Day 4 Task 4 : 99 km

At 4am the windows started shaking and it sounded like elephants were running over the roof ... a storm was directly over Roldanillo.
I have to admit that at that moment the thought went through my mind of how nice a rest day would be.
So when I woke up again at 6am to see a completely sunny sky it was time for plan B = get up, get ready & go to work! It's a shitty job but some one has to do it! ;-)

All the forecasts were predicting overdevelopment in the early afternoon so we planned a provisional, short, closed-circuit task in the valley in front of town. But as we drove up the mountain the sky was clearer than expected, base higher than expected and the early morning storms to the west weren't as big as expected. So filled with confidence for a better day than expected the task grew and grew to a massive 151km ;-) ! Super Rolda strikes again!

Classic Rolda Skies, again :)

Then some realism came into force; today was the worst forecast we have for the rest of this week! So, after some juggling with tp's and cylinder radius' we managed to just keep it below 100km and hopefully achieveable for a good % of pilots. Though the possibility of a stopped-task was still pretty high.
Not to miss an opportunity for a joke, I wrote up the task board with the full task distance, leaving out the cylinders. The shocked / surprised faces as they programmed GPS's was enough to make me smile for a long time :)

Task 4 - after the joke! ;-)

Start was a 7km radius around La Victoria to send pilots early into the valley and away from the greatest storm risk, then 10km radius around Bugalagrande, back North to Obando for a 10km radius on Zaragosa and gol south of Zarzal.

The start was very slow, weak and smooth with low base due to the early morning rainfall. The first 40km ish took close to 2 hours even for some of the pilots early in goal. On the track back north, the sky improved and pilots found climbs up to 6m/s close to the last tp. The final glide for some began 25km out at Obando, some missed, most made goal. The more cautious took 2 or 3 climbs to make sure to cross the line. The Colombian's Julian Andres & Steban Novoa seemed to glide faster than we could drive down the highway on the final stages and arrived well ahead of the pack into gol - again!! ;-)
30 happy pilots made goal with a few just short in the final kilometers.

Local hereos, Super Speedy Steban y Julian

Task 4 results:
1. Steban Novoa COL (R11)
2. Julian Andres Carreño COL (R10)
3. Matt Senior NZL (R11)

Mathieu 4th overall - doing good for the 'Old Guys' !  ;-)

Overall after 4 tasks:
1. Julian Andres Carreño COL (R10)
2. Steban Novoa COL (R11)
3. Matt Senior NZL (R11)

My Police escort before the dramas
a rifle & an ice-cream are essential equipment here!

I had plenty of excitement to keep me busy on the take off while the last pilots were getting ready to launch. Out of the north through a small col & just 100m above hill height came a roar of engines and a small plane dived at us, waggled his wings and made some aerobatics in front and below take-off.

Not cool guys!
An 'authorized' filming fly-past today :(

*!@!+*$!!!****!! The Military Police next to me were as shocked as I was and radios started squarking all over as questions were asked of the relevant authorites. As we gradually recovered, to our horror the plane crossed the valley and flew between and around the gaggles in the flats. Pilots were squarking, we were making a war dance and the Police controller was trying to pin down the appropriate idiot who authorised the flight.

As the plane appeared to fly of east we relaxed a little and started to get the last pilots ready to take off, when again it appeared. This time the reaction on take-off was nearly atomic ... I was swearing in all the 'Espanglish' words I know, the police were jumping up and down, the local boys throwing rocks at the plane, radios and phones all going at once ... I tried to convince the guys with guns to shoot the ****** down, but apparently that isn't really allowed here any more!

WTF!!
The hands say it all ... the 2nd fly-past

Finally, we were told by the air-control-tower that we should not worry at all, the pilot was a professional, filming the competition and have been authorised to fly close-terrain in the area ... WTF!!!
Long and complicated questions are being asked tonight!
More fotos ...

AirProx
Foto: Alejandro Villa

... & they look so relaxed inside ... F!@!!*^

Foto: Linda Bildt Andersson