The preparation for Sabina Glide – the pre-worlds in the standard and club classes, 8 -15 July 2007, Rieti, Italy

I am shortly off to Rieti to fly there and I am taking the opportunity to communicate my preparation and flying on this blog. Happy reading (and any comments are welcome). In the coming posts I intend dealing with my preparation to fly there.

Flight sim training

The time to leave for Rieti is approaching quickly, and before I know it, I shall be on the flight for Frankfurt and then Milan. It shall be my first visit to that famous venue in the geographic middle of Italy, but I have already spent many hours and hundreds of kilometers there, battling weak thermals and low ridges to get onto final glide. All of this possible using two excellent flight simulators with accurate 3D graphics and good weather simulation, Condor and Silent Wings. Connected to my Ipaq, running Winpilot, it is possible to set tasks and weather to mimick the conditions of the actual contest day. In addition thereto you can load the .igc files of the pilots who flew that particular day – and off you go. The advantage that you have is that you already know who won the day and what the average speed was, but it still remains very challenging. As the contest files I had, pertained to excellent flying conditions, I soon opted for setting difficult and marginal flying conditions. Train hard, fight easy is my motto. In this fashion I spent some 30 hours each on Silent Wings and Condor (to which should be added an equal amount of time poring over maps and analysing .igc files). I would expect to fly approximately 40 hours at most in Rieti so this simulator flying, if it is realistic, should be of real benefit. At the very least I have a far better understanding of the geography of the area – having flown into a few blind valleys and having been forced down into difficult terrain. I should also have a fair idea of how I am doing on final glides – I missed one or two by half a kilometer and one or two I had so much energy that I had to do a beat up, not something I normally go for.

But I did some real life flying as well: Here is a photo taken a few week ends ago from EY on the south side of Sneeukop looking towards Wemmershoek dam showing the snow still there after the front had passed through. It was a weak wave day and I had a real lot of fun flying into valleys which I had not previously explored. (the photo follows as soon as i have worked out how to post it).