Saturday, July 23, 2005

Litespeeds Wining Nordic Open

Gerolf writes a quick update on the Nordic Open... After 5 days into the comp we now stand at 2 tasks overall. Both tasks have been providing quite interesting thermal conditions. The amazingly unstable air mass doesn’t need much sun to lift off and literally every little patch of sun will trigger a thermal. The only trick then is to line up these patches properly along your individually chosen course line – which thus can deviate quite a bit from the straight line - and if you’ve done well you can have a sleek run all the way through, despite all the shadow and valley wind traps along the task. On Task-2, we three Austrians – Michi, Seppi and me, manage such a clean run. It’s the locals that will struggle today. Synchronised by Radio-Austria (for the first time in years!) Michi and I perform some nice team flying and manage to arrive in goal a good 50mins ahead of Andreas, Nils and Jon. Seppi pays his risky final by coming 2km short. 10 pilots will make goal in the end providing lots of speed points to Michi and me – we end up with a hefty 300 points advantage over the Scandinavians. This sort of tumbles the overall scoring. The Top-10 after 2 Tasks therefore: Gerolf Heinrichs, Aut, Moyes Lss4, 1534 Michi Fiesenbichler, Aut, Moyes Lss3.5, 1309 Andreas Olsson, Swe, WillsWing T2, 1190 Jon Gjerde, Moyes Lss4, 1150 Nils Henden, Moyes Lss4, 1095 Seppi Salvenmoser, Moyes Lss3.5, 851 Jens Krotzeng, Icaro Laminar, 803 Jonny Nilssen, Airborne C2, 770 Olaf Opsanger, Nor, Moyes Lss4, 763 Bjorn Joakinson, Nor, Moyes Ls4, 753 Yesterday and today (thursday) have been cancelled due to rain and wind, but we are confident to fly friday and saturday! Greetings, Gerrrolf