Uvalde! Which Gliders in What Class!

Alphen aan den Rijn     Sunday July 22 2012

ritzdeluy@hotmail.com     www.glidinginternational.com     www.soaringcafe.com

For ALL the news about Uvalde you can click on SoaringCafe.com [above] and you find the LATEST and also what happened last week. A WGC is the highest form of competition soaring in our sport, so I will spend a lot of time on it, not only on the Soaring Café site.

Without forgetting in this blog all the other news you are used to, I will continue my blog as well on Sunday and Wednesday while being in Uvalde, as well as writing every day for SOARING CAFE.


On the way in a glider from Houston to Uvalde.

Bruce Taylor (Australia) departs the Greater Houston Soaring Association (GHSA) gliderport in his new 21m JS1 with destination Uvalde on Thursday July 20th.
Picture and text ; courtesy South African Gliding Team.
As you know Bill Elliott and Rand Baldwin have set up the “café” to share our soaring stories, news about competitions and interesting technical news. Last week we invited all TC’s or a member of the team  participating at Garner Field to be part of the Soaring Café blogs. Most of them have answered with a YES and you can click on the WGC Uvalde item in the main menu bar already now to read all the latest by the several teams. So on ONE spot you can find lots of stories from the different teams in Uvalde.

https://soaringcafe.com/category/special-events/2012-wgc-uvalde/

One of the HOT items in SOARINGCAFE of course was and is the Concordia. Dick’s stories about the progress of this magic project got lots of readers! I look forward to catch up with Dick again after many years and to make my OWN picture of the Concordia. What a fabulous project he started!!! I heard the glider flies super and I hope Dick will have great safe and fast flights in it.

As said before I look forward to the difference in performance in open class this year. It will be VERY interesting.
The gliders have been added to the pilots now and at this stage I counted 4 JS1-B gliders in open class flown by the Aussies and …what Aussies! Former WGC champion in 1991 Brad Edwards and topper Bruce Taylor AND…. another two will be flown by the Goudriaan brothers, who both have flown WGC’s as long as I’ve known them! So four JS1-Cs in open class!!!!!!
Further on, Tilo and his men worked HARD, very hard!!! Seven Quintus M gliders are competing, two EB 29s, two Antares 23Es, three EB 28s, three ASW 22 BLEs, one ASH 25, two Nimbus 4Ts and the Concordia!!!!

Here is the news, if you have not read it already from the 21 meter span JS 1- C. I got it  last Friday!

—” As you mentioned the rumour of an Open Class JS1 on your blog (& Soaring Café), I thought you might like to know the rumour is now official see
http://www.jonkersailplanes.co.za/index.php?pageid=6 for a photo and http://www.jonkersailplanes.co.za/index.php?pageid=128 for a video.

Courtesy Iain Baker.

The 18 m and 15 m gliders are OF COURSE interesting too. This will be the second WGC with the JS 1 in 18 m class and the two owners of the business, Attie and Uys,  are flying them themselves! More JS 1 gliders as a total of seven  JS1-Bs have entered as of now and two JS1-As. Also six Venti, two Antares 18Ss, two LAKs and 17 ASG 29s.

In 15 m, I counted 17 Venti, eight ASW 27s, one LAK, five ASG 29s, four Dianas [SZD 56], and one LS 10. So all BIG glider businesses will be represented. Now the pilots have to do the rest.

The weather might be an influence too. Normally you would think hot and dry, but it has rained quite a lot over the last few days with thunderstorms and wind as well. Could be interesting. As the rest from the USA suffers from heat waves we might have that as well. But …the weather is the weather; we have to deal with it as it comes!

Other news as the Summer competition in Malden continued. The 2.30 AAT was flown but … no finishers! Patrick van Bremen Schneider, once already Dutch National Champion won the day with 124.2 km and got 36 points. The runner up managed 94 km for 26 points and one pilot flew 2.4 km. In the mixed open class two pilots managed to fly over 100 km. One of them Thijs Pare, yes son of … Daan Pare; he was the day winner with 73 points in his pocket—no finishers.

That says enough about the weather. Thursday was cancelled.

But it started to improve on Friday. Here are several gliders in a paddock, on Wednesday in pictures from Gijs Schwarte and Patrick Hoeve via FB.

 
Very green paddocks—not a good sign for a nice summer!

The weather on Friday was good enough for 171 km in club class and 202 km in open class. Finishers as well, [ it looked pretty good here too] as 7 from 12 in Club arrived home. Among them a young lady named Sietske, very much involved in soaring [she has been on the National championship organization team for several years] and now she flies to maybe qualify for the Nationals and fly herself. Good on her; she was 4th on Friday in an LS 4. The daily winner in the Standard Cirrus was Jeroen Verkuijl who represents Holland in Chaves in Club class and flew there last year and kept a great blog. Only three of 14 finished the 202 km task. The rest landed out between 11 and 145 km.

Yesterday they could fly again and 2 hour AAT’s on the last day would decide who would be the winners from this competition. Three pilots in club finished. The best was Patrick with 161 km in an LS1f. The winner in this class overall with 1161 points out of  4 days of 7 was Jeroen Verkuijl. In open class Jan van Ronnen won with 1159 points.

Also Sweden’s weather was “off ” with five cancelled days and three flown!!!!!

Luckily the last day was the  soarable day three, and whataday/expectation!!!! 417.4 km was the task to show who will be Sweden’s 18 m champion. BUT… in the end they changed the task to a distance of 218 km. Holger Erikkson was in spot one on day 1, seventh on day 2 and in second again yesterday; being pretty consistent he won the Nationals over three days in the ASH 26 E.

Torbjörn ended in the total scores [ 5th on the last day] in 3rd place, just ONE point behind the runner up Janne Nordt in a Discus 2 T—1799 and 1798 points.
Yesterday turned out to be a real top day in Sweden as one of the  pilots who took great pictures at the WGC in Eskilstuna, Per Carlin [I published a few as well!], flew 546 km in the LS1 f from Arboga, where two years ago the WWGC was flown. And good old Äke Pettersson flew 632 in the Ventus 2 from Enkoping.
A pity to see that Räyskälä had only one day during their comps two weeks ago and Martti [Sucksdorf ] now easily flies 550 km in the 18m ASG 29E. What can you do!?

The Livno Adria Cup flown from Livno in Bosnia Herzegovina was won by Italian pilot Aldo Cernezzie in an Antares/20m in the HIGH performance class.[4604 points and five days out of eight]. All tasks were AAT’s between 2.30 and 3.30. Boris Zors was the best in club class in a standard cirrus with 4410 points.

BUT … it is not everywhere in Europe soup weather as Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey enjoy temperatures of up to 38°C in sunny conditions and it is very dry there. The farmers are complaining about the drought, as they do in several parts of the USA.

Talking about Spain, they have had fantastic soaring weather over the last days and a lot of great flights have been flown from Fuente and Ocana. Guy Bechtold from Luxembourg tried out his new Quintus M with water ballast, with a 1,000 km flight. By the way, he flew a 1000K in the Quintus already in May in Luxembourg without water and yesterday he flew another one! I like his comparison with the Quintus with and without water ballast. With it is like a Ferrari and without like a Mercedes!

Also Minden and Inyokern in the USA have great soaring conditions.

Love this picture of the Quintus flown by Tilo.

The German juniors have started their National comps in Stölln / Rhinow with a free practise day yesterday. Two Belgian participants in club class, Jeroen Jennen and Jochen Schoeters. Quite a few already well known names, certainly for such young people, in both club and standard class. Will keep you informed and I wish all the young ones a great safe and weatherwise great competition!

That’s all the news. Next Wednesday I’ll post the last blog from Alphen and then the next one will be from Uvalde. CU.

Cheers … Ritz

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