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Task 2 – A tale of two flights…
Beautiful conditions today – perfect for a great task and some stunning photos before the start… I had a great start and for most of the way to TP1 there was no one in front of me – that’s a first 🙂 But after the second TP I, along with quite a few others made…
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Good news and bad news…
Well the good news is that we’ve had our first task today, a 63km race to goal starting at 1600. The bad news is that it was stopped before anyone made it to the fourth turnpoint because of difficulties in getting a helicopter to two injured pilots who had crashed on the ridge behind takeoff.…
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Comp day 3 – Sod’s Law
Briefing at 1000 – sunny but too windy. Rebriefing at 1300 sunny but windy and forecast to remain windy. 1400 – first gliders appear above St Vincent. 1415 – ten gliders above St Vincent, climbing high. 1430 – we’re at St Vincent preparing to take off, and by 1500 I had climbed out level with…
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Comp Day 2… no task, but not no flying!
Briefing at 9am then rebriefing at 11am… Sunny but too windy so team Avon decide to hire some mountain bikes and take the easy way up the hill (ie. chairlift) for a afternoon’s biking. Amazingly there were no incidents or injuries despite the fast decents on gravelly tracks. We had actually seen quite a few…
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Non-flying days aren’t always bad…
So I guess yesterday (Saturday) was the official practice day however it was windy and cloudy and generally not looking ideal for flying. So after a quick conflab we decided some retail therapy at the Decathlon store in Dignes les Bains was in order… A couple of hours later we were all fully therapied out…
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Exorcising the demons…
On Friday 5th August I finally got to fly after not flying for over a month during which time the wider paragliding community suffered its blackest week ever first with Xavier Murillo dying in Chile followed shortly by the deaths of the two pilots flying in the World Championships in Piedrahita. Even though I was…
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Light at the end of the tunnel…
At 16:22 local time today (15:22 BST), 11 days, 4 hours and 22 minutes and 864km after the start of the race in Salzburg, Christian “Chrigel” Maurer touched down for a perfect landing on the float anchored off Monaco to mark his second successive X-Alps victory. He’d flown a superb 65km flight in difficult conditions (headwind,…
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Normal life comes to a halt…!
Yes, I’m talking about the 864km Red Bull X-Alps paragliding and hiking race from Saltzberg to Monaco. And I challenge anyone to visit the live tracking page and not get hopelessly addicted after 10 minutes! There are two British athletes, Steve “Gnasher” Nash (GBR1) and Jon Chambers (GBR2) – they’re currently in 7th and 17th…
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Piedrahita World Championships
So there I was watching the LiveTracking for task 2 of the World Championships in Piedrahita at lunchtime today, and very exciting it was too. I was also enjoying the running email commentary I was having with three friends, pretending to be experts from the comfort of our own armchairs. The task was difficult at…
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My first visit to Rybury…
Last Wednesday (29th June) I took some time off work and headed to Rybury on the promise of a pretty good forecast. Sadly it (the forecast) didn’t live up to expectations, with light winds initially but 100% cloud shadow, then when the cloud cleared the wind became too strong! Still, I had a fun couple…
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Advance paragliders in the West Country 