This years Norway Open, the 9th. turned in to be the best since the start 10 years ago. The competitors list had names from 7 different countries and we were 25 pilots in total.
All pilots did a super job helping us to gain 16 rounds over two days. Friday was cancelled due to lack of wind but the forecast indicated around 8m/s from northwest the following days so we were not worried. Well, the forecast was wrong, in the end of the day it was around 15 m/s! 10 rounds was flown and hill record was achieved by Helge and Espen with 36,7 seconds.
To have a competition like this once in a while makes all the effort put in worth it. I have to thank all pilots for showing up and helping us with this event.
Saturday started with 9-10 m/s wind and when we finished it was around 14 m/s. Our timing gear/weather station did a good job and we will present all the weather data soon. Sure we have some variations but if you look at it round for round it may start low and go up but it also go down again in the same round.
It was quite clear even before the competition that it would not be easy to brake into the top 10 in this contest. Everybody was fighting very hard and trying their best. We had two crashes due to pilot mistakes and luckily nobody got hurt. But this was a reminder to us all that it can be a bit dangerous. So the layout of a comp like this must be thought about where to have the depot and make sure there is no people near to the course. Even you do all this something bad can happen but at least you can say that you tried to make it better. Safety lines does not really prevent incidents like this.
On Sunday the wind dropped and we had between 4 and 6 m/s wind. To fly in this type of conditions was a challenge and many pilots mastered this better than others. I have not calculated the results only from Sunday but it would be interesting to see this list for sure.
The final results ended up like this:
1 Espen Torp 13663
2 Søren Krogh 13467
3 Joel West 13425
4 Helge Borchert 13391
5 Kaj Henning Nielsen 13323
6 Knud Hebsgaard 13314
7 Jesper Christensen 12958
8 Arild Møllerhaug 12847
9 Bjørn Tore Hagen 12815
10 Dag Skoglund 12724
11 Jørgen Larsen 12712
12 Andre Austen 12679
13 Peter Gunning 12619
14 Olav Kalhovd 12475
15 Stefan Bertschi 12475
16 Rolf Børge Rettedal 12225
17 Erik Bjørnstad 12085
18 Kjell Sture Johansen 11816
19 Jan Grannes 11670
20 Geir Njaa 11517
21 Erik Andersen 11372
22 Marius Leirdal 10740
23 Tor Bruun 10656
24 Ingio Herrera 10518
25 Kjetil Stensen 5147
I would like to talk a little about the slope we flew on, "Hodne". Hodne is the name of the farmer and is also the name of the place. We are really glad we have a good relationship with them. From the sea to the top of the stone wall it is approx. 24 meters high. We have used the slope since the seventies. From my point of view few other slopes produces this kind of stable and equal conditions. The other thing is the possibility to have a safe depot and a rotating shift of the pilots when organising the starts. We guide the pilots on the backside out to the middle and let one and one pilot come forward when their turn is up. When finished the pilot swiftly moves over to the landing area and next pilot can be ready within seconds. We always have base A to the right side so the 30 second window will make sure the pilot that flew is well out of the way when the next pilot starts.
Take a closer look at the pictures and hopefully this show what I am talking about. The CD and the timing gear is placed 10-15 meter behind the wall for safety reasons.
Next year we will try to have ready our system for counting laps (beeps) and a system for showing the time after each flight. I think this is a must.
Hodne is a perfect place to have a F3F contest!
I would also like to mention the weather station did the job this time also. As seen on the pictures we placed it a few meters behind the wall and it does not show give us the data 100% but more than good enough for indication of the conditions.
The weather data will soon be punched......
Espen
Fantastic!!!!
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