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| From Greifenburg P... |
In May we still have a lot of snow in the mountains. Looks actually pretty nice. Nice until you climb to cloudbase at 2900 mtrs and freeze your butt off. Yikes, was it cold!
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| From Greifenburg P... |
Austrian Open - Hanggliding Competition
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| From Greifenburg P... |
I always manage to visit Greifenburg when they have some competition going on. This time it was the Austrian Open in Hanggliding. 70 registered pilots and another 40 free flying. Add another 100-150 paragliding pilots and you end up with a crowded launch site and heavy traffic in the air. It was actually amazing to see how well everyone got along - and how all the pilots scattered throughout the air and didn't really annoy each other.
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| From Greifenburg P... |
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| From Greifenburg P... |
Incidents
When 200 wings fly at the same site little accidents are bound to happen. Luckily nobody got hurt:
1. Paraglider landed in a tree above launch (must have been thermalling too low)
2. Paraglider and Hangglider collided above launch. The paraglider continued flying, but the HG lost control and came down under the reserve chute - landed safely in a tree.
3. Hangglider landed in a powerline near the LZ.
4. Countless screwed up launches and landings
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| From Greifenburg P... |
My first Cross Country Trip
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| From Greifenburg P... |
After having flown in Greifenburg for some time I'm ready for the next challenge - trying to rack up some distance. Forget about returning to the LZ - just fly down the valley as far as possible and hitch hike back to Greifenburg. Landing in the LZ is so yesterday.
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| From Greifenburg P... |
Had a nice launch around 1pm and got up to cloudbase fairly quick, outclimbing quite a few other pilots. Then I headed down the valley and climbed back up a few times.
Reached a bend in the valley and was able to clearly see the next town - Spittal! I had made it halfway to Spittal!!! But after a few heavy collapses and being blown back I had enough and looked for a nice landing spot...
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| From Greifenburg P... |
I landed right next to the road, packed up my wing and hitchhiked back to Regensburg. After waiting 10 minutes for a friendly local we passed quite a few other pilots on the way back. Awesome.
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| From Greifenburg P... |
Since I haven't bought a GPS yet I marked the track manually:
cheers, Matthias
PS: It's pretty exciting to see a helicopter pass 200 mtrs below you. Luckily my wing is very colorful and visible. And helicopter pilots must have good eyes, right?
Here are all the photos
