Lednik Cup 2024

author: Lukáš Koláček

It is the morning of Saturday April 27th and I finally see that it is not spinning. Next to the airport in Hati u Hlučín (LKHATH) there are two giant wind power plants that have been spinning continuously until now. I'm glad that Petr Dvořák's (VFR Weather) forecast did not come true and we have God's weather ahead of us for the precision landing competition called Lednik Cup. All thirteen participants are ready! We are going according to plan and the first pilot starts at 6:30. I expected it to start to come alive soon, because a few days before the race we had an igloo in the garden, which is why the start was moved by an hour and a half. The thermals didn't start until the middle of the sixth lap, it flew by and the race was stopped. Everyone thought it was over, but I'm briefing the last seventh round starting at 19:00. 

To explain, the main intention of Lednik Cup 2024 was to attract as many pilots as possible to compete. After all, it is a favorite for local pilots - the very last league paramotor competition here in the Beskydy was organized by Tomáš Lednik himself - and since then not even a round has been organized here. And so I decided to continue the tradition of the races by organizing a landing accuracy competition, naming it out of respect for Tomík (and with the consent of his wife Luca) after him - the Lednik Cup. So I started massaging social media. The strategy was to attract pilots on a number of prizes. Thank you very much to all the sponsors. To the company Radegast, which took care not only of our drinking regime. Luboš Halam for the E-Props propellers for the winner of the HOBBY category and Milan Klement for the clothes from the company FlySkin, Liberty and Paraelement, which he donated from Přibyslavský parashop. I would like to thank the company Otidea for the financial support and the printer Kleinwachter from Frýdek Místek, which took care of the printing. The founder of this printing house is a pilot and former student of Tomáš Lednik, so it was almost a duty for him, right Chosé? To the company Sky Paragliders, which donated prizes exceeding the amount of 25 thousand crowns. One in particular, the main prize that was raffled off at the end of the race, namely the Sky Quatro 160 Light reserve parachute. All in all, prices exceeding 50 crowns.

But back to the competition. Around 11 o'clock the wind started to pick up near the ground, so it was time for the ground handling competition under the motto "hard on the training ground, easy on the battlefield". Not everyone shared my enthusiasm, because I wanted them to do a slalom around the poles, a somersault in a somersault box and fly over a plastic pole one meter high. Everyone sent me to the woods, and that's why it ended up being a 150 m long course, a slalom around the flags, a somersault in a somersault box, dropping the parachute to the ground and starting again as quickly as possible and running across the finish line. I equipped all the participants with the same parachute, my slalom Freeride 15 from Ozon with a very simple Marie control . I think that just grabbing the control and getting an A at the start was a "story" for some.

LA 19th hour is approaching, Milan and Luboš are practicing a show for the motor paragliding festival and at the same time they are showing us that it's flying and we can go for it. The plan was to start in reverse order, so that those in the first places still have a chance to screw it up. But they were lucky, I lost my fight with the technique and I couldn't count it. So it starts in a proven system, whoever is ready, flies. The air after nine o'clock was already smooth...

During the first year of the Lednik Cup, 91 landings were made in three and a half hours. All excellent, sellers of propellers or frames were unlucky. The pilots brought many new experiences, prizes and points to the MPK landing precision competition series, of which the Lednik Cup was the second round (the first was the flight part of the ParaBike) and where the next two competitions will count. We will announce the results at the end of the season, at the same time as the results of the Czech Motor Paragliding Cup (ČPMP, formerly MPK League)

I would like to thank the volunteers for the smooth running of the race, specifically Filip Peter and Lucia Jančurová for an excellent job measuring the landing. To Dališ Koval and Kuba Halam for order at the start. Thanks to you, the pilots, that some of you traveled up to 825 km for this race, and especially to the group of pilots from Hatá u Hlučín, specifically Jirko Medvěd Pláček, for allowing us to fly at their beautiful airport. 

You can see who won on the score sheet, but who ended up as the lucky winner of the race and took home a reserve parachute for twenty "liters"? Ask about the MČR in motorized paragliding, which starts on June 4 at the airport in Polepy (LKPOLE) or at Ječmínek, which is on June 21-23 in Stichovice (LKSB).