If you want to fly 300km go to Quixada, Brazil

Although the Official Results haven't been published yet, it looks like the XC International Meeting 2009 and XCeara 2009 were a great success again. Alfredo Studer, who we met a couple of years ago in South Africa, is currently winning the XContest 2010 with flights of 318.6 (08/11) and 301.8 (04/11) flying the new Swing Astral 6, Kamira Pereira broke the Female Open Distance World Record twice with flights of 330.3km (14/11) and 326.1km (08/11)! and Washington Peruchi flew 330.4 (14/11). Thats three 300km days in a week! Why would you want to go anywhere else!

Keep an eye on South African weather - again!

With an El Nino in force, the weather is South Africa is likely to be dry and hot! One of the best forecasts come from the South African Weather Service which has its own aerosport section

Have a look at the latest Satellite and Rainfall overlay, Thunderstorm probability, spot graphs showing expected Convective Cloud Base and Thermal Strength. The De Aar 5 day forecast is here. Wind guru provides usefull weathermaps.

Look out for 20,000ft ft cloud base, with zero thunderstorm probability and a strong WNW airflow and perhaps even 500 km won't be safe.

Ondrej Dupal testing proto XC3 in South Africa

Ondrej Dupal has returned once again to one of his favourite winter testing locations, De Aar. With him, he has Gradient’s expected replacement to the highly successful Avax XC2. The design brief for this replacement is a new high-end wing that’s resolutely targeted within the EN D category. We are anticipating a very high performance serial racer to take on the best of the rest in this hotly contested category, combined with all that ‘sweetness’ in both handling and feedback which has become a trade-mark for Gradient.

News has recently been supplied to Burkitt Rudd that Ondrej is very pleased with performance tests of the proto XC3's. What is know is the Gradient team has two protos with different aspect ratios, one with 6.5 and the other 6.8. However news about line consumption and layout etc is still a mystery.

The wing should be certified in early 2010!

Simply Gradient sponsor the XC League

• £1000 and a trophy for the first total score (6 flights) of 1000km or more in the UK
• Prize from Richard Westgate at SimplyGradient

This prize is not specific to any year. It will remain on offer until it is won.

All flights must be valid scoring flights in the UK National Paragliding XC League.

XC 3 proto cleans up at the XC Africa 2009

Karel Vejchodsky was 1st and Ondrej Dupal 2nd in the Gradient XC Africa 2009 event.

The weather only allowed 3 tasks

The day after the competition finished, it looks like Ondrej Dupal had another good flight as reported on the Gariep Dam blog.

Sunday, 22 Nov. 2009:

The day started good. All took off early and some good distances were reported. Uwe & Ru¨diger flew 848km and Hans Wiesenthal 814km. The first long flights of this season at Gariep. In the afternoon Ondrej Dupal from the Chech Republick caused some excitement with his unexpected appearance. He flew with his paraglider from De Aar and landed nicely between the Nimbus and the Blanik on the apron.

XCeara 2009 starts in 21 days

The most successful big distance flying competition starts again on the 21st November. XCeara 2009 - The Cross Country Classic is the 13th such event. Last year 3 pilots (Marcelo Prieto, Rafael Saldini and Frank Brown) broke the World Distance Record from the site with 461.8km. The competition bosts 100% flyable conditions.