Iberaki 2007 Photo Album
Results and Official Photos

Weather is looking bad the Friday and Saturday with today looking to be the last chance for us to fly.

The task committee recycled a 100km task from one of the canceled days (Tuesday I think) and we were all pysched for a big task.

Launch was, as usual, crap. Winds were blowing hard south-south-west giving us 45º to 90º cross winds on the tiny south launch.

For those of us at the end of the launch queue this meant a long wait and probably a late start.

After stressing out the past few days about having to launch late, I tried to zen approach (hey, I'm in Japan) and set up my gear up and away from everything on the east launch. Put on my flight suit, and lay on the ground watching the show.

A few bottom-enders like myself weren't as patient and tried launching below me —with downhill winds and into rotor. One guy got let the glider overfly him into bushes (duh, downhill wind) but managed to squeak off on a second try during a lull in the over-the-back winds.

That got everyone really excited until Aleksej launched into rotor, lost the right 1/3rd of his wing, turned and landed into bushes below the lower launch—pretty much where Semih landed in a tree a few days ago.

Zen-Jeff watched all this with detached bemusement and then headed to the south launch for his 85th place slot.

I launched well, surprising myself a bit (really cross winds forced everyone to pretty much launch toward the hill and then make a quick 180º turn), got a nice bump of lift, and cruised out to a point that I hoped had lift.

But when I took another look, the gliders there were all sinking. A quick scan spotted a Boom5 climbing to the south (upwind for me), so I turned, pushed into the wind and sunk like crazy.

When I arrived under the Boom5, the lift was gone. Desperate, I looked back at the 3 or 4 gliders that had launched after me, hoping one had found lift.

The poor slobs had followed me and we all went down.

I didn't even make the LZ and had to hook a nasty wing-over cross-wind landing in a rice paddy (wet! soft!) to avoid powerlines.

In total, I think my flight was 90 seconds.

This was, finally, my worst fear: bombing out before the start in a competition. I hadn't even turned a single circle!

Of course, once it happens, you realize it isn't the worst thing—that would be someone getting hurt. But I was definitely an unhappy-not-so-Zen-Jeff as I trudged through the rice fields to HQ.

Back at HQ, my shame faded pretty quickly when I saw many far better pilots on the ground. In the end only about 40 gliders even made the start cylinder. More than 80 of us took sledders (or extended sledders for the lucky ones).

As I write this, there are pilots still in the air on the way to goal. As many as 10 may make it. As the Aussies might say: "Good on them", but in the final analysis I think the day will turn out to have depended very much on launch order. The early pilots got to base before the lift shut off.

That said, the day was not a total loss. After stewing a bit, I hopped back in a van with about 7 other pilots. Free of our competition obligations we went to the west facing launch where the wind was blowing straight up hill.

We launched into strong winds but strong lift. Just about 5 minutes later I was cruising at base (around 1500m msl) enjoying the now blue skies dotted with puffy clouds.

Iberaki 2007 Photo Album
Results and Official Photos

With the task canceled, a group of us (Alejandro, Marcos, Cecilio, Aleksej, Nunu, and Jordi) took a car to a bus to a train to the city of Mito.

Mito is the largest city in the area and has a well known park with a large lake, Shinto temples, gardens, and a plum orchard.

Shortly after we arrived in Mito, it started raining so we spent most of the afternoon walking around the park in the rain. I had a rain shell, and the rest of the crew bought umbrellas.

The best part of the park, in my opinion, was the bamboo forest. It was straight out of the fighting scene in Crouching Tiger (or House of Flying Daggers, or pretty much any Chinese movie since Crouching Tiger :-). I'd never seen bamboo as tall (at least 50 ft).

After leaving the park and walking through the city, we saw a grove almost as big growing along side a parking lot. The stuff grows well here.

In the evening, Gradient and MacPara hosted a party at the main hotel. Free food, good sake, and this time, come on guess... Come on! Yup, Karaoke.

People were a bit shy so a Russian pilot (I forget his name) grabbed the microphone and proceeded to sing a series of Russian songs. Unfortunately, the machine didn't have any Russian songs so he was singing without music and without the aid of the voice-filters.

It was awful enough to get encourage the rest of the field, and after pulling the plug a few times (literally unplugging the machine), Xavier offered a stirring rendition of 'Anarchy in the UK'. He improvised a bit, liberally throwing in "FUCK OFF PILOTS" and "TASK CANCELED"

This was followed by a stirring rendition of La Bamba from Cecilio, Semih, Alejandro and Nikolay.

But the best song of the evening (and I use “best&rdquo very liberally) was “My Way” by Xavier and Gin.

Here is my brief review: If Gin's gliders flew as well as he sings, we'd all be dead!

Iberaki 2007 Photo Album
Results and Official Photos

I think from now on I may limited my competitions to Valle de Bravo. In the 3 years I've flown comps there I think there have been two canceled tasks...

With thunderstorms predicted, went to launch for an early and short task.

Unfortunately it was, as they say in the sport, “Blowing Stink”. At first this seemed like a “Good Thing” as it meant we'd get off launch quickly (no launching in zero-to-rotor like Day 3). But in the end it meant another canceled task.

I suited up early and got out on launch thinking I might sneak ahead of my launch order and get off the hill before the winds got any stronger. But as I stood an launch waiting for a slot, I saw about 10 competition gliders—the fastest paragliders they make—completely stuck about 100ft up and 100ft out from launch. Zero ground speed.

That meant that my glider was likely to fly backward. I pulled out of line and waited.

A few minutes later, people were doing better (i.e. “moving forward”). I stepped back in line, with one foot looped through the speed bar, ready to engage immediately on launch—which, btw, looked to be the simple process of tapping the A-risers and getting plucked about 20ft off the ground.

Brett Zaeglein, wiser and more experienced, was just chilling watching the zoo, glider and gear safely tucked away.

A few minutes later, before my slot, the day was canceled for strong winds on launch.

Iberaki 2007 Photo Album
Results and Official Photos

It sounded so good this morning. A high-pressure overhead, squeezed between two low-pressure zones. High cloud base predicted. 100km task called.

But within minutes of announcing the task things started looking bad. The wind was blowing down launch—in all three launch directions, if you can believe it.

The best we got was about 90º-cross winds. Basically, the prevailings around launch time were west (or felt that way on launch) and we were launching in rotor.

I saw some amazing launches as pilots wrenched their competition wings into the air, correcting 90º twists and punched out into sink that could only be created by rotor.

But once they got a bit away from the hill, they were able to climb, and so launching continued.

One pilot, Semih Sayir had bad luck and got smacked down just 100ft or so after launching. He crashed softly into some low trees, but it wasn't reassuring.

Things kept looking worse and worse and I had a low launch order (86th!) and was getting worried that I'd miss the start. And I was right.

By the time I got off the hill, about half the field was at base, and the rest where struggling low, below ridge height, in blown-out lee-side crap. I spent 20 minutes or so zipping around like a pilot-with-his-head-cut-off trying to find something, anything, better than the light and completely blown apart crud I was in.

I kept thinking that I should just stay put, work the garbage I had, and eventually get above ridge height. But I didn't.

At the start-time I was desperately low ridge-soaring in the lee with about 20 gliders, including Brett Zaeglein.

I'm actually pretty comfortable scratching up points and just hung in there, going up a bit, down a bit, but gaining a tiny amount, just waiting for the sky to open up a bit and some real lift to come together.

After maybe 10 minutes of working a tiny space with all those other gliders (I arrived there with maybe 2 gliders, but now there were 20 or so), I fell off to the south a bit and went hunting for real lift.

It looked to me like Brett was getting flushed, and the other folks weren't doing well either. The folks who had launched first were still high and well on their way to the 2nd turn-point. So I thought, what the heck, I'll look for something real and either get it or dirt with the crowd on the point.

Ali Ashari, pilot, instructor, and Gin importer from Iran, slid out with me and we lucked into the best formed thermal of the day. It took a while, but we worked it up over the launch ridge, out of the lee, through the inversion, and to base at around 1300m msl.

I was 25 minutes late to the start, but it was a further lesson in tenacity. The flying earlier was awful, probably the least fun I've had in a competition, but I stuck it out and was high.

I pointed my wing toward the start cylinder, and then the first turn-point (the center of the start cylinder).

By now the winds had shifted and were strong from the south east—I was beating a headwind all the way to turn-point 1 and made it in lower than I hoped for. I tagged it and raced back to the launch ridge where I spotted Anders Baerheim and Eddie (sorry, don't know his last name!) ridge-soaring a point and thought, why not, I did it once, I can do it again.

Not this time. I was a bit higher than Anders and Eddie so I cruised in over them a bit farther back on the ridge. But the winds were much stronger and I flew too far downwind. When I turned back to push out past the point I was pegged. In fact, I was going backward. I pushed full speed and was still stuck.

With only two choices, trees or turning further downwind, I crabbed off north losing altitude and spotting rice fields to land in.

Just ahead there was a nice soft looking field with a glider in it and I opted to land with company.

A few minutes after I landed, Eddie and Anders also left the point, Eddie drifting downwind north past me, and Anders landing in the same field.

I wasn't particularly happy. The early launchers were on the way to turnpoint 3, from there is was all downwind and mostly on flats. But I was happy that I fought it out and at least made one turn-point.

Ali, by the way, had picked a different line to turn-point 1 and found a thermal over the point. With the strong southeast winds he drifted the thermal all the way to turn-point 2.

But it was all for naught—as Anders, Emi (the other pilot in the field) and I folded our wings, the reports started coming in on the radio from the lead pilots: "Level 3 at turn-point 3" meaning that the conditions were unsafe for continued flying and the organizers cancelled the task.

Which means that after 3 days we still have only 1 valid task, and I'm still in 86th place!

Results here:
2007 PWC Ibaraki, Japan, Task 1 results