Flats and tows

So, I spent my 5 days in the Netherlands and I have to say I had some good time. First day it was a rainy bicycle run on the Ameland island where Desiree had a lot of knowledge about the nature there as it is amazing to see and even better to actually know at what you are looking at.
Second day I got a chance to have a try to fake the famous pancakes from Kobarid next to my home town :) Well, 4 man in the kitchen was calling for some extra testing with how to make a sweet pancake mass to a salted one :) We somehow made it and it was nice to see Caspar and Ivo after a long time.

Next day we went to Stadskanaal where Rinus has a Dragonfly on the airfield which is used to tow Dutch pilots in to the air there.
Desiree kindly trusted me and land me her Litesport and Matrix harness. Having all that new it was quite an expectation of what is going to happen when I will have to ride a glider fast and low behind the tow.
Rob was very very good in giving me the tips of what to expect and what he wants to see from me when I get in the line.
I had one of the best if not the best pilot in Europe to tow me up. Experienced and always calm Rinus showed me the signs that he is ready to pull the throttle.
I hold on to the the dolly with the plastics and went for a run. First 20 m in the air, the Alpine pilot was still catching the path with the hips movement, but I soon got the game how to go behind the tow.
I made three nice tows with strong wind, cross and a gentle evening one. On the firstone me and Rob even went on a cross country flight but it all soon ended up as the thermals where gone. I felt like a student again when Rob was serious explaining me how to do stuff, but yes I was also happy as a student in the evening because I tried finally the towing stile of taking off.
With good hints nothing really special, just you got to do it right, but hey, you got to do it right also on a mountain take off :D

I am grateful to have people like Rob Desiree and Rinus that gave me a chance to try it, so thank you all :)

Enough of talking, here is a nice video of the flights.

Netherlands coast

Netherlands

Checking the Ryanair one day I found a ticket for 40 € to Duseldorf and immediately contact my friends Rob and Desiree if they are willing to take me under the roof for some days. As they where not in Tolmin for Kobala open this year I had to turn the favour and get my self up there after many years of their visits in my country.
Today I am off to Trieste for a flight up there. Here is my luggage :) Sticking the socks in to the helmet is a good decision for a flight up, on return it is going to be harder :D

Blog gadget Nokia N8

The main season has ended like this yesterday. I came out of the flat and saw this clouds and knew that when this thing passes us, there is autumn here. In last 14 days I had two really nice flights. As I was pushed down from the first place in Slovenian OLC I made a nice plan for 100 km FAI in Tolmin but I miss calculated myself with 2.7 factor in XCplanner and factor 2 in our system. I made the flight but lost first place for 7 points (7 km). Alojz Frelih got the first place (Congrats) with nice flights from Karavanke to Greifenburg and back. Definitely the flight to do next year.

So as there is rain outside after a loooong period, I have time to sit down and write a little bit about the gadget that I got this year to work with for my blog. Until now I was always equipped with computer and camera, always searching for a WiFi to do the job in the evening, by job I mean writing what was happening during the day in the comp on my blog.

Suddenly I had a Nokia N8 phone that was equipped with all of this stuff, really decent camera, internet connection everywhere where the signal was, and even an awesome video camera.

The real test where World champs, where I was live blogging from take off, landings and so on...
Somehow I found it relaxing when I had to sit down after taking picture and write about what is happening on take off. Nokia BH-505 earphones made the crowd noise disappear so I had my own relaxed world while doing the blogging and so I got prepared for the flying day.
On the first day I outlanded and we all know how it is when you have to wait for retrieve. At this very moment I was able to already publish the article about how the flying was and this is the easiest thing to do when it is all fresh. Waiting all day to make a blog in the evening makes you loose some senses about the day so readers got a better info like that and I passed my retrieve waiting time very fast :) At the same time I was able to see what is happening with the scoring as we had Live tracking, so I was able to see the standings already in the outlanding field.
With XCLeonardo app I was also able to do the live tracking from N8 as well as it has an integrated GPS so I did some flights here in Slovenia when others where able to look at my flying in Google earth while sitting in the office "working".
Built in GPS also helped me with sending the coordinates to retrieve van, I just opened the Ovi maps and had the coordinates in few seconds.
As we have so many internet media around, sometimes you don´t know where to publish any more so Pixelpipe app came in very handy here. I just marked the media I want to publish to, fb, blogger or twitter, with out having to write things more times.
I wont talk about the quality of the pictures that you can make with N8, we all know it is the best in phone industry and you have a good example also in the beginning of this article.
As we where many times more like tourists at Worlds it felt great to have the camera "phone" with you all the time. Maybe sometimes at some parties it would be better to not have it :D but it is good to have all the memories stored on a huge 16 GB mass memory.
I made my phone also a learning tool. We had quite many famous names in the Camp site Gabrje in my home town, I was kindly asked to film the seminars they where doing and the main question was with which camera we should do it as we had very low light situation there. I got quite many strange faces looking at the rig when I got my phone out of the pocket, slide the N8 in to te N8 producers rig and pushed the button for filming. One hour talks where a piece of cake for the N8. Sound is important too. The sound you get from this thing is just amazing. Before I started with the N8 producers project I tested the camera at a concert where I just filmed their performance and HERE is the video that makes the idea of what a good quality the sound of the Nokia N8 is.
I did some films for the place where I work. One with Canon 7D and one with Nokia N8. Check them both and try to see the difference :)
And at the end of it, of course I need to be in a good shape if I want to fly good, Sports tracker application is one of my favourite. I am able to see what is my progress with running, how long do I run, actually I see everything what a man or a woman needs to see when he trains for his fitness.
There is a marathon in Ljubljana in the end of October and this fellow is helping me to train at best for a 21km run that I subscribed to.
Who knows, I might make a Live tracking of the run :D
All in all it is a flexible gadget that you make it suit for your needs, it certainly helped me a lot during the season, and it will help me also in the future.

Tandem flying in Tolmin

There are always many people asking about tandem flying with me but usually we are always with a lack of time for this things during the comp season. This weekend there was W wind for 3 days on take off so there where perfect conditions to do some tandems and show the people what we are up to up there. As I had my glider in Gorica I used my brother to have a flight on Friday, I needed a passenger and he was asking me about it for ages already. I got a bit of air time and he finally got to taste what it looks like to be up there with the hang glider. September is the best time for this things, air gets calmer so you can fly easily with this air bus and of course the landing in the midday is easier as there is less turbulence on the landing field. Here is a video from Saturday

Dennis Pagen and avoiding the storms in flight

As we had Dennis in Tolmin this summer, we kindly asked him to give us a bit of knowledge he shared with the world already trough his books. Quite a lot PG pilots came as well to listen to this. There was a lot of people asking about it all around the globe so I decide to film it and share it on youtube. First my idea was to make it live web cast on internet which it would be possible with Nokia N8 but it would be just live at this very moment, now it is on internet and so in your video library where you can look when ever you want :) About 50 minutes video is set to 6 parts so start with the first one :) (The content of this is going to be also in new book of Dennis "Understanding the sky")

SerialCUP in Tolmin

As for all the drama that is happening now in paragliding world, guys from Slovenia already made a plan in beginning of the year to make a only serial class competition. It is all happening now in Tolmin, you can find the link here They invited some of the best pg pilots in the world to share their knowledge trough the flying on relatively same wings (serial) and seminars that they organise in the evening. Here is a video of a Swiss pilot Michael Sigel that I made with my Nokia N8 as it turned out it was the best cam we had at the moment :D Maybe many pilots wont hear nothing new in it but I strongly recommend it to newbies to refresh some thoughts about the comp flying, you can connect it in many ways to our comps as well.

MichelSigelPresentation from PARADAIS on Vimeo.