10.00 AM, from the HUGE garden of my tiny lovely house.
Another fantastic day, here yesterday in Uvalde. We slowly need more superlatives to describe the weather here in Texas. Great distances and huge speed over 3.15 AAT’s.Look at this picture posted by the WGC team on facebook:
The news and blogs on the official site started slowly, but now they are on full “steam” Good on them.
Looking back…. the difference in start time in 18 m. was BIG; over an hour. In the end of the day clouds disappeared and the last pilot I saw arrive came through the blue skies.
Here are some analyses.
In 15 m. Matthias Sturm raced as I said already yesterday with unbelievable speed , certainly for a “small” glider, over 502 km. ;151 km/h.!!!
Great soaring as well from Argentinian pilot Javier Gaude.[499 km. and speed 147.5 km./h] His friends at home as Damian, Lucas and Horacio were “over the moon” with this good result. Sebastian was 3d with 486 km. and a speed of 145.7 km./h.
Unfortunately the late starters at 15.28 arrived home last.
Lisa and Susanne both had 143 km./h and Alena 129 km/h.
In 18 m. class Russian pilot Dmitry Timoshenko must have thought this is MY day. He flew 502.4 km. in 3.hour 14.27!!! so a speed of 154.6 km. h. in his ASG 29. The difference in start time seems to have had less effect on the 18 m. gliders as late starters as Tom Claffey and Rolf Friedli[15.25] still managed to finish on spot 8 and 9.
On spot 2 and 3 Zbigniew and Killian both with 154.4 km./h. Zbigniew flew more kilometers [ 538] and used more time [3.29] ,while Killian flew 5012 km. in 3.13.17.
The “worst” speed was still 132 km./h.
In open class the “friendly fight” between 2 absolute toppers has started with still 7 days to go. Yesterday won by Pete Harvey in the Antares 23 with 553.4 km. in 3.26.16 , so speed of 161 km./h.
Runner up Michael Sommer flew 534.7 km. in 3.20.10 so speed of 160.3 km./h. Then there are more potential winners in this class and they all flew over 150 km./h.
When we start the last week of soaring here after the restday today, we see French pilot Laurent Aboulin on top in open class and I guess all the French are supporting him to keep that spot till the end.
Australian topper Bruce Taylor on 2 now, will be sure of the support from his team to even get one place higher.
And Michael Sommer on 3 wants a new record by winning 4 WGC’s in a row, that motivates as well, certainly with one of the best informed teams behind him.
But…there are more potential winners with 6 days to go…as the difference between the first 14 in this class is a difference between 6110 and 6690. So EVERYTHING is possible!
In 18 m. the number 1 spot is after 7 days for the current WGC champion Zbigniew Nieradka, with his team mate Lucasz Wojcik as runner up. The UK pilots Mike and Russell will do their best to climb higher, as will do young German pilot Michael Streit. And there are more potential winners with great names and great triomphes in this class.
Between spot 22 and one pilots are in the 6000 points-range. So great to see another week with soaring here in Uvalde to see who finally wins gold silver and bronse.
In 15 m. you would straight away think that the “friendly fight” will be between Matthias and Sebastian, but for sure other pilots think different about that. A smaller range of 6000 point-pilots here; 14.
Today teams are visiting Del Rio and San Antonio and more interesting places, maybe even Mexico as we did in 1991.
The WGC team has provided busses to go to the Frio River in the N. of Uvalde for a very relaxed day out. “Tubing” will be popular as well, loved that in 1991!!!
Looking forward to the last week. The last day still can give differences, NOTHING is sure at this stage, except for the fact that we are going to have a VERY INTERESTING last 6 days. Keep reading as SOARINGCAFE is here for you ….to make you at home part of the 32d WGC.
CU on Monday
I share some public opinions from other sites, when you have not read them yet;
This one by Jerzy from Canada.
In some contests luck factor exist.
At the beginning of contest organizers set maximum start altitude to
avoid situation where some pilots will climb very high before start by
incident and have big advantage on others . But on request of some
countries the limit was removed . Then two submissions of one of the
Sebastian Kawa ( one of the highest World ranked pilot) requesting
setting start altitude limit was ignored . Yesterday it happened, group
of lucky pilots in our class climbed 3,000 feet higher as the rest was
just seating ducks watching fellow competitors leaving 3,000 feet higher
which represents 30km advantage.
I hope that we will not have more days like this.
Jerzy XG
At briefing yesterday Ken told us that he had calculated that so far during the contest pilots have flown in excess of 40,000km which is the circumference of the earth and by the end of the contest we will probably have flown to the moon.
I wrote down some other tug nick names yesterday : Sweet Pea, Red Baron, Baby Blue, Killer Shark, Yellow Peril, Yellow Jacket. There are 11 altogether so I’m still missing a few.
David had a relight on day 5 due to a blocked ASI. He called on the radio, we had the crew waiting when he landed, someone grabbed his wing as he slowed, the offending tube was cleared out (Polish is suspected) and he was relaunched in 5 mins with out getting out of his glider. We certainly have the A team working for us here.
The finish yesterday was amazing. At 5.30pm our gliders all had over 200km to fly on task, the sky was grey with spread out from the storms up north and we had strong winds from the associated gust front. The 15m guys initially planned to land 40km out at the Batesville airfield. The crew were sent off with the trailers to meet them. Then we had a call that they had found a 5kt climb on the gust front and were now heading for Uvalde. We recalled the crew to the grid. As the time ticked by and it got darker we called the pilots to tell them that they had to be on the ground by the end of legal daylight at 20.23 or they would get a penalty. It’s the first time as a Captain that I have told a pilot to land to get a better score. (The penalty is 10pts per minute). As the minutes passed it became clear that whilst they might be able to squeak into the airfield at Uvalde a paddock was the safest option. The trailers were re-hitched and the crews set off again. They landed safely 5km away. Whilst they crossed the finish ring 15km away and clearly finished the task they were below the minimum finish height (3000′ minimum with a penalty for the first 100m low then an outlanding at the ring) so received distance points rather than speed points.
