Bassano

Goodbye Switzerland hello much more affordable Italy.
Drove with Trent and Roberto over the Nurfenen pass and across northern Italy to Swiss Nic'c other house near Bassano. Absolutely beautiful spot. Huge clubhouse and restaurant in the landing area. This vid gives an idea of the convenience of the ramp launch and the beautiful flying. Naturally a restaurant at launch.

Now off to Cucco for the main event.

Swiss Open - last day

Agood last day back on my RS3.5 and in my own harness.

http://www.shv-fsvl.ch/sport/resultate/delta/

No flying - a day walking to the Aletsch glacier

Possibly could have flown but after it was cancelled a crowd of pilots walked to, under and over the Aletsch glacier we had flown over yesterday.

 Amazing how blue the ice was.

 The edge of the glacier was covered in grit and pebbles making walking on the ice not too bad.

 A 1km tunnel through the mountain on the track to the glacier.

 Contented.

Contented

Fiesch

Drove Zac, Shapiro and Dustin down to Fiesch in Nic's Merc.

 On the car train. Odd experience going on a train in the car under the Alps.

Horns as we take off.

Rough air but wow.

A frame grab from Trent's Go Pro. as we were about half way throught the task. Hard to focus on racing with scenery like this.

We are carrying trackers that give live positions every 10 seconds.

http://livexc.dhv1.de/tasks/42

I have been flying Swiss Nic's T2C and had to use his harness. Packed it wrong and could not zip it up in task 1. Great glider. Made goal yesterday, then drove to Zurich to pick up Nic and Trent. Drove back today and Trent and I made goal together.

Bar, restaurant, go carts, massages at goal. 

Wrong side of the Alps

Everyone must fly Interlaken before they shuffle off. I had a Thai meal last night with Bernie and got a lift up with him today. He runs this outfit with another Aussie. Starting at 7am they did around 10 tandens. They have a great patter on the way up and very satisfied customers.

http://www.hangglidinginterlaken.com/

 Beautiful summer weather but I was on the wrong side of the Alps today. A Swiss piot flew over from Fiesch right past the Jungfrau and landed in Interlaken. I had a fly on Nic's WW T2C, nice glider. Hopefully my glider gets here tomorrow.
Going down to the airport early to pick up Shapiro and Zippy.

Interlaken

Swiss Nic met me at Zurich airport and we shot down for a beautiful fly at Interlaken
Glider still in Frankfurt so I floated around on a Falcon.

The Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau off in the background.

Europe 2011 - Getting there

Here we go again. Packing a couple of weeks ago. Jocks, socks, electronics and somewhere in there is a hang glider.

Off to the Swiss Open in Fiesch and then on to the Worlds in Monte Cucco, Italy.

Unfortunately some lazy bastard let the glider sit in Sydney for a week and I will end up beating it to Zurich.

Right now I'm sitting in Singers at midnight waiting on a 1:30 am flight. Great Airport but Australia really is a long way from anywhere. Looking forward to meeting up with Swiss Nic in the morning, 14 hours from now, and hopefully flying Interlaken Monday.