The XC Course is on!

After some days of free flying at Monte Cucco and Tre Pizzi, we drive to Villa Pascolo (Costacciaro, Italy) for the XC course to meet Dennis, Jouette, Aaron and Harm and Annette. Some activities can't wait and thanks to some helpful Italians the Aeros dealer arrives early enough for the necessary repairs.

All the participants arrive at Villa Pascolo at 18.00 for the first meeting. We sit in the nice garden while everybody introduces themselves and we get an idea of their experience and learning objectives.

The group consists of 5 Dutch pilots (Harry, Erik, Rene, Elsard and Jack), 4 Russians (2 x Andrey, Dimitry and Eugene) and 2 pilots from Turkey (Makbule and Christopher). The instructors are of course Dennis, Koos and Harm and I will be assisting Koos group. Annet has taken care of the organization (great job!) and will assist at launch and Jouette will also assist during the course (and hopefully gets to go to Assissi ;-).

We discuss retrieve, landing and take-off and the programme for the week. Afterwards we have a nice dinner at Villa Pascolo.

The following morning we meet at Ostello del Volo in Villa Scirca for the first lessons on communication and landing.

Because the wind is very strong NE, we have to go to Tre Pizzi for the first day. We first check out the landing field, and after having looked at it on Google Earth the real field is something different! The task will probably be along the rigde, so we check out the landing possibilities. As they are not too bad, everybody decides to rigg. The wind is still very strong, but the first group of pilots launches as soon as they are ready and the rest follows in the next hour when also the paragliders can take off.



Everybody lands safely and we see a lot of happy faces!