"The First Stage of the Brazilian Nationals was once again
contested in January in Sapiranga-RS, south of Brazil. Although the weather is
supposed to be good this time of year, for the last three years the pilots had to
endure tough flying conditions due to the sudden entrance of cold fronts. This
year was no different.
The dry conditions were perfect until right before the comps. Once the competition started, a cold front blew through from Uruguay
and the heavy rains associated with it dampened the ground and, after the
weather cleared, made for some hard tasks to complete. We were flying most of
the time between 1200 and 3000 ft, which posed very tricky decisions.
You were mostly allowed one mistake, this would put you on the 1200ft mark then
you'd have a chance to come back, if you didn't take it or didn't find it, you
were grounded within two minutes.
But, I guess that's no good excuse for a bad performance
when you saw the top pilots like Andre Wolf, performing much better than the
pack. With only three valid tasks, Andre won all of them, adding a touch of
class by being the only pilot at goal on the first and second days. (No one made
it on the last one.)
I made a video on the Go Pro and I hope its length (nine minutes)
won't detract people from watching it, because some images were really nice. I
encourage everyone to watch it in HD definition, although it takes a while to
load.
