Mistral Soaring

Yeasterday was the second contest of the regional winter league. 13 Pilots met near Marseille. Weather forecast was pretty good with 40 km/h of wind, sun, and about 13°. Unfortunately, the wind speed was higher when we arrived on the slope, and increased until miday to reach 30m/s dusts.

We had the time to complete 2 rounds, doing 2 runs in the same flight. Best time went to Allan Cohen in 35s with his Alliaj HM. Condition were very turbulent and everybody had to fight with the wind.

Then we decided to drive downhill to discover a rügen like slope along a canal. Wind was lower, but still turbulent. Few pilots try this liliputian slope and try to find the right trajectory, stay in the air, and accelerate. That was a bit challenging !

We also saw the new prodij HM from Aeromod in Action. Alexis did the 2 rounds with it, agains F3F ships and managed to do very close times around 39 to 40s. The Prodij HM is pretty impressive, looking exactly like his big brother the Alliaj HM. Amazing energy retention, carrying ballast like nobody else !!! We admired a kit that Alexis had with him. The moulding quality is superb, and has improved. Definitively a nice 60 inches sailplane.

A 5/6 people team from the TV, coming from Paris, spent the day with us, filming the flights, interviewing the national F3F team members. They are preparing a documentary about the mistral wind, and some other famous wind in the world. This serie of ducomentary will be broadcast in 2013 on Ushuaïa TV.

Here are few pictures taken yeasterday.