I'm tweeting here in Forbes because I'm not flying here in Forbes
(after flying the first day and a few practice days). I have a fully torn
Supraspinatus tendon (rotator cuff) and that prevents me from flying with more
than one arm.

I tore the tendon when I tripped running out a landing back at the end of
September at the Santa Cruz Flats Race. I flew for a couple of days after that
without problem, but now my right shoulder is no longer operational. I had
thought (quite incorrectly) that I would be able to continue with my prior plans
of flying in the pre-Worlds and get an operation at a later point, but this is
not the case.

My plan is to head back to the US and have an orthopedic surgeon sew up my
tendon and then spend six months in rehabilitation.

I flew the Moyes Malibu a couple of times before the competition, and was able
to do so with one arm. The problem was landing with one arm. I could do it but
it wasn't easy. I just couldn't get my mind to work the non working arm so
flaring was almost non existent.

I flew the Airborne REV 13.5 on the first day of the competition. It was easy to
fly (it had been tuned to be very easy, but not the best in glide) and I was
getting pretty good as a one armed pilot. The trouble came again with the
landing.

The first leg of the task was to the south, but we had a strong 10 knot west
wind to fight going south and a blue sky with cu-nimbs to our north. We had to
continually fight upwind to have any chance of getting to the turnpoint. The
lift was mostly weak and broken, which made it all the more painful.

There was a not so high north south ridge upwind of the turnpoint at 20 km. We
fought to get over on the windward side of it but that did no good as there was
no lift on that side. Also as it turned out there was no wind. When I came into
land hoping for wind to help with the landing, I found calm conditions. It was
not a pretty landing, breaking the base tube as I landed flat on the wheels. I
should have just come in and landed on the
wheels.

So not being able to land safely I decided that I was nuts to continue competing
(and nuts to even think that I should have come here and tried to begin with).

I'm not in the best of spirits at the moment, as you can imagine.

The Airborne REV was great to fly and Scott and Rohan are doing well on them,
occupying first and second place after the first two days of a ten day
competition. Phil Shroeder flew mine on the second day and found the handling
very nice. But he, like me, feels that the VG line is still a bit too hard to
pull. I had a hard time because I couldn't pull it with my right arm/shoulder. I
was yanking it with my left arm.

The glider flew perfectly straight in glide and was quite a bit faster when the
VG was pulled on with the base bar coming back for light bar pressures.

What's next? We'll see.