GoPro

Should I explain what does the header of this story mean?

I think not. Who does not know this small things that have changed the view of the world wide public also to our sport. People around the world can now sit down and have a brief touch of what we are doing among our flights, what do we see and how our life looks like trough this small lenses.

I grew up in a family where we never had a camera or a good  photo so I even did not knew about my love and dedication to that until I did not take my ex-girlfriends camera in my hand and started with it.
Just in time when I started to look what to buy to put it on the glider GoPro came out with their HD camera. Birthday was around the corner so I got little help to get my very first camera. Soon after that, GoPro made a contest where I got my second HD camera. I fet like the biggest producer in town with two cameras on board taking pictures and filming many times. The first day I took the camera in the air was one of my most viewed videos all time. I never got a chance to fly like this in that conditions after that.
Hang gliding high in the mountains from Matjaz Klemencic on Vimeo.

After HD version Hero2 came out and I was selling my GoPros HD and bought Hero2 straight away. Another GoPro contest was out and had this fortune to get another GoPro camera for free again. Of course just signing to contest is not enough, but after having good material and friends around the world willing to click while contest was running I was able to have my arsenal of GoPros full again. Hero2 made a video that was hosted on well known Infinity list web page.
Hang gliding Soca valley ride from Matjaz Klemencic on Vimeo.

Now, Hero3 is out :) More expensive, better smaller, with Wifi build in, a thing that just fits to a hg pilot when you can put this light thing on the wing with out having troubles in the air because of it and a WiFi to start it when things are looking the best around you.
I pre-ordered one to have the best possible camera now and am looking forward to get it around my birthday time again. Seems like they love November to put new thing out and I like that :)
However, while waiting for it I got a nice mail from GoPro itself saying that they appreciate my work so far and would like to give Hero3 in my hands to produce more stuff for the people to see it. The flying and the quality of the camera that will definitely bring new views of our sport as well. I am however honoured to get this chance of course :)

Oldies :D Interview about N8 producers at local tv

This one will be more interesting for people knowing Slovenian language as it is an interview that happened after the N8 Producer zero gravity trip.

We talked about the contest, how I was invited in to it and how was the overall trip with Zero G flight included in it. This one will be fun to watch after some years for sure :D

Magic Lijak

So boring, yet so reliable :D

Why we come back

The tittle t this project came out of the way of how my life is travelling between working Gorica and home town Tolmin. Especially in summer I am like nomad with the pillow and a glider on top of my car coming back to this valley where soul rests out of the working rush days.
As I had an idea to film bits of places around this valley I was lucky enough to get latest machine, a phone :D, Nokia 808 PureView to film this.
It mad me hike around places where I have not been in years. When there is nice weather we are in the air not hiking up the mountains. So it was a good excuse for a bit of exercise during windy days.
The filming was with out any story I was just filming and filming and hoped I will come up with something good in the end. Well it satisfied me. I still need to work on my glide camera system as it is not working quite good, a motorised dolly is still in the making, buying a new one would cost me something more then 1000 € but when I calculated how much I spent already for small parts, well.... Price seems more reasonable now :D

Hope you will like it, please watch it in 1080p and with some good speakers to it ;)

No place like home

After Turkey, dust, flats etc. I was hardly waiting to get back on my home hill Kobala. Amazing how nice it is to see again the trees over the mountains :)

We had quite a dry summer here so the colours are switched a bit this year. It should start becoming brown from top of the mountains down but as it was so dry you could see brown spots lower in the valley on the ridges. Actually these are the spots where thermals are triggering as you can see that places facing most of the time to the sun where absolutely most brown of all.
I am back to Gorica now already, back to work back to my old life. It was nice to spend time around for nearly 2 months.
After Turkey we came home with hope of a bit bigger refunds for our silver medal as we would get higher rating in sports category at our Olympic association. But.... The drum roll finished two days before we got back home so in the end we will be left with huge portion of refunds for our Turkey competition. This is how things are done in Slovenia, you don`t know wetter you will get your costs back or not until the last working day of the year. Then suddenly your club gets refunds and club is the on then having problems to transfer the money to us pilots who have had to pay for everything before.
What does that mean now for us?
Team was well pumped up for Australia and there was a slight chance that we will actually get down in bigger number but... It all ended up with one phone call to our Flying association who refused to let us send filled contracts for the categories 2 days later.
So the wish for the Worlds in 2012 is cut down by bureaucracy.
I will focus now on Litespeed RX which I badly want for my next season. The level of my flying definitely went higher this year and I am sure that it can go even higher next year. Well, I will need to sort it out with my stupid "push on" flying :D

HANG GLIDING - Three steps to the flying itself

This summer I had a chance to work on a video project where DHV asked me to make a video that will catch up an interest in possible new pilots to our sport. They gave me all the rights to build it up from idea to the production. Since I bought some serious gear for filming I was able to say yes.
We did quite some filming in Germany and Austria, but with big lack of good weather all the time. I am used to have this epic shots which come from days of flying and luck wherever you go.
I had to get the best out of it and ones I sat down to my computer, the story started to evolve. Hope you will  like the outcome of the video.
In a rush of making and exporting it, I forgot about my dear friend Jochen Zeischka who made few shots in the video, so credits for this video go also to him.

Enjoy it, share it ;)

HANG GLIDING - 3 steps to the flying itself from Matjaz Klemencic on Vimeo.

Prize giving ceremony

I am back home after 30 hour drive. Smooth border passing made us come back fast. A good group of fun people in the van just made this trip easier.
We started our trip back right after the price giving ceremony which was held in one open restaurant in Talas city.
Nice breakfast for all pilots with lots of sugar included of course :)
It has been an adventure to me, flying in a different place with different culture. Overall great experience, only too bad we had the weather we had which was more of a gamble than real flying. Well, we still flew, 9 tasks, which is a lot.

The new Eropean champion is Alex Ploner followed by Dan Vhynalik and our best Primoz Gricar.

We where happy to have silver team medal behind team Italy and in front of team Spain