Bassano Easter Weekend 2016

Over the Easter weekend I went with some friends, including one from Singapore, to Bassano del Grappa, one of my regular flying spots in Europe. Despite the disputable forecast (Föhn winds and cloud covered days) we had four wonderful days of flying and relaxing with dear friends. 

The Pi2 19 I thankfully received for testing from www.flugschule-hochries.de

A detailed review will follow once I did more flights with it.

The below shown UP CCC protoype will most likely be ready for PWC Superfinal 2017. It looks like an exciting wing.

My pictures below feature the following:

Wings: Advance Iota, Advance Pi2 19, UP CCC protoype
Pilots: Simone Müßle, Nora Martiny, Toh Hong Lian, Unknown

Bahau, Malaysia - Beautiful XC weekend

Bahau was for me the first site where I could fly in thermals after I achieved my license in 2011. It was for a long time the best site I knew in the vicinity of Singapore. And for 5 years I had a lot of great experiences there and made good friends that will probably stay for a lifetime. I always knew this site had potential for more. For more than just flying above the ridge and soaring it back and forth. The only thing that kept us for many years from leaving the ridge, was the fact, that landing possibilities are rare in this forested and palm plantation covered area. I was not flying the site for a year or so, since my travels brought me to other places and I also was told that with the palm trees growing quickly, the previously already rare bomb-out options, were all gone. 

On the weekend of 12 and 13th of March Bahau finally had the chance to prove what it's offering: 

For equatorial regions quite rare, the cloud base was at almost 2000m. With pretty strong climbs which are also not often to be found in this area thanks to the humid air, it soon went up and the land showed us the path. Dried out or half flooded paddy fields along with foot ball fields, which I learned to love so much in my last years in Asia, where marking the way along the road and I followed it to a nice out and return of 20km. One of my dear friends, JJ, even made it to a 23km straight line. It might sound little, but for us this was the first big step towards amazing future cross country flights and the furthest somebody probably ever got from this take-off. We started to make big plans: a triangle in the roads showed us the option of a 40-50km FAI triangle. Until these plans are realized, this last weekend will stay in our minds as the best weekend in Bahau. 

A short site description that I made for Paragliders Association (Singapore) some time can be found here: http://paragliders.sg/index.php/whereto/wwwfly/bahau

Flights on Leonardo on this site are here: http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/tracks/world/alltimes/brand:all,cat:0,class:all,xctype:all,club:all,pilot:all,takeoff:32334

Flights on XContest are here: http://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights-search/?filter[point]=102.37253%202.82812&list[sort]=pts&list[dir]=down

I'm looking forward to seeing further developments and to know the site being alive.

Khao Sadao, Thailand - Short Trip

Pilots: Nora Martiny, Patrick Lemaire, Chloe Kesmarky, Camille Grand, Atle Zeiner
Wings: U-turn Infinity 4, U-turn Blacklight, Ozone Mantra M6, Gin Carrera+