a hard days night

I have a friend who famously said "I don't do that thing", well i don' t do outlandings (at least not yesterday). But it really takes hard work to fly slow - first you have to make the conscious decision not to fly with the gaggle (on a blue day, nogal), and second, you have to decide to go down the l'Aquila valley (and not the traditional mount Velino way) - then you have to ridge soar in a seabreeze to get to a turnpoint at 2100m height - by then you have given up 60 km on the main gaggle and you are set for a lonely long flight and a late return to rieti with a final glide starting 90 km out at 2000ft below glide at a zero macready - but it is really nice to see Casteluccio - at the foot of mount Vettore - nesstling in the valley with paragliders and hanggliders.

This is doing Rieti the hard way - most of the pilots here have many hundreds and in most cases thousands of hours flying from here, those who do not, have been here on training courses. There is also a lot of team flying going on - you can see that from just looking at the start times, but also from the big silences on the only official radio channel. Some pilots also get special post briefing briefings. I believe i am doing it the right way though, you have to really understand how this site works and the only way for me is to work my way through it.


Today is the last day and it looks blue - i would guess at least another 400km (unbelievable the amount of flying done here in the last two weeks,.

Once again thanks for all the support,

3G