Well, summer actually. This has been an interesting spring. In April I went to the World Cup in Castelo, Espirito Santo in Brasil. The terrain we fly over here is from a different world. It’s beautiful and exotic. Along with 35 degrees C on takeoff and warm enough to wear shorts at cloud base, it’s really comfortable to fly here. The terrain, local winds and thermal production along with some interesting enter-exit-enter cylinders made for some tactical flying and decision making. We got a booming 7 tasks out of 7 possible!  Here is one of the videos from Philippe Broers at the World Cup organisation. I made 10th overall which I’m very happy with. It’s the best international result so far. Congrats to Felix Rodriguez Fernandez for winning the comp!
Fast forward to May 8th. There is a famous story in Norway from 1993 title “Super Saturday” when the Norwegian XC record was broken several times. May 8th was Super Sunday. We were a group of pilots who declared Lillehammer from Hvittingfoss, a distance of 176,5 km. That would be a new Nordic record. People were laughing at takeoff because being able to fly that distance without an engine and only with cloth and lines seemed so unlikely to them. But after 7 hours in the air we made it! It was absolutely fantastic to fly over snow covered Norwegian mountains, green spring valleys and long lakes for 7 hours. I found the last thermal and climbed to 2000 meters at the declared goal. Then I went on glide to Rena and landed at 188,5 km open distance, which is my personal best. This is also a new site record for Hvittingfoss. I’m happy to share this Nordic record with my friends Gunnar (who had the idea), Terje, Jan, Tor Erik and Eirik. The record received lots of media attention, for example in here.
4-6 June we had the first Norwegian National round in Lofthus, south of Bergen. I won all 3 tasks. Never happened before. Lots of flying hours, focus and concentration paid off. I am very happy about my result! Coming up this weekend is the 2nd round in Hjartal , Telemark. Let’s see how that one goes.