Cool!

The Acroaria team are very pleased to have been assigned the task of running the second FAI World Aerobatic Championships in Omegna, Italy from 6 -15 August 2010.

Acroaria ‘09 (9 - 16 August) will serve as a pre-event.

Despite their 8 years’ experience of running acro comps, the team are still keen for any input from pilots regarding how they would like to see the event run. Any comments please, to formulavolo@libero.it

Some launches from Chabre during the worlds. All photos by Nathalie Fevez.

Zippy.

Flying at the pre-Worlds

A reader from Australia (which adds a bit of irony to this story) wrote in to critique the Oz Report on many different levels. He also wrote:

I want to know how it feels when you are racing against another top pilot and I want to hear about some of those amazing climbs while in thermals.

...to show up an coming pilots what it is like, e.g. how hard a thermal was to stick in and how it felt to wonder if you were going to make goal.

A local artist had 20 or so paintings hanging in the gathering hall at the Pre-Worlds. Here are some of my favorites:

As I was setting up for my virgin flight in Austria, I found a pair of black lace thong panties laying next to my glider. I peeked around to see where they came from. I deduced that Jack had placed them on my gear as he was the prettiest bitch around. :) Who knows where (or who) he got them.

I spent yesterday afternoon re-assembling my sweetie and giving her a loving tune up. New wires, VG cord, and full tune. Can't wait to see how she flies.

I put up a video scrapbook from the trip. We had church bells tolling as we unpacked in Austria. There was plenty of dancing with clouds on the trip, and Zippy happened to fly up on me when I had the camera out one day.

Bito Angola

Konrad Heilmann <<email>> writes:

I'm very sad to say that this weekend we lost the only Angolan Hang glidider pilot.

Justino Quissua, a.k.a. Bito Angola, 27 years old, suffered an accident when a glider, he was testing for a friend who wanted to learn, folded up in flight. The accident happened in the Huambo region, one of the many sites Bito was pioneering in his country.

The 2009 Worlds, only four from each country?

The current thinking of the 2009 World's organizers is
that each country will only be able to appoint a team of four pilots (to
score three places) in the 2009 Worlds. Additional pilots will then be
allowed to come to the Worlds based on the country's WPRS standing up to
an additional one per country (maybe two).

Suddenly all my tech devices break down at the same time, also my flight to China was taken away from me and now I am in Seoul, Korea, instead. So much went wrong, even my compeo ran out of battery on launch at Hochries on Saturday (and our team doc Ecki saved my flight with lending me his vario), the first time that this happened in all those years. And yesterday on the flight even my beverage trolley broke down and would not move... at least we have a wonderful, helpful crew that carried me along.