Last week-end was the F3F contest of le Col du Glandon. For people who don't know, this is the place were the french F3F was born in 1994. The particularity of these slopes is that there are at 2000m and are facing 2 valleys. They provide smooth and homogeneous flying conditions thanks to the breeze. The down side is that they are capricious and the probability to fly is lower than elsewhere because of the specificity of the moutain climat. This week-end the weather forecast was very bad anouncing rain and storm. However, the different forecasts were predicting a possible weather window in the middle of the day for both Saturday and Sunday, therefore we couldn't cancel the competition without trying.
Saturday, we arrived at the slope around 12am and installed the equipement. We started to fly in a light breeze between 3 and 5 m/s, creating a light lift. We managed 4 rounds before the wind die. We waited a bit, doing some free flying, before to go down.
Sunday the appointment was 1 hour earlier. Despite it rained all night, the sky cleared a little when we reached the car park, but no or very little air, but in the wrong direction. Later, we felt some air coming from the valley, on the south slope, so moved to the other car park, and walk to the slope. The time to install the bases and timing system, the breeze start to blow around 5 to 7 m/s. We knew that the flying window would be short, so we started rounds quickly, and flew 4 new rounds. Then, we had some rain drops, but the sky was becoming dark and we could see the low clouds trying to go over the summits in front of us. We decided to stop there with 8 rounds in the pocket which is not that bad for such crappy weather. On the ranking side, Matthieu Mervelet, after a shy start on saturday, used the turbo to win the competition. I finished second very close to him, and Yves Tirand third, even closer to me. Thomas who was leading on saturday took 4th place followed by Joël Marin in 5th position.
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