Alphen aan den Rijn May 13 2012 MOTHERDAY
ritzdeluy@hotmail.com www.glidinginternational.com www.soaringcafe.com
A sunny good morning with very blue skies today at 8.30 but clouds popping up at 9.15. Very weird weather here in Holland. Lot’s of rain…great for the garden…but most of the time too cold for the time of the year and then in between, on Thursday, ONE day with up to 26 dgr. , which went together with rain, hail, thunderstorms and heavy wind gusts. Now it is back to 12 dgr!!! No wonder I keep my cold!
But as you know, this cold stream ,[ the wind was REALLY cold!!!] can bring great weather. Yesterday the skies looked extremely well. We drove from Amsterdam to Eindhoven and it looked like ” exploded”; clouds everywhere from the early morning till the late evening,[after 8 PM] with so here and there a small local shower. Of course I had a quick look this morning on the OLC if everybody was that happy with those great clouds and yes they were; 771 from Soesterberg in an LS 8, 801 by happy -birthday- boy- Bart in the Ventus 2CM and more! 64 flights in Holland only and a lot over 400 km. , even 4 over 700 km. and that on the OLC , so even more enthusiastic pilots , as not everybody is interested to put a flight on the OLC. And I keep saying no wave ridge or what ever here in Holland….pure thermals!
Early saturday morning…ON his birthday…ready to go
Courtesy Bart Renckens [FB]
Good morning Friesland by Jens Bouma[FB]
Also places in Germany and the UK had that lovely weather with flights from Lasham and Dunstable from over 800 km.
Belgium had las week terrible weather during the Nationals and yesterday Jean Luc flew over 500 km. from St Hubert. But that’s the weather, that is soaring.
Great ridge- circumstances again in the USA, this time the Eastern part with another 2000 km. flight in a 15 m.Ventus 2CT. A Canadian distance record as well as the longest flight ever in this area starting from Mifflin County. The 3d over 2000 km flight this year. Not bad!!
I left you with the news that the 12th Fatraglide12 handed out 400 and 500 km tasks on day 3/4.[Wednesday]
Not a perfect day for some however, when you see that pilots had to restart and certainly not when you hear that the number 1 in the combi class lands before he departs after a 2d launch; Here is Tibor’s story.
“sad news – current leader of Combi class Petr Svoboda just reported outlanding before start line, south of the airfield. He struggled after first take-off and relaunched and it seems he was not much luckier with second attempt. We will see new leader in combi class after today for sure”.
Poor Petr!!!! The 0 point-day will have hurt him enough already, as well as slipping from spot 1 to 8 overall.
Other pilots went on track and it turned out to be a 1000 point day and the 1000 points were for Lubor Kuvik and Roman Mracek. In the combi class 0nly 4 finished with 502 km. in the pocket. Lubor who flies in winter in Corowa, has a Corowa -mate from Denmark there as well. Jörgen Thomsen flew 429 km. There is a total of 6 Danish pilots flying at Martin.
In the master-class 8 pilots[from 22] managed to fly the task of 402 km. Felt very sorry for Peter Bartak who just missed out on about 1 km. in the st. cirrus.
About this Club Class Masters ; I like the concept and for those who do not like to surf to all sites here is a copy.
“Why?
Until 1978 there were only 2 world gliding champions every two year. Now we have 6 classes at WGC, 3 classes in women gliding championships and 2 in juniors, which is fine but can you name the winners from last year? Probably not. Who is the best pilot?
Only way how to find out is to get back to the roots and let them compete together. One class, similar gliders, one winner, no tears. That´s what we call „Glider racing as it should be“.
Rules?
—only racing tasks (no AAT – because we are not in math competition)
—Turn points FAI sectors (because if you fly 300km we should not cheat it 1km on every TP)
—club class with handicap max. 1,06 (it´s old club class we all remember – without retired standard/15m gliders because handicap can´t make it fair all the time)
Prize; EURO 3000,- and the winner gets it all!!!
I do not know about this high amount of money. Of course in other sports MUCH more money goes around, without problems.Only hope pilots are not going to take risks or are going to do silly things. It’s only money!
The comps continued on Thursday again with nice tasks just over 400 and 300 km. Petr Svoboda straight away “put things straight” by winning the day just before Lubor; 6 points difference, but still a mental push for Petr after his disastrous out landing. Great effort! Only 3 outlandings .
In the “Masters” also a few outlandings but also pilots with 7.5 m. climbs!!!
—”Maximum was 8,8 m/s.. dreams can come true in Fatra and Tatra mountains.—” Quote of the day by Tibor .
Roman was 2d and consolidates his first place and chance on the money.
But …Ivan Harasta won the day and is only just 100 points behind.
On Friday, day 6 it was pretty hot and only 2 pilots in the combi class managed to finish the nearly 400 km. task, one of them Lubor.
Day 5 for the Masters had more finishers and Roman Mracek is on his way to the “pot of gold” , winning another day. 5 Pilots finished the 310 km. task.
Yesterday only small tasks from 116 km and 106 k. before the front would arrive. A small window to fly in to finish this competition. The window turned out to be too small and in the end the day was cancelled for both classes. They tried at least and in the club Masters 2 pilots even made it home and finished one Roman, [ 4483 points out of 5 days] so he deserves ALL the money as the winner of the MASTERS!
In the combi class they had a B task a 1.30 AAT but nobody flew further then 70 km.
Winner in this class; Lubor Kuvik. [ 5152 points out of 6 days]
Another nice competition to follow from home. Good!
Over to the Hahnweide competition which started last Friday evening with an opening briefing. It was pretty HOT there that day.
Day 1 started with a no-flying day for standard class and 2 seater class but 15m. ,18m. and open had to go into the air. Steve Jones [UK] had a good day in open class winning the day with 448 points. Reinhard Schramme won in 18m with 423 points and in 15 m. 488 points for Marc Schick. Still 7 days to go , so a lot can happen certainly on fast days with long tasks, let’s hope they get them. Will keep you informed.
I could finish this blog with some sadness about the crashed brand new Russian plane in Indonesia during a demonstration flight to sell it, or with the nearly funny but very expensive incident with a Nikki A 321 ,where a jetway lifted the plane and dropped it from about 1.5m. back on the apron, causing substantial damage, but I will not.
I got the nice message from Belgium where tuggie Bruno asked his girlfriend Sabrina, mother of his 2 children, to marry him in a special way…some had tears. With all the bad weather during the Nationals in St Hubert this was a highlight.
“Sabje, will you marry me, Bruno”.
She said YES over the radio!
Picture courtesy Esther Fokker.
Hope their lives end as in a fairy-tale and …” they lived long and happily after”. Congratulations.
Cheers Ritz
