Austrian Arena

End of Summer news from the Austrian Arena 2005
Hi Guys, sorry about the lack of contact yet again back been real busy and not in front of my laptop enough to let you everyone know what’s been happening.

Well where did we leave off, early July saw two back to back comps in Piedrahita. Of the fourteen possible we tasked 8, 4 in the Dutch Open and 4 in the Brits. It gave me a chance to road test the Airwave Magic FR2 like for like against the other comp weapons out there. And I gotta say that I was impressed. It has a claimed top glide ratio of 11.3:1 and a top speed of 65kmh.
Pretty good performance for a plastic bag & strings!!

After the 4 tasks in the Dutch the FR2 helped me finish 3rd overall. Just behind polish pilot Marcin Tobewski and Adrian Thomas, also on an FR2. The came the 2nd leg of the British Open, it was hotly contested by the usual suspects. Most having made goal each day the last task shook everything up a little. Russell Ogden showed true form(Ozone Proto) to change gears and gaggles several times to cruise into goal on a tricky day. My most vivid memory was climing out of McDonalds car park in Avila with Bob Drury, Neil Roberts & Steve Etherington less than 100m over the tarmac. However that low save didn’t save the day. 40km later on saw all of us go down, only to see the 2nd gaggle come over head 40mins later under a better sky to make goal. DAMN!!!
Russell won the British Open again, extending his lead on all of us, we were all waiting to see what would happen in more fickle UK conditions in August.

After some mixed summer weather in the Alps it was time for the British Team to head off to Col de Bleyne for the Bleriot Cup. This comp has run for the last 26 years. This is a true team event, with team work imperative to success. The first 2days we were in St Andre for 58km and 75km tasks. An example of team work was that on the first day I waited for our 2nd pilot Craig Morgan just before the goal cylinder so we could cross together, therefore gaining max. points. We had enough time as the closest French pilot was one hour behind us!!
That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the week. Never have the French been beaten so convincingly on home territory.
After 5 tasks the final score was Great Britain 35000 : France 25000

On the local news front Our Team the Golden Eagles have finished 2nd in the Austrian XC League. One of the hardest and most contested leagues in the world. Congratulations to Thomas Walder, Stefan Steglair(ex-World Champion) & Bene Katzer. Nice one guys!!!

I’m also very happy to be able to say that after a lot of hard competition in the Nationals this year I found myself in 4th place overall. Therefore gaining a place on the British Paragliding Team and look set to go to Morzine in France next year for the Eurpoean Championships.
Should be great experience to go up against some of the best pilots in the World.
I’m very proud to be representing Britain and of course the Zillertal!!

So that’s pretty much it till next year as at the end of September we’re off on our jollys.
Hope you’ve had a great & safe season wherever you’ve been.
Plus we really hope to see you next year for some great flights around our area here.

Fly High, Fly Far and Stay Safe

Kelly, Alex & George

www.austrianarena.com

Spring news from the Austrian Arena
Hello again guys!! Sorry for the long lay off but been way too busy to put anything down on my laptop the last months. The office work also suffered so sorry if you were waiting a few days for a reply to anything.

Still no news is good news as they say…

This season, has up to now, been the most amazing and record breaking season I’ve ever seen in the Alps to date. I’ve never seen so many 100km days in a short time and even some 200+km days came around and showed us that you should never ever write off a day in Spring. Tommy Walder(as seen in Skywings), our local hero, nearly closed two 200km triangles but overdevelopment and being a little too slow on the other day saw him have to cut it short. This put him on the top of the Austrian XC league until last week Heimhofer Klaus flew three 200km+ FAI triangles on consecutive days!!!

We were blessed with the weather for the week of the British Open and the race training the week before. The race training week was everything I hoped it would be, BIG distances were cracked as I tried to cram in as many routes possible for the boys as I was scared that the weather would break. I must have done a good job of selling my soul as the weather just got better and better, then stayed that way for the Open too!! One task on the training week saw us complete a 102km cats cradle around the whole valley. No stone was left unturned. And on the last day after a 75km route I noticed a good street developing to the south and instead of racing to goal I changed the plan and after spinning up from low down we were all soon cruising at 3500m on our way to the border with Italy.

Check out the photo.

The whole of the spring has yielded so many good days I myself have flown in excess of 1300km, 30% more than the whole of last season and it’s not even mid June. Amazing…

So on to the British Open, well what can I say, it was very hotly contested with the same guys always finding themselves racing into goal in pretty much the same order. 6 tasks were flown over the 7days, ranging from 34km to 72km. The racing was some of the best I’ve ever had & was stoked to be flying a Boomerang 3, the last task flown 72km was completed by Russ in 1hr 40min, that is very, very fast.
Everyone was happy with the task setting and even on days where it looked to them that it was ‘mickey mouse’ we pulled out some fast down wind soaring tasks, the only grumbles I heard were about the into wind final glides which favoured the comp wings. Well what can I say except you can’t please everyone. However on the whole it was a comp without incident, only on the last day was the helicopter used to evacuate a pilot with a broken ankle from launch and was on the scene in under 8 minutes.
British team members Russell Ogden, Mark Watts & Adrian Thomas took podium places, followed by myself in 4th then the ‘PIMP master’ Neil Roberts in 5th . My heart goes out to new guy Jamie Messenger, UP Targa, he was fast, very fast but burnt out on the last two tasks and slipped from 1st place to 7th . This comp definitely required consistent racing. Congratulations also to Mike Cavanagh, Ozone Mantra, John Ellison & Nick Roberts, both on the Omega 6. For the serial class, nice one lads.

There was some pay back I suppose from all my weather brownie points being cashed at once, but it wasn’t a problem as after a couple of gloomy days I suggested that we go to Bassano for a few days. After the North Foehn died down at little we were reward with high bases and beautiful views over the WWI Memorial. Plus it was a good excuse for me to wind down after a very busy schedule, ummm pizza & pasta!!! A cracking alternative for bad weather in the Northern Alps.

Check out this picture at altitude looking towards the Dolomites.

Anyway hope you guys are having fun this season flying and hope to see you in the future in a beautiful part of the world wherever it maybe.

Fly High, Fly Far & Fly Safe

Kelly, Alex & George

Winter news from the Austrian arena
Hi Guys! Been very busy and a little lazy to write recently so I thought I’d let everyone know what was going on in one news letter…

February started with some of THE most insane conditions for winter I’ve ever seen, 6m/s thermals that didn’t stop until you were at 3200m. Small clouds showed the route to take to the mouth of the valley, testing the new Targa 2 I flew the Zillertal tour in just under 1.5hrs. Only climbing and ¾ speed glides, airspeed of around 58-59kmh. Very FAST! And extremely cold, at base my vario recorded a temp of -15deg, with windchill at 55kmh that worked out to be around -45deg. Hard to talk after landing with a frozen chin!! However some of the most amazing snow covered alpine views I’ve ever seen, amazing for so early in the year!! Click here to see picture…

After that week the weather crapped out for a while with it snowing ever 3-4days and staying a little cloudy, during the breaks in the weather a film crew were here shooting for a new action movie called ‘Last Holiday’.

This $80million picture features rap queen turned actress Queen Latifah & Gerard Deperdeau. The plot is about a girl who has been given 3 months to live so instead of becoming depressed she decides to learn to BASE jump! You get the idea… Was pretty interesting watching the helicopters fly around and film the skydiving scenes over town. I’m told it’s from the same director as ‘XXX’ and the ‘Bourne Identity’ so should be pretty good.

Anyway back to the flying… We had a group come and stay with us for the last two weeks of March, the weather was good with all pilots breaking their personal bests in height gain(3000m+) and some attempted their first real xc flights. Congratulations to Adrian Chalkley who after some gentle ‘encouragement’ followed me on a small 22km out and return, we only turned back because of the cold. Otherwise it was the first 100km day of the year. Nice one lads and hope to see you again next year for more of the same… March has always good potential as the valley floor is warm, the air cold and the valley winds light so ideal environment for lower airtimers to practice their skills.

Most pilots here have taken delivery of their new wings for the coming season now and I’d say that the Trango 2 from UP, Gradients Aspen and Gin Zoom race will be dominating the sky from the look of things. I’m still yet to test them but the T2 looks really good. Unfortunately it won’t pass DHV with the comp lines.

This brings us to this last week, it’s been a hazy week to say the least as Mayrhofen has just turned into a TOTAL party town with ‘Snow bombing’ bringing 1500 party mad boarders. I gotta say the event rocks and altho I don’t normally like dance music I have been spending far too much time than is good for me in the normally euro-cheesy disco. When not boozing the last 2 days I managed to fly a 73km and a 90km cats craddle around Tux and Zillertal valleys. Got a few days off as the foehn is here, so we can party hard without the voice saying ‘tomorrow is a 100k’er what are you doing, man?’ ; )

One last thing is that everything is sorted about the British Open coming to town in 2 months. The BEST time in the Alps for racing, hope the weather plays ball. At the moment there are very few places left on the XC courses, so if you haven’t booked and are keen try to let us know asap.

So thanks again for reading and we hope you are stoked with the coming season, bye for now and fly safe…

Kelly, Alex & George
www.austrianarena.com