Rain, Overcast

The weather has not been cooperating so far. We have not flown at all during the Jannen Kisat competition and the low that is giving us the bad weather does not look like it is moving very quickly. The contest may be completely weathered out.

First Cross Country

Yesterday I flew my first cross-country flight here in Finland. The cloudbase was low at the start of the day but there were cloudstreets and some strong lift. I first headed east into wind about 60km and then came back to the airport and went 40km downwind to the west. On the way back the clouds started over developing and I had to land off field. It was a nice big field and there were no problems with landing. The farmer was worried about his crop being damaged so we had to carry the glider out piece by piece. Other than getting a bit tired it went okay. Today we cleaned the dirt off the wheel and wingtips. I also entered in a small contest that is being run out of Rayskala called Jannen Kisat. The first day is today but it was called off due to weather. Tomorrow looks like thunderstorms but by Monday it should improve. Friday flight

Arrival in Finland

We arrived Saturday in Finland and Timo, the fellow we are renting our glider from picked us up at the airport. On Sunday we went shopping for some food and had a quick look at the glider. Monday we started changing over the instruments. The weather was quite good and I got in a short flight at the end of the day. I had one thermal peaking at 9 knots. The PZL vario that came with the glider worked fine but the Sage did not. We installed a new capacity bottle for the Sage today and did some work on the battery circuit. Hopefully everything should be working by the time the weather picks up again.

Leaving to Finland

My dad and I are leaving to Finland tomorrow, Friday June 5th. We are going early to prepare the glider and so I can get some practice in the area. We have room, car and glider hired already. To keep things familiar we are bringing some instruments from my dad's glider including his LX5000 flight computer and Sage vario. We are being careful not to go over baggage maximums and carry-on allowances while packing the instruments. We arrive in Helsinki at 12:25 Saturday. I will write another entry when we get settled in Finland and expect this blog to be updated frequently during the next month.

Flying in South Carolina

I am now down in South Carolina crewing for my father at the Region 5 North contest in Perry. He offered me to fly the practice days, then he will fly the contest. On Friday it was blue but we had good lift to 5000ft and once got to 6000ft. I flew 306km Friday flight. Saturday was not as good. It was blue with high cirrus moving in. I didn't get much more than 4000ft for most of the day. I stayed much closer to the airport and did 192km Saturday flight.