sreda, 1. junij 2011

From Croatia to Slovenia and Italy


When I started my first long flights in Tolmin I was usually lonely hang glider pilot on top of Kobala. Now I have almost always a nice company to fly with, or Alan or Slovenian pilots or Italian Lupo and Davide who join me most of the time here on Vipava ridge.


They both already tried to fly from Buzet to Slovenia, Lupo (ex-designer of Hazard wing) flew from Buzet to Gorica and then back to Vremscica.
They put up an idea to fly this route again and I was pleased to go with them. Nice cumulus clouds already in the morning showed that we should have our thermals marked for flying from Buzet up on the flats towards Slovenia and known Vipava ridge.

We where a bit late on take off, but so was the air as we saw after the take off. Slow progression to the cloud base and then step by step over the hills in Slovenia. I got lucky under the cloud and gain the height while Lupo and Davide struggled on Slavnik hill. I was searching for Vremscica to point my self up north but found it when I was already 10 km from it :) Slow thermals but enough to move on to the Vipava ridge. This should be easy to make but in the end I almost went down bellow Kovk take off. Blue sky over the ridge but I managed to jump to the Gorica ridge with a hang gliding ramp take off. Quite rough air, right on the ridge where I fly the most :) A rocket thermal got me to the 2000 m over paragliding take off on Lijak so there was no question any more about where to go on. Tolmin.
I never did that before so it was a flight to an unknown land again this days. Small cut over the plateau and clouds on the end of it drove me over the plateau with out big problems. There are also landing fields in this small valley so no problem about that.

Tolmin valley waited in sun so I said lets go on to make three countries in one day. I flew the general path towards Gemona in Italy and landed back in Tolmin.

We spoke on the phone with Lupo and Davide who retured back from the Vipava valley and tried to go back to Buzet. The day should be much much better to fly back to Buzet, but I wont say it is not possible. Scott Dougall who is in Tolmin on flying holidays was so kind to me that he drive me and the glider back to Nova Gorica. The retrieval of the car had to wait for one day.
I did a good job of making it steal safe as I left the lights open so I guess when I was flying over it over Vremscica airfield it was already dead :D


Looking forward for new adventures with this two guys :) It is always fun.



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