MERRY CHRISTMAS…Losing with ONE Point, or Winning with One!

Wishing you all a MERRY CHRISTMAS. Enjoy  these days where ever you are with family and friends!
The pilots in Namibia have such good weather, they can only be happy, but the weather in Australia is good too and even expected to be much better, so everybody not at home but on an overseas trip should be in a jolly good Christmas mood as well.

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The South African Nationals finished just before Christmas so some pilots could quickly fly home or ask their family to join in over there.
A great 10 days of good soaring there at Welkom. The South African National Champion in 18 m class is Oscar Goudriaan, winning with ONE point on runner up Ronald [The Netherlands]. Oscar won two days; John Coutts [NZ] won two as well and Arne [ Denmark ] won three days and came in 3d!!John was 7th.

Ronald [2] and Arne [3] trying the JS 1 “zero gravity device” as Iain Baker, who send the picture, called it.

Was very much impressed with the Soyu launch last Thursday. Together with the Russian commander and an American scientist, “our” Andre Kuipers left for a five month visit, about 400 km from us, to the ISS station. Visit means doing lots of research; Andre is a medical doctor and on this trip also the flight engineer. [see blog]

Enjoy the rest of the news from Wednesday and today also a lot about Welkom on www.soaring.eu
Next week also the 2 new open class gliders Quintus M from Schempp-Hirth and the Antares 23E from Lange Aviation. Standby!
Picture courtesy Maria Böttcher…Frohe Weihnachten, Merry Christmas,  Bonne Noël en een Zalig Kerstfeest.