On The Road

The weekend was coming up and with no flying the previous two weeks everyone was eager to spread their wings. We knew that Krushevo was going to be great with many pilots preparing for the Open competitions from 11^th of July and the PWC from 19^th so it was a unanimous decision to fly there, than Alek brought up the idea of flying in Krushevo and hitting the road for Ohrid right afterwards and then flying there for the rest of the weekend. Unanimous decision again.

We where in Krushevo in 11 : 30 AM and it looked awesome, There were not cumulus clouds and it was very stable but still there were many thermals with base 300-400 meters above start. There were a lot of pilots too, flying, taking off and arriving in fact it was the biggest crowd I have been flying in. From our group Pero took of first, he found his thermal right away and climbed several hundred meters. After I had a sketchy start I struggled to get the thermal centered, i was not losing to much height but I was not gaining either, and than Duci who just finished the beginners course started thermaling very close to me. I immediately joined him and menaged to center the thermal. After that everything was awesome. I joined Pero in a thermal above Krushevo, than for the first time and I was basically joining people for the next hour and learning from the other pilots. We landed, regrouped and started our way to Ohrid.

When we finally arrived on the takeoff in Galicica one of the cars run out of gas so we had to leave it there with a gas station 50 km away and that was not all, it was tail wind too.

The next day we had one of the best flights. After flying in the noon and not catching any thermal we went for another chance. The start is just above Ohrid, above a village called Velestovo. It’s on 1300m ASL and there is a constant SW wind in the area and the west side of the slope where the takeoff is being heated quite a bit in the afternoon producing epic flying conditions on daily basis. We took around 6PM and it was great flying until 7PM . Surfing this invisible wave with your friends and having full conversations while in the sky made all that traveling more than worth it and landing at a football field for a cold beer with the people you shared the experience are filings in my opinion reserved just for sports pilots.