Brazil's biggest lake hosted the second stage of the Open Paragliding Acro Competition nearby the city of Linhares. During the training day on Friday and the first competition day on Saturday the weather conditions were quite mixed. From the early morning hours several rainshowers and thunderstorms passed the area, causing big variances in the strenght and direction of the wind.
The take-off place was a beautiful sandy beach on the east side of the lake, suitable to launch in a 180 degree angle. The raft and the event was right on the opposite side which seemed optimal, but it's position often made it difficult to tow the pilots into the flying box due to the dominating NW-W wind.
Another problem was that the lakeside is everywhere surrounded with a 50-70 meter high steep slope which caused strong rotor in the landing place and sometimes made it even dangerous to land on the floating platform, especially in the afternoon hours when the see breeze reached the area. During this period the hill on the opposite (take-off) side was nicely soarable even with small acro wings...
3 runs were planned for Saturday and Sunday but due to the variable wind, rain showers, technical problems with the boats and often unsufficient altitude to perform the maneuvers things were happening slowly and only 2 runs could be completed (one with 3 and one with only 2 maneuvers).
Final, overall results of the Open competition (incl. Marobá-, and Linhares Acro)
1. Pál Takáts (Hungary, U-Turn Thriller)
2. Yves Berlovitz (Switzerland, Paratech Acro)
3. Hernan Pittoco (Argentina, SOL Supersonic)
4. Renato Lopez (Brazil, SOL Supersonic)
5. Christophe Guillet (Switzerland, U-Turn Thriller)
Brazilian results of the Linhares Acro
1. Renato Lopes (SOL)
2. Rodrigo Machado (SOL)
3. Mauricio Braga (Paratech)
4. Rafael Goberna (SOL)
5. Ronaldo Cardoso Camargo (Paratech)
The organization has announced that a final, third event of the Brazilian National Acro Championships will take place in April at the same location (only counting for the brazilian ranking).
Despite the - mainly location related - problems I must admit that on the other hand no competition ever before has provided such a service for the pilots as this one. For the entry fee of 250 EUR practically 11 days of accomodation, food, drinks, flying and transports between the locations! You can compare it to one of our greatest European events in Italy where for 100 EUR you can sleep for 4 days in your own car in a busy parking place, take bath in the lake and use a terrible public toilet where you wouldn't even send in your biggest enemy for a ride...).
The financial support by the government is very strong and the organization team is very motivated to improve things for next year (like with professional FAI judges, more towing boats, etc.).
Watch the photo galleries, results and more information on the official website.
