The final day of the comp and the weather was looking epic: sunny, light winds, and cloudbase predicted around 10,000'. So the task committee came up with an ambitious route: a 121 km triangle from the Butte, to Farmer in the SE, North to Leahy, and back west to goal in the Chelan Falls Park LZ.

Sunny and light winds at the beginning of the day, with the winds predicted to strengthen quite a bit as the afternoon went on (to 15-20 mph on the ground). Task today was race to Okanagan (about 70 km) with no turnpoints in between. When we heard the task there was lots of discussion amongst pilots about which route to take: you could stay on the Chelan side of the river (the mountainous side) until closer to goal, or you could cross over to the Flats right away and fly on that side (the east side) all the way north.

Forecast for today was sunny and light winds from the south. But no cu's, and some high cirrus came though occasionally. A 62.2 km task was set: Butte to Sims Corner, then goal at Leahe.

The launch order today was decided by your FAI ranking. However, the first 20 minutes was allocated to whomever wanted to launch, without having a higher-ranked pilot butt in front of you. After the first 20 minutes a higher-ranked pilot could butt in front of you. Subsequent days will be determined by your comp ranking from the day before.

I'm in Chelan for the next week or so, for the Chelan XC Open/Pre-PWC/Canadian Nationals. Got here yesterday, mid-day, in time to see a gaggle of pilots finally get high on the Butte (apparently they had been scratching since it had been overcast until now) and make the crossing to the flats. After getting up on the flats they flew NE, aided by the SW winds. Pilots were scattered all the way from Mansfield to Grand Coulee.

US pilots Marty Devietti won the Open Class division flying a proto Airwave FR4 and Melanie Pfister won the Female Class on an Airwave Mustang 2!

Congratulations to both pilots.


Results can be found here: RatRace 2008

SPORT 4 – highly increased production in full swing!

To fulfill the demand of our new Intermediate glider we had to boost production capacities on a big scale. This is now running great and large numbers of gliders are arriving twice a week. Delivery times are finally coming down!

New MAGIC5!

MAGIC 5 - Airwave's new serial class glider released!

The MAGIC 5 is fast. Never before has a glider received EN certification with a speed range of over 30km/h.

We plan to certify the Size S in a short time...

Antoine Girard's adventure begins!

On June 14th, the big adventure of Antoine Girard will start. Antoine wants to climb 4 peaks each over 8000 meters - one after the other and paraglide down. He will begin with Broad Peak (8,047m), then K2 (8,611m), G2 (8,035m) and finally G1 (8,068m).

KISS leads Accuracy World Cup again!

It's a short hike from one wing tip to the other and you can hop over the wing in the other direction... on the ground it has almost the span of a standard class sailplane. It's light and just floats above your head in 5km/h of wind; looking from one tip to the other requires some neck flexibility! :)