The 2010 Canoa Open
It is good that we have two practice days here as the new pilots
need to get accustomed to the site. Dustin is already aware of just how to fly
here but Jeff Shapiro and Kraig Coomber and others (like me) need a refresher
course in flying at the beach, especially this particular site.
Around 1 PM we went to the launch (there are two) nearest to Canoa, maybe a few
hundred yards outside of town to the south up a dirt road. The launch is a
little less than 300' above the beach/town area. There is a new small hotel
(three stories) being built just behind the launch.
The launch is a rounded slope behind a steep face which drops down to the road
into town. Plenty of room for all of us to set up. Some of the pilots went to
the other higher launch about five kilometers south of town.
We will be racing on the hills that face the ocean. The hills are quite steep on
the ocean side no doubt due to sloughing. The hill heights range from
about 300' to maybe 1000'. They are quite a ways back from the ocean itself,
varying between maybe a quarter kilometer in most places to almost a kilometer
twelve kilometers south of Canoa at the southern turnpoint.
The area between the hills and the water is dead flat with a wide sandy beach
area right next to the water and the rest of the area in grass or scrub. There
is plenty of room to land in the unlikely case that that becomes an issue.
The race course is from Canoa south almost to San Vincente. There are three gaps
in the hills along the course line, the longest about a kilometer. You lose
maybe up to 300' crossing the longest gap, and 100' on the shortest.
The hills sometimes have cliff faces although often they are rounded and covered
in brush and trees. It is the near the end of the dry season now and everything
looks brown and dead. There is a lot of variation in the height of the hills as
you run the course, and one set of high tension lines that you've got to be sure
to be above.
There is a big gap (maybe two kilometers) to the north of our low launch on the
south side of Canoa for the river and delta area that make up Canoa itself.
There are cliffs to the north and I had no problem getting to them from about
500' at launch. Unlike our course area, there is little to no beach area below
the cliffs to the north of Canoa, just pounding surf.
The lift was good there and it was easy just to let the bar out and continually
climb to 1,450' as I flew along the cliff line to nine kilometers north, getting
up into the cu's forming just in front of the cliffs. This reminded me of flying
at Redhead in Australia.
The Jeff's, Dustin and Kraig were flying very fast today. There may have been
others going as fast but those were the ones that I was trying to keep up with,
not successfully. Tomorrow, lead (I didn't bring mine), VG adjustment, hang
height adjustment, and maybe a few other things. I'm flying with just my bicycle
helmet, so no head pulley. We have one more practice day and then it begins for
real. But first, social responsibility at the school, and then flying.
http://OzReport.com/1256874027
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