Australia is mostly flat, certainly between Kingaroy in Queensland [ North of Brisbane]and Tocumwal,[300 km. North of Melbourne] so no wave,  sheer-wave  yes ,no ridge soaring , just you , your glider,  the thermals and in this case also the wind.
Chris Woolley  flew 1. 300 km. from Kingaroy to TocumwaL in his Ventus 2CM/18 m. .
A set 1.250 km . down wind goal flight , extended to 1.300 km. distance!!!!Not bad! Pretty unique even.

It’s however a big project/ a huge exercise, as when nobody drives with the car and trailer behind, or somebody is so kind to ” bring” you home in a borrowed car with trailer you have to find your way back as well and 1.300 km is FAR.
And,…normally the weather on the way back is less good. Luckily gliders have engines nowadays, so you can “move home under steam” , but you have to fly parts as well over such a long distance.
Son Adam follows his dad and keeps us informed and after his congratulations he is a bit less cheerful now .
“ Dad’s on his way home, what an exhausting and complete contrast on the last flight he did. 3hrs below 2000′ AGL; The air-con from altitude and a long final glide must’ve felt good though, ” was his comment .  From Tocumwal to Narromine is just over 500 km. when you fly the distance.
It’s a long way home!!!!But hopefully the adrenaline from the epic flight , will still help him on this trip.

The weather here is still ” nice” ,with around 10 dgr. C. too nice for the time of the year and about 26 dgr. C. higher than last year in this period.
Not only here in Holland but also other places ” cope”  with weird weather.
“ It’s hard to believe that the temperature in Bangkok recently has been cold enough to ‘freeze’ coconut oil, rendering it useless in a pump action bottle! It’s been that way for several days now.” is what one of our former tuggies mentioned.
And Indonesia suffers from rain and people from Jakarta deal with flooding’ s, whilst part of Italy had terrible land slides.

Tuggies;  hardworking tow-pilots!!!
Sadly enough we lost one ,55 years old,  from the Canterbury Gliding Club, as Jill from Soaring New Zealand shared with us today. As with my son, help was impossible cause fire started straight away.Too tragic for words!!!I know AND feel the devastation, each time such an accident happens.
But that was not all, a glider crashed as well at Drury the club from the Auckland mates and the pilot , only 36 years old, was killed. A sad and bad day for our New Zealand soaring friends from both the North and South.We share their sadness.

R.I.P.

And for those who are keen on the OLC, here is some important news:
”  the OLC team decided to synchronize victory celebrations and set the end of normal OLC to the 4th Monday in September (in 2014 this will be the 22nd of September). The 2015 season starts on September 23rd. ”
For more news and explanation you can go to;
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/segelflugszene/cmsnews.html?month=012014#1326

Busy , busy the speed of life is fast , too fast and before we know it is September again.We are going to have however ” our”  summer and I hope it will be a good one with lot’s of great flights EVERYWHERE.

Still a bit “impressed”  by the NZ tragedies, so a short blog today.
For all other news about several comps and state comps you can go to www.soaring.eu

Cheers Ritz