In the morning, clouds started forming very early, and just 10 minutes after takeoff, it already looked pretty bad, like there would be too much cloud cover. Fortunately, we handled the part where there was shadow everywhere with ease, except for the morning climbs when we twice got back up from 200 meters. After that, the clouds nicely spread into rows with strong thermals. Thanks to my cooperation with Standa, we managed to quickly find the thermal cores, which gave us a high average speed. Once, I couldn’t catch the thermal with Standa, but he waited so we could fly together again (thanks!). Everything went perfectly until 420 km.

At the 420 km mark, Standa lost some altitude and went further south under a cloud, which I didn’t like at all, so I flew further west. In the end, we met again after about 15 km. From then on, it was just about holding any kind of lift, drifting as far as possible, and gaining as much altitude as we could for the final glide, which worked out pretty well. We were 20 km short of 500 km and had 2000 agl, so with a glide ratio of 1:10, there wasn’t much doubt we’d make it. The final glide into the sunset was amazing – flying 35 km without turning is always a great reward after 10 hours of flying. In the end, we landed on a football field, where lots of locals gathered. People here are really awesome – they took us to their home, gave us wi-fi, made us a great dinner, and waited with us for the retrieval (big thanks to Benito for the amazing support). Now we’re facing a long journey to the hotel, and on Tuesday we fly again. 😉

Records:

• Longest flight with a paraglider in the EN-C category

• First 500+ km with a paraglider in the EN-C category

• Most kilometers flown by a Czech pilot

• Longest flight from the Caráubas launch site

• Youngest person ever to fly 500+ km (17 years old)

Of course, Standa flew a longer distance than I did, but since we both took off from the same takeoff and landed in the same place, if we calculate the distance without considering the turning points, we covered the same distance.

Glider	SKY Merlin (EN C)
Route	512.7 km (512.7 pt)
Duration	10:47