Ten Percent Moments

12th FAI Paragliding World Championship

Information

Team Canada
Brett Hazlett
Keith MacCullough
Claudio Mota

My SPOT
Keith's SPOT
Live Tracking


Day Two


We had an amazing race to Avila that started with some zig zagging in the Piedrahita valley and ended with a long downwind leg to goal at Avila.


Conditions were light during the first part of the task, it was quite a struggle to make all the turnpoints. The downwind leg was really fun and I final glided with Michael Sigel.


I knew there had been serious accidents and reserve deployments because of the continuous communicating on the safety frequency. It was only later that I discovered that there had been two fatalities and five reserve deployments.


In response to this the FAI suspended the certification of Competition Class gliders and stopped the championship.


We are all deeply saddened by the accidents and disappointed by the consequences. Two years of racing to earn a position on our national team, so much training, so much money spent on equipment to satisfy CIVL's new rules, so much time committed to being here, and so much anticipation of this event.


What do we do now?


Day One


With a predicted 20 km/h westerly and the top of lift at 2800 m the classic 154 km race to Arcones was called.


It was fun racing. I had some trouble managing the airspace and landed at the edge of one of the restricted areas, trying to get around it.. somewhere between Avila and Segovia. Keith landed at Segovia and Claudio made goal!


We don't know who won the day yet but the results should be up in a few hours. The link above to the live tracking is apparently very exciting to watch. Realtime race action in 3D.


The weather for the next few days is expected to be good. We've been averaging one reserve deployment per fly day. Pilots reported witnessing many airspace infractions today, the penalty of which is a zero score.

Town decorations

Practice


We had an official practice task for the competitors to test their equipment, the organization to test their systems, and the air to test our gliders.


A 60 km multi turnpoint task with goal in Piedrahita, wind at 15-20 km/h from the north, 2-5 m/s climbs, and base at 2800 m.


We flew the task with lots of speed and angry places in the sky threatened to take your glider from you. One pilot floated down safely under his parachute.

The opening ceremony was grand

First Flight


I opened my eyes alertly. It was only 5 am but I was eager to taste the skies of Piedrahita. I went for a walk through town in the dawn light. The air was cool and the streets quiet.


Later a few of us found an open cafe for breakfast and discussed the forecast and ideas for a practice task.

Swifts celebrate in the early sunlight

We arrived at launch at 12 pm and prepared to fly. Despite agreeing upon a practice task on the ground, we later scattered across the sky pursuing personal choices of which areas to fly. I spent 3 hours completing a short out-and-return with a brutally difficult battle against the wind on the return leg. I had flown into a narrow valley known for being a difficult area to cross because I wanted to learn how to fly this part of the flying arena. Flying around in the easy parts of the sky is fun but is low quality training.

A front was approaching from the west so I pushed to get back to town before it arrived. As I zipped up my glider bag in the LZ in town the first drops of rain and a light gust front arrived.

Travel

Anonymous departure gates, morphing time zones, and the lingering smell of eau de Boeing. Beginning in Canada and touring the northern hemisphere via Greenland, Ireland, Holland, and Germany, we have arrived in Spain.

 Our beautiful Canada

Preparation


I enjoy the days before leaving for an important competition. I begin to eject unimportant things from my mind, things that are not relevant to the competition. My distracted mind implodes until I am in a state of simplicity. The ritual of tattooing my competition numbers to my glider often begins the process. Daily life tediosities lose meaning and fade from awareness.

Ozone Mantra R11

A chilled down tempo meditative evening of ridge soaring, thermaling, and proximity flying at Muller Windsports.


My R11 looks somewhat different to my R10.2 and feels somewhat different to my R10.2 and yet there is a definite familiarity present.

The glider feels a little heavier to pull up in light wind, heavier but not harder. When launching in strong winds it feels more or less the same as my R10.2 but I seem to get it right more often.

The handling is awesome. More or less in the same category as the R10.2, but slightly better. Less hesitation to initiate a turn.

Comfort in rough air feels about the same as the R10.2, probably slightly better.

Speed builds up very quickly with bar and the glider feels great. This is the most exciting thing about the glider, for me.

I put new B handles on that are shorter and have a wider flare and hook them with my first two fingers.

The R11 doesn't spin very well. I tried twice to do a spin landing and all I got was a 180 deg rotation. It would take so long for the inside wing to stall that by then I had mushed down to the ground and the was no time for a full rotation of the glider.

Something that stands out is the unique sound that the glider makes at high speed. There's something different in the pitch of the high speed whine. It is the most beautiful glider I have flown, as viewed from the harness.

A non-pilot spectator at launch walked over to me after I top landed and she said.. That thing looks like a shark!

Sky Water Show

Hello,
I collect videos that will be shown during the famous Sky Water Show of Montreux
clubrvl.com/​
on Bigscreen. Would you give your permission for the public projection of some of your films there? More specifically:

Hanggliding at Torrey Pines
vimeo.com/​8271511

2011 GV Open 
vimeo.com/​20942598

2011 Pre PWC Superfinal
vimeo.com/​19693137

Many thanks
Andreas

Are 2-liner Paragliders Dangerous?

On my way home today I took a shortcut through the military training area and noticed two crash test dummies discussing the safety of 2-liner competition gliders. I couldn't help but stop and whip out my iPhone. Here's what they were saying: 

Now

Now

I destroyed my body at the gym today.. it was multi-hour corporal annihilation. Total physiological punishment.

I've read that creation and destruction are intimately linked. To create something new, the obsolete version of that something must first be destroyed. It applies to uninstalling software, breaking up with a girlfriend, a burning forest in Australia, and shredding muscle fibres in the gym.

I stood there, staring blankly at the ink stamp on my left wrist left by the friendly attendant at the entrance to the gym. It was Monday, yes, but all I could see was.. NOW.

Now is the best time for anything, is it not? And Monday is as good a day as any day for more Now.

PWC Korea

This is the video that made of the event, filmed in 720p @ 60 FPS.

People gather to witness the sun setting over Hawaii

The days after an important competition are peaceful and contemplative. The anticipation leading up to the event and the physical and mental exhaustion during the event leaves me feeling calm. Usually there is a long trip back home which offers uninterrupted time to reflect upon what happened during the competition, the amazing things I saw, the amazing people whom I shared the sky with, and how I have developed, ever so slightly, as a pilot.

I finished 14th overall and therefore was guaranteed qualification for the Superfinal in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, in January 2012.


Day 7

Low base, light rain, poor visibility.. the last day of PWC Korea has been cancelled. The competition is over.

Jack Brown (USA): Overall champion

Ayumu 'Bruce Lee' Miyata (JPN): Asian Champion

Daria Krasnova (RUS): Female Champion

Yurdaer Etike (TUR): Moustache champion

Day 6

This morning I opened my eyes slowly and could see through my hotel window that the front had arrived. There was high overcast, some low cloud, and a cool humid feeling.


We were taken to launch to wait for conditions to improve. A few pilots launched and demonstrated that the air was lightly soarable but not taskable. Light intermittent rain became light continuous rain and it was then that the day was cancelled.


As I write this in my hotel room I can hear thunder in the distance. The forecast for tomorrow is rain.

Seiko Fukuoka Naville

Day 5

Conditions on launch today were similar to yesterday but with a little more wind, more sun, and less favourable launch conditions. A task was set but only 10 min after the launch window opened it was cancelled due to reported 25 km/h winds at 600 m.


Jack Brown is leading the competition. The forecast for the last two days of the competition is not positive. If he wins, Jack will join the ranks of Josh Cohn and Scotty Marion as Americans who have won a world cup event.

Yasushi Kobayashi

Day 4

We flew a second task in less than ideal conditions and somehow 25 pilots managed to complete.


There was a strong south wind and launch faces west, there was high cloud, and the halo around the sun betrayed the approach of a front. The high cloud became thick, dimming the slopes and fields, giving the course an ominous feel. Every slope seemed to be in the lee and the air reached out to take your glider from you.


One pilot took a massive collapse in the lee and after the glider surged forward he pendulum-ed into a small tree. A witness said that without the tree, this incident could have been fatal.

There is a strong military presence in this area. The roar of jet fighters could be heard regularly.

There were seven turnpoints and each one seemed impossible to reach but somehow the glorious crescendo of my Flytec 6030 would signal the edge of yet another turnpoint cylinder. The celebration of each turnpoint achieved was short lived as I turned and looked along the next leg from an unpleasantly low height, with the sun at an increasingly low position in the sky. There were always more ridges to pass, in the lee, and it was always into the wind, somehow.


The stress of the rough air made this 3 hour flight more mentally exhausting than the 8.5 hour flight in PWC Chelan last year. Today I relearned the lesson: Never give up.

I have often wondered why I seem to need to learn the same lessons over and over again. Why can't I learn each lesson once, never repeat the same mistake, and progress to the next lesson?


After today I realize that it is not that there are many lessons and you must learn each one once, but the opposite. There are actually only a few lessons to learn but you need to learn them many times. Each time you are taught the same lesson by making the same mistake, you have not failed in any way. Each time you make the same mistake, you learn the same lesson, but more deeply.


There are only a small number of things to learn in life, but you cannot master each one simply by being introduced to it once. You need to get to know each one, like a friend, until you are familiar with the subtlety and depth involved.

Yassen 'the assassin' Savov

Day 3

Finally, we have flown. It was a 70 km cross tailwind task, with a single control turnpoint.

Launch conditions were challenging. The pilot ahead of me was dragged around launch a little, then into the air, then took a collapse and wound into the trees. I launched next and during my first turn I could see three gliders in the small trees surrounding launch.

The landscape was beautiful, but the air was often malicious. I watched a pilot throw his reserve while climbing in the first thermal after the start. The thermal was so strong that he continued to climb for a short time. There would be three reserve deployments today.

Most of the flight was in the flatlands, flying over rivers, small hills, rice padi fields, and turquoise tiled houses. We spent most of our time at 1000-2000 m.

Dean Stratton won the day with an elapsed time of 1 h 32 min.

Yassen Savov completed the speed section over 1 min faster but was unable to reach the goal line. He described approaching a 20 m tree covered hill attempting to gain the 100 m he needed to fly over the bridge, the river, and a sandy bank to goal. He found something but it was a really turbulent area with houses upwind so when he tried to climb in the scrap of lift he spun and recovered his glider just in time to flare.

There was a lot of excitement in goal. We were so happy to have flown such an fun task over such interesting terrain.

Flying Land

Day 2

I woke up at dawn, anxious for the day to begin. The air was cool as I walked to breakfast but it was still. On the way back, however, there were signs of wind.

We arrived at launch, anxious to fly. After days without flying, the immense launch area covered in green grass, with windsocks swaying gently in the breeze, felt like paradise.

A task was set and we prepared yourselves for the flight but the wind and thermal strength continued to increase. The quality of pilots' launches deteriorated rapidly until finally one pilot took a large collapse moments after launching and spiraled into the ground below launch. As I stood on launch, holding my glider in my hands, I watched as he disappeared out of sight, with his glider on the horizon.

There was collective silence as EMTs ran to his aid. He did not hit the ground but fell into a small tree. I heard he was not even injured. Amazing.

Launch was closed for a while and then about twenty minutes later, after consulting a number of pilots who were in the air near the startgate, the decision was made to cancel the task.

Philippe Broers

Day 1


Strong west winds convinced the safety committee to cancel the task. Yellow dust, arriving from the Gobi desert in China, filled the valleys with a yellow haze.