Organya, Spain

After being here a week and a half, I'd have to say this place hasn't been the most "magical" as advertised. If you're into competitive acro, Organya's is definitely a place to train, but according to other pilots from France and Austria, it's not Shangri-La. One of best French acro pilots is here, and he thinks his site is just as good. Anyways, Organya is located here about 2 hours NW of Barcelona.

Here's my day-to-day:

830 Get up, have breakfast, and go use the internet.
1130 Go back to campsite, hang out with other pilots, read a book, or go to the pool
1500 Lunch
1530 - 1630 Siesta
1645 - 2030 Train acro
2130 - 0030 Go back to campsite, hang out with other pilots, read a book, or party

Repeat

Pretty simple, eh?

Here are the pluses of Organya:

1) about 1000 meters AGL to play with consistently
2) 4 -5 refills an hour
3) the time to fly is always the same
4) many of the best acro pilots to learn from
5) the campsite has free wireless and a swimming pool for 5E/day

And the minuses:

1) training is over the ground, and the ground is hard
2) if you throw your reserve and you aren't far enough away, you'll land in the mountain and that's BAD
2) it's really f-ing hot every day
3) there's NOTHING to do around here other than flying
4) it's a REALLY long drive versus comparable sites in France (10 hours from Annecy, for example)

I haven't been training as hard as I'd like, esp. with the dynamic maneuvers. I was hoping to do more infinity attempts, but I just don't feel comfortable doing it here. So, I'm focusing solely on the SAT/helico, helico/helico, helico/SAT. What I've realized about my acro flying is that I'm a LONG way from where I thought I was, and thinking about doing the Infinite before mastering the above-mentioned tricks is just a joke. Trying the rhythmic is the most I'll be doing.

I think about Seiko, whom I've been camping and hanging out with a lot. She's been flying acro as long as I've been flying, and she's just now learning the rhythmic and tumbling. But, her SAT/helico, helico/helico, helico/SAT are beautiful. In fact, like some of the great pilots here, she can do in 1 continuous run: SAT/helico, helico/helico (3 - 4 times, going back and forth), helico/SAT (other direction).

The 3 other pilots doing this here are all ranked in the top 10. It's simply beautiful to watch.

From what I've seen this summer, we (Americans) aren't even close. IMHO, I'm only the one from the States who's really trying to raise the acro bar and I feel, at times, I'm one of the worst pilots here.

As I sit here in the restaurant, we can see the training box. It's a little too early for most of us to fly (1430 now), but the Spainards, Horatio Llorens and Alejandro Rodriguez, are training. I just watched Horatio, who's the #1 pilot this season, do the following all flawlessly transitioned from one to the next:

Infinite (10 turns)
Helico
SAT
Helico
Helico (left)
Helico (right)

then exited to Misty/Helico.

As I said, we're not even close.