About my goal & the first/last training day

Of course I’ll do my very best to place as high as possible, but that is not the goal of this trip. The goal is to get me as well prepared for the Worlds next year as I possibly can. But above all: have fun. That may not sound as a winner, but I can assure you: if you’re not having fun at what you are doing its going to be very hard to be the best.

So what I’m up against? As you can see on the website: Almost 60 opponents, roughly half of them are South-Americans (its a combined National and South-American championsip) and the rest from everywhere on the planet. The French came with a pretty big team and there are some famous names among them. Almost every glider that is on the clubclass-list is presented, so I took a moment to compare my rented Jantar 2. I only had a Jantar 1 polar, but even that one doesn’t look that bad. I compared it to the LS-4 and Cirrus. It doesn’t climb that well, but from 160 km/h it’s just as good as an LS-4. So I guess we have to fly fast… :) Hope the weather fits with the plan!

But it’s not all about flying. Get familiar with the neighborhood, the country, the customs, nutrition, meet some people, discovering/solving logistic problems, etc, so I’ll have a bit of an advantage on all aspects compared to those who didn’t come here.

Today I flew the Jantar for the first time. I had to weigh the glider at max weight, so I filled it up with 150 liters. Organization is still a bit chaotic so nobody was there to weigh it… But it doesn’t really matter, I wanted to try it anyway at MTOW. The important thing is that we can fly and that we did: wasn’t easy to keep it in the air with 45 km/h of wind and a max altitude of 800 meters. It flies pretty easy, but I still have to figure out how I fit best. Got all day tomorrow: briefing at 15:00 and no flying… :(

The first thing you notice when you fly here: besides Chaves (which is a modest town) there is absolutely NOTHING! Pretty important to land near a road and building in case of outlanding. But we aren't going to land out of course..

Oh yes, after the flight drunk Maete for the first time. It’s a kind of tea and is a bit spicy. You drink it out of some sort of dried pumpkin with a metal straw. Most important thing is that you share…: