What a great way of living! Still being fit enough at age 81 ,to start a glider course and still being in good health and tough enough, to go solo!Remarkable!
Was, like many others,impressed with this news ,shared by the Chilhowee Gliding Association where Sarah Arnold is with her husband Jason,the owner,mechanic, instructor and tuggy.
“ A great experience in his life: Cal Watford 81 years young soloed a glider today.”
Good on you Cal!!!!I have asked Cal to share his impressions , hope he has time and interest to do so! That’s for next week then.
Picture shared by the Chilhowee Soaring Association.
At the moment Sarah is in North Carolina on a wave camp where she is the tuggy, but no worries as they don’t soar this weekend at Chilhowee and no secret why!
As Sarah mentioned as well, Cal was not her oldest student, he was 83!
Cal has flown before but started gliding in August last year and loved it.He had in between some problems with an ear infection and the weather did not co-operate either on days, but he continued when possible with as GREAT result; SOLO!
the Chilhowee airfield covered in snow.
A bit of the same story!
In our Sportavia time we had once an 84 year old Japanese gentleman going solo. It was the high- light in his life! He was in the past a ” kamikaze-pilot”, had not flown for 50 years and never in a glider.
His daughter , who arrived with him, took good care of him and our instructors did the rest and he even made it after going solo in the Blanik, to the junior!
We celebrated EXTRA with him.First SOLO, lot’s of SAKE!!!!
ALWAYS a great moment for the pilot, but also for the instructor, the owners of the business and ALL members /guests.
The new season starts soon and the soaring-season-openings -party from the Gelderse [number 1 on the OLC airfield statistics last year] is already on March 1!!
In winter lot’s of work has been done on all gliders, as maintenance is so important.Also here in Holland as you can see , by young and old.
Both pictures courtesy Frans Guise in the work shop of the ACVZ
[Amsterdam Club for soaring]
And new gliders for the season arrive as the DG 505 MB elan in Italy.
Also new owners of “used” gliders are happy and wait impatient to try them out !
Several pilots have visited courses [as in Holland TABOE] where top glider pilots share their knowledge with young but also older pilots [ no age limit ] , so they can fly this season better and achieve a higher cross country level .
Others are packing the container to send the last gliders home as they do in Corowa next week.
Got by the way a very nice link from Grietje, who owns Soaring Corowa with her husband Francesco and also they are both tuggies and instructors. .
ASH 30Mi in Australia, Corowa
The first ASH 30 MI flying over Australian soil, great video with camera’s on the ground and a go pro on/in the glider.
The pictures under the video show the fantastic paella Pepe always makes as a farewell in the last week.
The Belgium juniors get some extra attention as well and we can see at recent comps that it helps for both the Dutch as well as the Belgium pilots:
They organized a junior refresher and all Belgian Juniors aged <25 and with cross-country experience (3 distance-flights of at least 100km) are welcome.
Topics:
MacCready (Tijl Schmelzer)
Team flying (Niel Deijgers)
Debugging nutrition misunderstandings (Hanne Vandikkelen)
The power of a positive attitude (Ken Evens)
St-Gaudens Junior Gliding Camp (Ken Evens)
Shared by Gianni, the new DG 505 MB elan!
According to DG Independency by motorization.
Still nice long flights in the late-overseas-season as in Narromine, the place -to-be, as you know, for the JWGC next year. Over 600 [500 FAI] by Brian Du Rieu in the 18 m. LS 8.With that flight he topped the OLC list on Wednesday.
Narromine had a real good summer and is at this stage number 6 on the list of airfields from the OLC with 89 pilots making 489 flights and 235.504 km. in total!
Thursday only showed a total of 13 flights worldwide, it’s really waiting now for the more exciting spring flights, specially those in the mountain areas.
Yesterday from Cunderdin in Western Australia a fantastic flight in the SZD 55 by James Cooper; 800 FAI triangle extended to 894 km.
Minden had on Thursday a beaut wave day with flights up to over 600 km in the Duo Discus and yesterday even 986 in an ASW 27!!!
In Tocumwal a new Danish record for 2 seaters was flown by Joergen and Birgitte in their new ARCUS on February 8.The heat is broken now and they are back to normal temperatures and not the 47.8 anymore they had.With the chance no flying, but a few days to recover.
They have notified the following Danish Record attempt for 2-seat glider, max.20 meters span:
Another record was flown and an interesting one; a simultaneous record over 750 km in LS 8 from West Wyalong, S. from Narromine by Matt Gage and Allan Barnes.
When you try to fly such a record , you won’t make it. It happened to them in their training to get better in pair flying as practice for the next WGC!!!
And as I read it was not the first time in Australia. It happened before in 1985 when an LS 3 and a Mini Nimbus flew 1.015 km. over an out and return.
It seems it also happened in hang gliding as 5 pilots claimed a simultaneous continental record and all flew the same distance, over the same route, in Brazil.
Did n’t know that!
This is how it is written in the General Section of the Sporting Code and this applies to all air sports
6.6 SIMULTANEOUS RECORDS. On any date that a record is broken by more than one pilot, the best performance only will be awarded the new record, except that, if two or more aircraft flying in a group and in the same conditions achieve exactly the same performance and simultaneously beat a record, the performance may be registered as a record in the joint names of the pilots or members of that group.
HAVE to finish with the Olympic Winter Games.
Love every minute. Have not ever looked so much TV as this year. Share the happiness and sadness so near to each other, in every of those winter- sports.
It’ all so close !!! Our Dutch speed skater lost from a Polish mate by 0.0003 sec. At such a moment I think why not as in skiing; 2 gold or 2 bronze on the podium. But rules are rules!
Impressed by both the Polish and Dutch athletes on 7 and 8 on the medal list between all those GIANT’s in winter sport.They are not real winter sport countries!
With 13 medals the Dutch still live on an orange cloud with still at least 4 to come in speed skating, maybe more.
It’s good to see that ALL hard work over the last 4 years now bears fruit and get’s the admiration of the world.
Though speed skating is not very popular I noticed . World wide it only get’s a small amount of viewers whilst ice dancing is the most popular.
Just looked at Belle Brockhoff who is a snowboard crosser and participates in the Olympics for the very first time.
Pilots from the end of the 70thies / early eighties might remember Bruce. His daughter just finished on spot 8 in Sochi!!!!She did so well, was pushed aside in the half finals, [ got apologies for that from the Canadian girl] for that reason missed the final, but was 2d in the small final. Good on her. Mum Kristine, sister Brooke and dad will be very proud on her!
I guess all Bruces mates as well. I am!
Bruce during his gliding life, and last year and daughter Belle ; number 8 at the snow board cross in Sochi.
Last picture courtesy Olympic Australian team /Cameron Spencer.
Enjoy the rest of your Sunday, time to look at speed skating 1500 m for women.
Cheers Ritz and for more news about last week you still can read ,temporarily once a week on Wednesday at www.soaring.eu
