Day 2: Too hard

I didn’t really enjoy the flying today. We were low all day, typically only 700 metres or so above the valley floor. The only safe outlanding options here are on airfields and at times the glide to the nearest one was a bit marginal. After about 200 quite stressful km of the task I found myself in a place where at my current level of experience here I wasn’t happy to proceed further. Mind you, not everyone seemed that worried. This is Sebastian Kawa about half an hour before launch:

Just a bit about Viticura Airfield. It is located on the north eastern edge of Santiago. Actually within the city itself. It is only about 400m wide and not terribly long. On one side is a river and a freeway (sorry, tollway) and a main road is on the other side. There are about 10 terrible second during each launch where the only place to go in case of launch failure is the river. Or its rocky bed. A broken glider would be the minimum result. After that a polo field comes into view. Not huge but better than the river. Then the tug flies over an escarpment, the ground drops a couple of hundred metres and you are over the central metropolitan area but there are lots of golf courses and such so all is good. Tomorrow I might post a bit of video of the launch and you will see what I mean...