Acc Early League 2023

The third weekend of April was part of the calendar for the paragliders' precision landing competition. The first round of the ACC league was held at Raná. The organizers were keeping a close eye on the weather, as there weren't many parachute flight days for now. But you know, you can't fly in it, you can race in it, and rather land in it 🙂

On Saturday, April 22, exactly the day of the race, the weather was luxurious and all the available forecast models promised summer. An incredible amount of flying and non-flying public also gathered at Rana.

Also, on Friday, we chose to start from the saddle and placed the landing target on the back, not so frequented landing strip. As it turned out during the day, it was a prudent move, because the flying weather that came after almost a month attracted crowds of pilots to Rana, for which there was not even a parking lot and the driveway to the road was lined with cars.

The race itself was quite peaceful. After the initial briefings, starting marshal Mirek Volný sent the first pilot into the air around ten o'clock. A total of 42 pilots took about 45 minutes to complete one lap. The quality of the pilots in the racing field was confirmed by the result of the first round, when 14 pilots recorded the result using the electronic zero. And a lot of other landings were inside the five-meter circle, so the judges were quite focused and wrote off two winding meters by constantly unwinding and winding :-).

In the second round, the competition started to get more interesting. Two young juniors, Kvido Hadaš and Lennardt Schubert, scored a result with zero, which after the sum of both rounds made 3 cm for Kvido and 2 cm for Lennardt. These two were chased by experienced representatives Vlastimil Vachtlem, Radek Václavik, Petr Garbier and Lennardt's younger brother Linus. Both Schubert brothers belong to the German junior national team in landing accuracy.

The races continued at a leisurely pace with close observation of paragliding traffic on the hill and increasing thermals with wind gusts. In the middle of the fourth round, the thermal shocks started to get a little erratic.

The communication with the starting marshal Mirek Volný intensified: "Míro, tell them that it is getting stronger, to fly straight and not fly too much downwind to the right, because then they won't make it."

The laconic answer of the local flying school instructor came over the radio: "And what do you think I've been trying to explain to them here for 20 years?"

So we decided that we were in good time and that we could dry out the race when the conditions were a little calmer for everyone the same. One pilot was allowed to restart in the fourth round, as he did not reach the target area due to thermal gusts. And we didn't want to risk pilots using these restarts more.

In the early evening, she managed to fly the remaining racing bikes with time to spare, so that 6 valid racing bikes were flown.

After an excellent entry into the competition, Kvido Hadaš defended the lead, who kept his nerve until the final round, when, thanks to the rules, the last start of the competition was waiting for him. He kept his nerve and with a total result of 9 cm after cutting he placed first, followed by Radek Vaclavik and Vlastimil Vachtlem.

The "paper" favorite Vlastimil Kricnar did not succeed in the first or even the second round, when with his 44 cm he would have to wait for a big mistake by his opponents, which did not come. Although he recorded results within 3 cm in all subsequent rounds, it was only enough for 8th place even after the elimination.

Markéta Tomášková was betrayed by her landing in the first round, when her foot slipped and she landed on the seat, therefore she scored the full number of points - 500, unfortunately she met the same result in the last round. Even the strikeout didn't help improve her score and results of 2, 5, 4 and 1cm flanked by two XNUMXs relegated her to second place in the women's category. Junior Lucie Martínková also dominated here, although she did not have as good a record as Markéta, but she had five hundred points less. Since the fall, thanks to her coach, Lucka has made a big shift in her approach to landing technique and won first place from Rana. German Anne Lena Marion won third place.

The junior category somewhat reflects the OPEN category, as a young generation is growing up, which has shown that it can land even in thermally difficult conditions.

The Hobby category showed that even motorcyclists can land well, and Jiří Koudela, who is better known for his achievements in the world of motorized paragliding, took third place. But when the locals told us that he was flying a gyroplane to Rana to practice landing, it is no wonder that he was placed on the podium. Hugo Hadaš was second and Karol Rumpli, a regular in this category, was in first place.

The team competition was won by the Schubert family, supplemented by Ohman Remy, here the Hadas family still have a little reserve and next time they have to impress the head of the family (Klára sorry) to strengthen the team spirit. Neither the Czech nor the two Polish teams were enough for the family match. The Poles bit the carrot a bit in the race. They did not do well individually and their teams finished just below the podium.