1st of Brendans Videos from 2007

Brendan Nielsen is quite a handy chap on his video camera and over a 2 year period has managed to create a few pretty darn good slope videos. I am going to try and post these over the next while.

Nuff said, check out the video from Red Hill 26th May 2007

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More 3 imp video

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Here’s the rest of the video of the imps

If you are battling to view open the windows media player on your pc first

IMP video

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Here are all three imps

Brendan goes Discus

What a brilliant and beautiful evening slope session up at Chappies yesterday… Marc where were you? Marc?
Lionel, Brendan and myself were the lucky lab rats to escape the cage.
Warm conditions on a North Wester and with reasonable lift, that had a tendency
to go on/off at the most inconvenient times…
Brendan chose to maiden his 3M Discus and attached are a few shots of the man and machine.
A very good looking bird, it has a habit of bending its wings,
which kinda gives you a heart attack, but just seems to be part of the gliders characteristics.
The conditions were bumpy every now and then, and the wings
were very clear indicators of the state of the lift at that point.
Still, the Discus has great energy retention and looks really good in the air.
Well done Brendan on two incedence free flights and a successful maiden flight.

Brendan and the Discus after the maiden flight – well done mate

Spot the glider in the landing zone

Stunning evening scene and a great slope session – clearing the cobwebs

For those rainy days

Here in the deep south were pretty much a bunch of slope addicts and winter is upon us,
windy, cold and sometimes very wet…so Wessie at Clowns hobbies has a little package to
make sure you can continue to slope, even when its wet.
This natty see through box hangs off your neck with a broad strap,
while your TX is held inside with Velcro.
You then slip your hands inside and stay warm and dry… well your hands and TX at least.
You may however have to develop a specialist “tip of the hiking boot launch”
or kick your glider off the slope, as trying to get your hands back into the box after the launch
may well be asking for trouble.
Then again, you could get one of your buddies to launch your glider instead…
probably safer with a 3meter glider and will help avoid
those blow back slap in the face with a composite wing type accidents…

Good and dry and you can keep your lunch safe as well

IMP

Sorry but video quality is very poor a cell phone just doesnt work but here is shot lifted off video

Formation stall turn no prize for whose out in front!

IMPi!

Finally we managed to get the first 3 colour coded Impala’ s on the same slope at the same time.
Saturday and Sunday both produced very interesting South Easters in the middle of winter
and while Hout Bay barely showed a breeze, the Red Hill slope just cooked
under a perfect 30km/h South East breeze.
What a beautiful day, what a stunning setting and what a load of fun.
Formation flying is never easy and th attempt to have three of the same craft in the air
at the same time takes some kind of concentration. Even staying in more
or less the same place proved fairly difficult and it is going to take
more than a good few hours to perfect any kind of form.
One great learning curve coming up.
Hopeful someone got a few air shots as we were flying at the time
and I know Marc had a video running.
So here is a mug shot of the three pilots and their charges prior to the first launch.

Impala lads about to launch, Kevin, Damian and Steve

Rainy days in the middle of winter

Winter hits the Cape Peninsula with a vengeance and the whole darn place gets flooded on Sunday 12 th July.
Saturday the 11th however saw a few positive souls gathered up at the Chapman’s Peak NW site
in an attempt to get some air time. It all started out fine, with great lift conditions in a
fresh to breezy North Wester. We had a good few flights, but as all the guys who
had traveled from the deep south, (traversing around the closed Chapman’s Peak can add plenty of time to the trip) arrived at around 2 PM, at which juncture the heavens opened up a wee bit and a nasty little drizzle set in.
After an hour of standing under the trees in the rain, a good few lads headed home on their trans peninsula trip.
True to form, and not 10 minutes after they left, the clouds opened up from the Sentinel Peak side,
the sun shone and the wind dropped to a gentle, cold West North West and the few who had stayed behind
to wait out the rain were rewarded with an hour and a half of evening flying  in cool, dry and
clear conditions, and eventually left the slope as sunset took hold.
Sometimes it pays to wait out the storm, and in this case, it was well worth the wait.
Sunday turned into a wash-out of note as the heaviest rainfall in years plummeted to the ground
and basically flooded large areas of the Cape region. Some very impressive rivers developed where
there never were any before. Would be interesting to know how Chapman’s Peak stood up to this test,
as it is supposed to re-open to the public in August sometime and the rainy season is not over by then…

Waiting in the rain, and watching it advance across the valley

This view made a few of the lads head for the hills

Peter Prinsloo grins and bears it while flying in the rain

Uncle Bill and Damian mid discussion

Jeff and Pye snuggling up to avoid the cold

First part of kevs imp maiden video

Kevins Imp maiden

This is a wmv file so  you need to open windows media player if it isnt your default player before clicking on the words kevins imp maiden video contained within. It should then play the first 10 seconds as i only converted the first bit as a test from mp4 to wmv.

Hope it works

Kevs Imp on Maiden

Wednesday was hot and bumpy and the light was fading fast but it didn’t stop one Farr from putting out the imp on its maiden. Wrong slope because of construction. We flew the west slope in a northerly but we were going to fly no matter what.

No need to fly a wing first or to check the controls. Toss it out and fly it even with rudder inverted!

But out she went and looked awesome.

Checkout those colours!

Banking for a straffing run.

Hurry up Steve

Lights on in hout bay, that how dark it was but it didnt stop us putting in a combat session.

sorry guys would have posted the video but it wont upload any tips welcome. Obiwan?