Before my planned one week holiday to the beach with my high school friends, a few updates as the soaring world continues [also without me]. And…congratulations to Bill and Rand for having more than 1,000 posts now on their Soaring Café !!!
Finally the open class and 15 m pilots could fly in the UK yesterday. Tasks were set , but….no it was not meant to be…AGAIN. What a pity! Hope it will be still a valid competition but then it has to be good from now on!!
From Bayreuth—today MIGHT BE the second day of flying [out of 10] with two more days to go. Two hour AAT’s have been set. Warm air has reached the area; how good that is for the lift we will see tonight.
And the ladies in Ulm busy with the German Nationals have today a set task as well with 131 km for club, 212 km for st.class and 207 km for 15 m class, though the prediction for thermals is weak!
The Pre-Europeans in Vinon continued with day 4 yesterday [without Giorgio] but with smaller tasks than planned due to the “lousy” weather in France too. 1:30 AAT’s were set in the three classes.
In 15m class the Polish pilots had a good day starting and flying together and being 1, 2 and 3 with 195.4 km for Tomasz Rubaj [Discus 2], 198 km for Sebastian Kawa [Diana2] and 199.6 km for Lucasz Grabowski [ LS 8]
The German pilots did well in 18 m and in open! For today the tasks are: 257 km for the 15m pilots, 299.8 km for 18 m and 384.3 km for open.
In Finland the 18 m Nationals continued with day 3 and a speed AAT was set with a time of 2:30. On day 2 he outlander; on day 3 he won: Martti Koivula, 253 km in 2:44.
Day 4, today, looks like a very good day with a task set from 506.6 km.
And to finish my best wishes to my longtime friends Giorgio, Marina and Chiara Galetto. Giorgio “crashed” as they called it, at the Provence2012 Glide site and has been operated on for a “little problem” with the lumbar vertebrae as I read on that official site. We ALL wish them well. Marina herself told her friends that he also has a badly bruised leg and arm and will have to wear a corset for a while. She also wrote,”—“we discovered that two German pilots saw the crash, allerted the rescue in Saint Crepen, and afterwards left the task. A brilliant example of sportsmanship, that makes us hoping for the future of our Sport.—” A long time ago Giorgio did the same for somebody else during a competition. Giorgio seems to be in good spirits and we are all happy he survived . He already made an analysis of what went wrong and calls it a “bad experience.”
All last weeks news about the several comps in www.soaring.eu
CU you on Sunday June 17th, FATHERs day, when I am not frozen or drowned [by the rain] at the beach. Luckily the European Championship soccer gives relief! I hope… “we ” first have to win round 1.
The fantastic pictures today are courtesy of Bert Schmelzer jr. [Belgium] who lives in Switzerland, racing over the Jura and along the Lake Saint Point.
Ritz
