The Great Glider Debate...

It seems everyone is dying to know about gliders... the short story is there is not that much difference and if there is we will not really know for another week or so... clearly I am not objective, but I will try be honest about it when I have a stronger impression.

For what it is worth and results notwithstanding, everyone I have spoken to so far is happy on what they've got and the same people are complimentary about what the others have.  This generosity of spirit is seldom seen at the world cup.  

For me it is not relevant given that this will probably be the last season of this particular class of glider.  We will be flying wings significantly different in the near future, so rather ask which manufacturer is best positioned to dominate the next generation from 2015.... 

2013 Super Final - Govenador Valadares - Day 2 - Task 2

I think I will bore the readers if I go on about how awesome the day was, but then the day was truly lovely:

'A geometric lattice of perky young cumulus permeate the picturesque sky;

Cloud base soothing and cool with unlimited visibility in the crystal clear air

Vibrant views of the rolling hills clad in a thousand hues of green'

In fact the mood in the air was amazing too.  You would not think that one hundred world cup pilots were racing around the 80km task on near full bar, fiercely competitive and yet oddly calm and co-operative even tolerant?

A 80km task was set which resembled an isosceles triangle with the base leg extended as an out and return.  There was a little bit of confusion at the start with a number of pilots missing the first turn point as they were tagged onto the lead gaggle like fleece to velcro (baaaahahaha).  It was amusing to see them realize the mistake and scurry back never to catch the lead again. 

The racing was fierce with just about everyone flat out on the transitions.  The lead changed a few times as the gaggles split and got out of synch leapfrogging and cutting corners. As expected, the first fifty pilots were separated by five minutes after two hours of intense racing.  It is what it is, to quote a good friend, and we can expect more clumping if the conditions continue to be this good.  Yassen deserved the win flying in front with RusselO and PeterN.  Three awesome pilots rewarded.

Anton is on fire in the top ten with Andre some fifty points back on the overall standings.  Francois is hanging in there but taking severe punishment on his slower wing: 'Hoe maak mens die A-lyne korter?'   

photo: JF de Villiers

photo: JF de Villiers

Super Final - Brazil - Day 2 early report

Looking even better than yesterday!

2013 Super Final - Govenador Valadares - Day 1 - Task 1

What a fantastic start to the comp (albeit predictable)!  A great day for racing with a 70km out and return with the requisite final glide sprint that saw most of the field finish within ten minutes of one-another.  

One or two gambled at the end and took a few minutes out of the rest.  Positions 5 - 92 were separated by 100 points... It seems flying in the bunch is rewarded and taking risk early is punished.  Having said that I think the lag gaggles would have been punished more severely had the lead (mass) gaggle not got low and slow 5km out of the end of speed section.  whatever-the-case, I hope we get a little more variety or we will see the same procession we had in Colombia last year.  Good news is that the cloud flying wasn't so bad yesterday.

First impression of the gliders: Enzo 2 a little faster than before... IP7 the same as before, and Boom 9 - L has better glide ;-)

More detailed reports to follow as I catch up on my sleep.

2013 Super Final - Govenador Valadares - Practice Day and snow cones

We were in GV in 2005 for the World Championships.  That year we had ten tasks, we flew every day.  The big buzz on the mountain is about gliders as you can imagine.  

The release of IP7 and the Enzo 2 has led to speculation and broad claims of perfection and 'a new level of performance'.  In truth I believe GV is about the flying and not so much the glider.  It was no surprise that the practice day did not show any obvious leap in performance, but we will know more after two weeks.  In my personal opinion, on my LARGE boom 9, the new wings have only closed the gap a bit....

Much more controversial is the great cone debate.  The greatest headache for administrators, and probably the catalyst for the demise of the open class, is the damned final glide.  The top comps have pretty much congealed into a clump of 'sticky' pilots who appear inseparable until the last glide whereupon up to a hundred pilots push as much as they can out of their equipment to cross the line with the fastest glider winning by a few seconds and the group spread over a few minutes.

The inverted cone finish was invented to stop this practice and it was used during the practice task as a precursor to debate with the possible implementation during this comp.  As is always the case, there are strong lobby groups within the world cup and those not in favor of any proposal almost always shout the loudest.  In this instance I wonder if the groups are aligned along good and evil lines?  If you know how to go faster than anyone else (see this blog entry) then surely you would be opposed, and conversely if you can't be bothered to tweak your glider and devise methods to go faster than the designer intended you would prefer a more sedate finish.  Whatever the case:  'there will be no cone here, but the cone is coming' to quote our beloved chairperson.  

In my humble opinion I believe we should trust the executive to make decisions in our best interest irrespective of the hypothetical consequences because administration by consensus is almost as bad as FAI style bureaucracy.  Paradigm shifts can be refreshing and stimulating.

2013 Super Final - Govenador Valadares - Commute, Commute, Shoot, Commute

Hello everybody... sorry about the delay, but I am now well rested and able to type again after a bit of a tedious travel plan.  To cut a long story short, 10 hours to Sao Paolo, 4 hour layover before 2 hours to Vittoria and then a 12 hour lay-over at the Vittoria bus terminal before another 9 hours on a bus to GV.

oh yes, and they managed to lose my glider for a few hours, so add that...

what else?...and did I mention the shooting? I watched a cop shoot a civilian in board-shorts!!! holy crap!

Not that I think Brazil is a dangerous place.  I have been here half dozen times and every single time I am filled with optimism.  There is hope for South Africa (and the African continent in general) if we could emulate some of the magic that Brazil has achieved as a developing nation.  So one random shooting does little to dampen my spirits or diminish my appreciation of a welcoming country and favorite paragliding destination.

Hope or Wishful Thinking?

Hopeless

With very little happening on the competition glider scene I often lament the death of innovation in the open-class since the introduction of EN-D in Cat I comps (Let's call it the END of open class).  The farce of this false class was comically illustrated at both the World Cup Super Final as well as the World Championships in Bulgaria earlier this year. 

 

It was particularly odd when four different riser systems on one particular brand were deemed to be acceptable despite the enormous performance differential in the field at speed which led in-part to the mass glider measurement exercise in Sopot.  In fact, it is even more bizarre to note that not a single sanction has been imposed on any pilot in any big competition after so much measuring and weighing since the END (as far as I am aware).  Seriously?? What are the chances that not a single pilot was cheating in all this time and where some gliders were going 5-10 km/h faster than everyone else at times?  The conspiracy theorist in me really really wants to believe the FAI does not want controversy at these spotlight events, so they issue stern little warnings and punish one or two soft targets as examples in the hope that everyone else will be more subtle in their 'interpretation' of the rules.

 

Rather assume no-one is cheating and figure out how it is done, so I went back to my IP6 and had a look at the riser collection for it.   It turns out the original set has more travel and does not have limiting straps between the A & B risers.  That means you can pull the top pulley a whole lot past the intended limit.  The Boomer 9 and Enzo don't have limiting straps so I asked Adriaan Thomas about it.  He says the boom 9 does not benefit much because you deform the wing if you pull the A's down too far.  The Enzo is way faster if the Don is flying it (hanging onto the A's with full body weight the rumour goes). 

 

Uncertain of what was going on, I decided to test my IP6 with the longer 'un-limited' risers on single reduction (strong legs help).  I managed to get the top pulley down to the carabiner and hung on for dear life while the wind noise rose to respectable levels.  Easy 5-10km/h faster than standard.  Hmmm... Another way to do it is to tweak the line lengths within specification.  Ask the gents involved in testing lines at the big comps and they will confirm you can do quite a bit before getting a warning.  What's the point you ask?  When the top twenty pilots are separated by minutes and seconds after a comp, then a 2-3km/h advantage might mean the difference between the podium and tenth place (all else being equal).  How about flying heavy?  No real benefit there if you look at the wing loading, speed and glide formulae and who would want to fly 10kg over the top when you have to thermal at some point against the best pilots in the world?

 

I concluded that tweaking the lines and the speed system is the way to go if you really need it that badly.

Wishful Performance

 ... back to idle thoughts of pure performance:  Summer has arrived and I had the rare occasion to fly my Boom 9 with my mate Marty on his R11 on a stable and windy day.  For two gruelling hours we hacked our way into wind absorbing some punishment while taking cues from the vultures and storks which marked the nasty little punchy thermals for us all day. 

It is always special to fly with the vultures.  They don't seem to be bothered by us much when sharing thermals as long as you behave predictably and respect the turn direction and avoid cutting them off.  I normally shut off the sound on my vario and try keep up to them as reference.  Every now and then you think you're doing well and then they shift a little and get away from you without really trying.  As for into wind glide and speed... well that is just plain embarrassing, the vulture kills us every time!

Read all about our local vulture population here.

 

 

 

Hopeful

So here's the thing: I have flown my R11 against two awesome world cup pilots on END wings and I concluded 'no contest' in every department.  As a result of that I was expecting to get my arse handed to me on a plate yesterday during the into-wind slog.  Imagine my delight when the entire flight was a ding dong battle where neither Martin or I were able to gain significant advantage.  Of course the R11 has an edge given how hard I had to work to keep up, but I had the sense that the gap has closed significantly and I could not suppress my rising excitement at the thought of what is possible given that Gin was able to certify something this close to the ultimate open class performance standard which the R11 represents. 

 

I cannot wait for the next generation of high performance gliders and I suspect Gin is leading the way for now.  I just wish there would be some clarity around the open class so the designers have the freedom to create more dream machines.

 

For now, I am content to fly my Boom 9 and I will stop whingeing about open class in the belief that we are almost back where we left off and probably a little safer for it.

 

 

World Championships - Sopot, Bulgaria - Task Five

Sopot finally delivers one for the speed bar merchants flying 130km in three and a half hours for what was essentially a triangle of sorts. 

 

With cloud base above 3,000m and climbs of +5m/s on the 10 second average, we spent most of the time above 2,500m racing streets and joining the dots between clouds.  In the end LucaD took it from the rest with team SA into goal 5 minutes late. 

 

The top 50 were separated by seven minutes which represents a difference of just over three percent.  This seems amazing and I have reported this phenomenon on several accasions citing the intensity of competition, but I am starting to wonder.  In this instance the explanation I offer is that the the second half of the race required a touch more self-control after the excesses of the first 80km which had the lead pushing really hard under the clouds above the the main ridge which proved to be the most efficient route of the four options (North, South, foothills and Valley).  This allowed the lag gaggles to catch up which has been the case most days.

 

Another factor that may explain the clumping of pilots (other than the tiny performance differential between gliders) is the speed limitation: there is no reason on a good day not to scream around the course at full (or near full) speed on the transitions. This was not the case in open class where you had to decide how fast to go based on McCready, the size of your brain and/or the quality of the day. 

 

The speed range was big enough to make a real difference and on a day like today I suspect we might have been handed some serious punishment by the don (Luca) had he been on an open class wing.  Today Luca pushed the hardest above the mountain in the first half of the race and in the end he only won by seconds from Petr, Adrian and Yassen.  It was good to see PeterN arrive fast in goal along with Frank, Primoz and a couple of other guys I rate really highly.

 

Russel and I are clawing our way back up the rankings with Russ in 27th.  The grape vine has started the 'hundred mile' rumour for tomorrow, so I had better get my beauty sleep.

World Championships - Sopot, Bulgaria - Task Four

Disclaimer: my violent mood swings are directly linked to my flying performances. 

 

Today I am feeling a lot like James Brown.  Actually I feel better than that old hack!  After the extreme depression of landing in the dark valley of misery I could almost hear The Death of Orpheus being played by my imaginary detractors.  Today I was SURE Eddie van Halen played Eruption for me as I crossed the line in single figures!!

 

121km course, and what a rush that was!  It adds a totally new dimension to the idea of 'street racing' with huge gaggles drawn out and screaming around the track with almost total disregard for the course-line.  The lead was dominated by Gin pilots pushing all the way to the very end where we all jammed the pulleys together under the congestus at the last turn point gaining almost 1,000m in altitude over the last 20km.

 

Mickey Sigel flew in front with three Gin pilots taking the first first three slots (and most of the lead-out points) into goal.  Stefan Wyss won the day from Steban and Mickey.

 

Russel came in a few seconds behind Andre saving SA some team 'face' after the perversion of the previous day.

 

The cloud flying problem seems to have abated temporarily and I have video evidence of every single trip I took to base showing NO cloud flying in my gaggle(s) at any time.  It seems serious threats and some dire sanctions by Nicky the meet director had the desired effect.  Now why can't every-one just play 'nice' all the time?  

 

 

World Championships - Sopot, Bulgaria - Day Four (or Five) - Task Three

So before I get going I must say that I had a less than perfect day landing after 60km when 64 of my fellow competitors got to goal.  I rode home in the losers' bus and drank the tequila of inadequacy with as much good humour as my overly competitive genes will allow without feeling overly false.  HOW LONG IS IT GOING TAKE (to quote my son Sebastian) to win one of these stupid world championship events!!!???  Ah well I intend to hammer out a respectable result with whatever pig iron is left on this miserable mortal coil.  Forgive the overly dramatic prelude, but we did watch 'Les Misrables' last night and it appears to have taken hold.

 

With that off of my chest, what bizarre day was that!! Holy crap!  Viagra climbs and sink of the Prozac variety in the Darth Vader Valley of Darkness with the overly moist convergent cloud shadow.  The field is in TOTAL disarray with several of my all-time heros sucking hind-teat in the hinterland of the overall  placings:  LucaD, JoshC, MickeyS, NickG, TorstenS, PeterN, Arnie, Guy, Adam ChristianB to name but a few, are languishing in, or near triple digits.

 

If SA team group landing wasn't enough, adding insult to injury Nevil got zeroed for suspected cloud-flying along with a couple of others leaving Stef as the non-scoring lone ranger to goal for team SA. 

 

Even after the absurdity of the super-final in Colombia, cloud flying is here to stay it seems. 

 

My Eureka solution(s) to the cloud flying problem:

 

1. Develop a probability algorithm based on the last 10 years worth of world championship and world cup tasks and derive the cloud flying 'signature' thereby busting 'cloudies' in the great Lance Armstrong tradition whereby all previous cheats are named and shamed and stripped of any significant honour/result.  The cool thing about this is that we have no need of FAI/CIVL/PWC or any other administrative body, we simply publish the probability results based on peer-group consensus independently and ask the aforementioned bodies wtf they intend to do about it.

 

2. Persuade comp organisers to apply the cheat algorithm to their comps and shift the responsibility onto the pilots to prove their innocence (as shockingly draconian as that sounds, even I take video when I think I may have to explain how I got 300m up the side of some cloud)...  and yes, we all know about multiple bases and cloud-tunnels (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-JXmC12WWQ), but I would wager the cloud flying 'signature' will be unique and damning once the quants work it out.

 

3. Get the manufacturers of our flying instruments to include temperature and humidity into the track log.  We know how precise upper air soundings are, so this data is sure to flag entry into cloud as opposed to blue thermals which will have distinctly different temperature and humidity 'signatures' which will aid in the application of burden-of-proof for the pilot. 

 

I hate the idea of over-regulation and the failure of the same has been so completely and utterly demonstrated through the En-D disaster and resulting farce of certification along with the circumvention of speed systems and tweaked performance.  Having said that, cloud flying remains an annoying fact of life, so stringent rules backed by theory and technology are long over-due and infinitely more desirable than some arbitrary glider limitations and contrived certification regimes. 

World Championships - Sopot, Bulgaria - Day Three - Task Two

The Devil in the Dust

 

The forecast would have had most free-fliers sleeping late and digging out kiting gear.  Not the paragliding world champs!  We enthusiastically headed up the mountain after a sublime rest day to bask in the sun while the wind was howling over the back and producing dust devils commensurate with an event of this magnitude.  We watched in awe as the first devil tried to steal a boomerang and harness lifting it a dozen swirling meters before slamming it back onto launch while fighting two desperate pilots for ownership of a second and third glider and almost succeeding.  A second dusty came steaming through launch like a freight train a little later and this time it grabbed two harnesses with gliders in pack bags stripping them clean of any loose pieces before rapidly moving them down the hill with frantic owners in hot pursuit tackling their kit and holding on for dear life.  The dervish raged for a chaotic minute or two before retreating with the spoils of its raid taking two garments all the way to into the clouds above launch in minutes.... and then we flew the task.

 

Happy Place - Waiting around listening to blues and thinking of home and cloud streets

 

 

Fear no Evil

 

So we bombed off into the valley-of-death-glide for a seventy km challenge in the valley to keep us off the lee of the mountain.  The start was one of those days where one hundred and fifty pilots spent a lot of effort ridging up the side of rapidly developing cumulus while trying to stay out of the clouds at the start followed by a desperate glide to the first turn point across the Sopot Valley to the south followed by a blanket search of just one thermal in the valley without sun.  One thing is sure at events such as these so soon after the start: the fact that if there is a thermal anywhere within one hundred square kilometres of a valley in shadow, it WILL be found and ridden back to base.  Having said that, this knowledge is not very comforting when you have been on glide for 15km and that elusive thermal is shy and not showing her skirts.  We eventually found a tiny patch of sad looking sun and almost all got up in the end before flying around the course in around two hours twenty.  The first fifty pilots were within one hundred points of one-another with a total of one hundred and twenty five pilots in goal which is amazing considering the diabolical start!  A good day for team with most in goal pushing us into eight position overall.  Russel is tenth overall and Andre 17th some fifty points back with Chris top fifty.

 

Results here: http://airtribune.com/13-fai-world-paragliding-championship/results

World Championships - Sopot, Bulgaria - Day 1 - Task 1

Johannesburg to Sofia via Istanbul

A pleasant drive through the sun flower fields from Sofia to Sopot admiring the gorgeous cloud streets set the tone for the 13th FAI world championships:  Mellow and seriously organised.  Management secured 'casa Africa' for the team.  My serviced 'crib' has aircon (it works) and clean sheets plus en-suite bathroom with shower (replete with real hot water 24/7).  The house is the talk of the town with vicious rumours circulating about how we outbid other teams to secure the mansion (including pool, boma, flat screen & volley ball court).  Whatever the case, I have never been this comfortable at a competition outside of South Africa ever... so I guess a BIG thank you to Jan & Chrissi for making it happen.

 

Race-to-goal

The launch is massive and the ride up the cable way is relaxing in a simple kind of way with 101 two seat open chairs, recently refurbished, slinging us up to launch over roughly 2 km of cable.  A 75 odd km out-and-return east-west course was set with two turns points before goal amid great excitement at the super sweet cu's and wind dummies melting into the clouds.   As is so often the case, the valley clouded over and 150 pilots were stuck on launch well after the race was due to start.  Make that 149 with Marco Littame who smoked every-one by 100 points getting off shortly after window and flying around the course alone while the rest of us were cooling our heels waiting for it to start working.  We eventually got off with the lead gaggle bouncing along at base dodging clouds along the way before getting flushed at the easterly TP.  The lag gaggle got the jump after the lead got flushed in the lee of the northerly wind.  RusselA managed to make up lost time flying a more direct line with AndreR a few minutes after to goal.  Chris landed inside of speed section but short of goal with Nev, Khobi and Stef going down at the sucky section near P1.

 

 

There will be many disgruntled pilots seeing as it felt like a bit of a lottery with many world title contenders down and out on the first day.  The Swiss, German, British and American teams were among many of the top teams who got caught out with Italy, France and Brazil putting in strong performances.  The up-side is that it is only day 1 with a high probability of good hard racing to come and perhaps a fist day shake-up will break the recent trend of EN-D processional course flying.

 \

Checkout the SA team blog here: http://sateam2013.blogspot.com

Results here: http://airtribune.com/sites/default/files/task_result_2013-07-15_20130715-2204.html

Barberton Open Day 2 Task 2

It's never a good thing to be on the ground when the wind shifts over the back.  So when eight or so pilots get off the ground and the rest have to watch them take the start from the launch you end up with grumpy people.  I was one of the lucky ones making goal in second place behind Henry Schurink.. Not that it matters... I had to leave due to work commitments.  I hate leaving a comp at the best of times,  but to leave after two nearly flawless days in the lead on a crispy new wing burns my arse more than a little.  I guess there will be enough pressure to invalidate today and I feel that's right despite being one of the lucky ones who managed to launch.

Then again it was a pretty special day with Sebastian landing the electric model airplane by himself AND doing his first tandem on a paraglider with Stef Junker.

I hope to return at the end of the week to get a couple more tasks in before Bulgaria.

Barberton Open - World Championship Team Training

Everyone knows about Porterville our local world class summer flying site near Cape Town.  Very few international pilots know about our winter flying site, Barberton, situtated near the Swaziland border in Mpumahlanga or the 'low veld'.  It is as popular with the local pilots and possibly even has a longer tradition of attendance.  It is certainly the family friendly comp and many SA pilots' first comp site given the gentle and safe flying conditions.  Barberton is a small town tourist town nestled in a bowl of ancient hills:

Wikipedia:   The mountains around Barberton are the oldest in the world dating back 3.5 Billion years, and these mountains include some of the oldest exposed rocks on the planet (only rocks from the Isua greenstone belt in Western Greenland are older). These volcanic rocks, which scientists call the Barberton Greenstone Belt, have given up direct evidence of conditions of life on the surface of the very early earth.

The first form of life on earth, a bacterial micro fossil Archaeospheroides barbertonis was discovered here and has been identified as being 3.2 billion years old.

It is no small thing to experience flying over this area.  The tasks may be modest by most standards, but what they lack in grandeur they more than compensate for in technical subtlety and picturesque appeal.

With a month to go we decided to make this a team preparation event as well as a fund raiser.

In this respect we had a very well attended auction and spit braai.  It is humbling to experience the broad generosity of our flying community considering how few people ever get to go to the worlds. 

Day1 Task 1

It was looking like a great day, so we were given a spider web of back-and-forth racing with multiple start points and routes.

I unpacked my brand new Boom Boom and launched early taking a 5 m/s freight train straight to cloudbase @ 2,200m ASL within minutes.

The temptation to wax lyrical about my GIN B9 colour 'apple' is almost too much to resist, but I will simply refer you to an earlier post http://andre-comps.blogspot.com/2013/03/porterville-world-cup-thank-you-thank.html (The (long, skinny, sexy, awesome) Glider)

The apple carried me around the course in just over an hour without interference from any competitor until the very end where Anton snuck by while I was site-seeing on half bar.  Forgive the pompous tone of this last paragraph, but sometimes, once in a rare while, you just get the lines exactly right and flying feels effortless.  My family spoiled me for fathers day and my glider played along too.

Weight Shift

Who would have thought that the there would be a positive spin-off of the EN-D comp-debacle?

 

Around the globe we find a bunch of extra large men munching on carrot sticks, sipping Perrier and nibbling on calorie deficient foodstuffs as though a metro-sexual revolution has swept the global paragliding ranks.

 

The reason is simple:  If you want to be competitive at the upcoming world championships in Bulgaria, then you have a choice of glider and size.  Order anything you like as long as it is a medium GIN Boomerang 9. 

 

I was deciding how to go about trimming down for this season, so I asked my son, Sebastian, for advice. 

It went something like this:

 

Dad: I need to lose, weight.  What do you suggest?

 

Son: Why do people get fat dad?

 

Dad: If they are not sick, it is probably because they eat too much or don't get enough exercise.

 

Son: Is aunty Dorothy sick?

 

Dad: Not as far as I know, why?

 

Son: Are you sick dad?

 

Dad: Never mind.

 

...And thus, armed with the wisdom of a seven year old, I cut out beer and carbs and voila!  My target of 13 pounds shed in six weeks with four weeks to go .. I may even have the luxury of ballast this time.

 

I thought I was the only one with this problem, but it turns out there are several big lads out there turning lean.  The difference this time is that it looks like none of the manufacturers are having much success certifying anything other than medium size gliders so it has to be a lifestyle change rather than a crash course.  Time to stop weight training and start swimming again I guess...

 

Come to think of it, there are probably a whole group out there with the opposite problem.  What are they doing?  Sumo-style feasts, steroids and heavy weight training maybe?