Belgian Open - Day 5 - Task 3 - 102km

Nice Climb


102km task - 5 turnpoints – Goal at Laragne Camping

We took off from Aspres as the wind was forecast Westerly. Super lovely smooth takeoff with a nice grassy rigging area but the road up is horrendous (like the road to Chabre was pre tarmac). Four of us were in Nick’s van and our drive to take-off was interrupted by a shredded tyre – thankfully it was the only disaster of the day.

A bit of technical info about the flight: Average 400 ft a min climbs. A good climb was just over 600ft a min. Max climbs topping out at about 8000 ft ASL.

There was never a smooth glide – I was constantly fighting the glider to keep it in a straight line even though the winds were only between 6 to 10 mph between North and West – apart from final glide which was 13mph from the West and not a good goal direction……….

I cant tell you all the names of the turnpoints because I just follow arrows on my GPS and didn’t write the names down at the briefing. But for those of you that know the area quite well I’ve captured the route in pictures – you can find more of them HERE Unfortunately, some of the pics are at a funny angle due to the keel stinger rotating.

Turnpoint 1

Turnpoint 2

Dead ahead for turnpoint 3

Cruise Ridge

Basically – we headed South to the ridge behind St Genis to the first turnpoint; then we headed East to the second turnpoint on thingy wotsit ridge; then the third turnpoint was South on the Gauche ridge; then we headed back to turnpoint one near Aspres and then we came back to turnpoint two and then into Goal at Laragne Camping.

I just scraped in Goal in the West wind. I had to go around the trees on the far ridge and scraped in with no turns and a land! Not done that before, am usually too cautious! If we had a goal line as opposed to a goal circle I might have just landed on the line and on my ass!

I had a great flight (am still looking for those smooth glides though) and may have been the quickest by about 5 minutes (?); we will see when the scores come out tomorrow. For those of you asking - I don’t think there is a web link to the scores but will check tomorrow. If there isn’t I will post a photo of the printout (best I can do)!

It’s very cool here on the evenings and we have high cirrus. I’ve said this before but the weather in Europe seems strange at the moment. Some of the guys flew from Chabre today. Fabien Garing literally took off the South side and plummeted straight to the bottom landing field with not even a blip on his vario.

PS - Another broken arm yesterday! Bringing the total in this comp to 3.