, altitude and distance! Indeed a super day.

Sunday morning those that had been all week flying their socks off decided that the bed and shower at home were more attractive than another hard day of flying. Me and the others that had been grounded during the week did not want to miss the opportunity of another good day and set out to tow in very different conditions. A drier air mass was flowing in from the north west, causing much more gusty conditions and snappy narrow thermals in the airfield area. Only on my third tow did I manage to follow one of those up. The now much stronger winds made me drift to the southeast and I decided to go for the short classic flight to Sammi, a mere 15 km away.
With an eye on the upcoming Nordic Open championships I decided to try to practice a "final glide", i..e. to start to glide to the goal at just sufficient altitude. I wanted to that at 1500m but around 1300 m I hit an inversion and the air became very turbulent. As I'd drifted a bit more closer I decided to give it a try. As I'd expected I ended up a bit short, making me a little more confident about guessing those final glide altitudes. Nowadays we of course have our instruments to do most of that work, but as my XCTrainer was in service I had a good chance to hone my own skills.
Two other pilots took off much later, enjoyed quite much better conditions and could fly all the way to the Tampere approach area.

In the end we had 7 consecutive days of excellent XC flying, none of us could remember a similar period. For example Mika reported 19 hours in 19 flights over the week; I did 11 hours in 3 days. And the weather is still very good! Some of us managed to upload some flights to our own Finnish section in the XContest.

For me it now is time to prepare for the Nordics though. Got my XCTrainer back (excellent and fast service from Aircotec) and now should clean and check my gear a bit and then pack...

More pictures

A busy summer weekend

After that first nice spring weekend May did not provide us pilots with the usual record breaking conditions. It was rainy, windy, or both, or then sunny but too windy. But this last weekend was nice again, with challenging "dry" thermals in a perfect blue sky.
On dry, "blue", thermal days the ceiling of the boundary layer with thermal activity is lower then the height at which the humidity in the air would condensate so no clouds are formed. Apparently these conditions are more difficult to predict as the forecasts for this weekend have been too pessimistic by quite a large margin.

On Saturday the usual group of enthusiasts/optimists gathered at Kiikala airfield. It was surely gonna be sunny, and me and some others simply didn't believe the forecasts of "no thermals, with a ceiling at 900 m MSL". I was towed up around 12:30 and immediately found some lift. Weak lift as expected, but lift nevertheless! Slowly I got higher and once I got to about 700 m the lift got a bit better. I boated around a bit waiting for company but it seemed too difficult for the others to get up. So despite the low ceiling of about 1100 m I pointed my glider south and started to glide towards Hanko.
Hanko is a regular goal, it is a small city on the tip of a long peninsula in the very south-west of Finland, famous for its beaches and summer life. Usually it is impossible to get there as on practically all thermal days one has to fight sea-breeze. But optimistic as we are we of course did believe the prediction of little or no sea-breeze whereas we didn't believe the forecasts claim of "no thermals" ;)

And sure there were thermals! It was actually quite easy to find them; almost in perfect text-book fashion there were thermals heated by fields, triggered by rocky hills or small lakes. Often weak, but at times with strong cores. The main trouble was the elusive nature, the cores didn't stay put at all and often I lost it and I had to hunt for the core over and over. Twice I got very low but the textbook tactic saved me. With some 25 km to go I could clearly see that smoke stack of the Koverhar steel mill and most of the time it went straight up. As Koverhar is right at the coast that looked promising, no sea-breeze!
But some 5 km later I got some really good lift, too good to be true compared with the rest of the day and got up to over 1500m. I suspected this to be the sea-breeze front and indeed once I set of for the next glide there was nothing but a south-westerly head wind and otherwise smooth air. So a little later I landed in the area of Bromarv (see track). Thanks to Karo and Make for a long retrieve! On our way home we enjoyed a nice dinner on one of Ekenäs (Tammisaari) many summer restaurant terraces.

For today, Sunday, the forecast was even worse: warmer more stable air, no thermals and a southwest meteo wind picking up in the afternoon. So of course we went to Kiikala again. I was expecting a very similar day, but it turned out quite different. At the airfield the winds seemed very light so with Juho we planned a small triangle of about 45 km. We were to approx. 15 km due south-east then 15 due west and then back to the airfield, 15 km northwest.
I was the first to get up and this was much easier than on Saturday with clear defined thermals that were not as narrow. Initially the ceiling was again at about 1100 m. I waited a bit for the others at the north end of the strip but when I saw that Juho and Jukka were clearly cranking at the south end I went there and joined them in the same thermal. We rode it up all the way and then I started to glide to the south-east. This first leg was quite easy we found some thermals along the way. A couple of times a moved around a bit in front to explore the area and to check if we still had a group.
A bit before the turnpoint, one of the junctions of the new motorway, we had a good thermal and before we reached the top I decided to fly out, take the turnpoint and then came back to the thermal. Somehow Jukka lost it here, but I don't know exactly how.
Juho and I now started to work our way west. This was against some headwind and apparently we were jumping invisible cloud streets, as we now had strong sink between bands of thermals. But it went all fine up to the next turnpoint, another junctions. There were some good fields bordered by rocky areas and small lakes, but we didn't find anything to take us back up, even to we together scouted quite an area. Minutes later we were both on the ground, approx. half a kilometer apart, after some 34km and a good 2 hours of intensive flying (see track). Thanks to the triangle task we were close to the airfield though so Leevi and Pekka were soon there with a welcome retrieve.

All in all a wonderful weekend, over 5 hours in the air, with only the minimum 2 tows, and almost 100 km total distance.
We now also have a Finnish league in the XContest and this weekends flight surely help to motivate all to try hard ;)

Spring is here!

A couple of pilot friends started already yesterday, but for me it was today: the opening of the Finnish summer flying season. We gathered around noon at our Kiikala airfield and quickly prepared the towing setup. Juho K. was the first to go; he had to search a bit but just before coming in to land found a nice thermal. The same thermal caused quite a strong backwind at our start so the rest of us had to wait a while.

It is very typical at our airfields that thermals are triggered somewhere near the middle of the fields, especially if it has 2 runways that cross each other. No matter where, i.e. at what end, the start is set up, you will have wind from the back. Patience, and timing, are important, the trick is to be ready to launch when winds are nil, or light from the side or front. Often when you start the tow in a clear head wind the thermal is behind you and most of the tow will be through sink which when sufficiently bad will leave you with far too little altitude to fly back into that thermal.

I was next in line and lucky to time it right as I hit a nice thermal right near the end of the runway, at the end of my tow. Conditions were very nice, with thermals that took me up to about 1600m at 4m/s. Only close to the strong inversion at that altitude was the air truly turbulent.
As the winds up high seemed light I decided to try a smallish triangle, as an exercise. The first leg went very nice but the second leg into the wind was much more difficult than I'd expected. Sink was quite strong, but the real problem was that below 900 m the wind had picked up. On what would be my last glide I slowed down to less than 20 km/h once I was a bit lower, while still in 5m/s sink. I only just made it to the field above which I'd hoped to find a thermal. I arrived with only 50m altitude, too little to search for a thermal. A bird showed me one nearby but I was too low to go there. So after exactly one hour I was on the ground (flight track). Very happy though as it was my first flight in months, and after several weeks of bad flu my first day out. Even the walk out to the main road was a joy, in sunny warm weather. On a hill close to where I landed I saw a colony of wood anemones, a sure sign of spring in Finland.
Efka had planned to fly the calmer late afternoon and picked me up along the route, thanks! After a detours she'd also found Juho who had flown a more straight downwind track and had landed some 20 km from me.

A taste of alpine flying

Last week our family spend the traditional Finnish "skiing" vacation in style: we were in Chamonix, France.
Joanna and the children challenged themselves on the various slopes every day, enjoying the sun, the huge mountains and the stunning views. Whereas I myself managed to fly all but one day, typically in very light conditions.

The weather was characterized by northerly winds, causing the main Planpraz site to be in the lee. This was not a problem, but it may have caused the thermals to be "broken"; in any case they were very small in all dimensions. Nevertheless the flying was nice and interesting. I'd never started from really snow covered slopes; here there was actually a ski piste prepared just for us pilots!

On Friday there were no clouds at all and it turned out the best day of the week with somewhat stronger and slightly larger thermals. I made two flights, in the first one I had a nice thermal bubble right after launch and I could turn up to above take-off and the lift station, but then it was again over. Inspired I went back up for a second flight. Now only got bits and pieces of boyant air straight after launch, but once I was some 600 m below take off found a good thermal close to the mountain. I had to do figures of 8 in it, but it did carry me a good 150 meter back up. A bit later found a similar but shorter-lived one (or then I simply found it near the end of its lifetime) and then it was time to land; after 30 minutes, the longest flight of the week. Working such patches of light lift makes for excellent practice and in those settings it is great fun!