Day 6..what will it bring!!!!???

Good morning! A BIG applause yesterday evening at the USA/Australia party for Ed Kilbourne and I come back on that evening later in GAGGLE TALK.
A huge applause yesterday evening as well for Bill Elliott , who created an informative site about soaring, www.soaringcafe.com. His partner Rand will arrive today as well and together [Iam only the guest blogger] we are going to inform you about the last exciting week. And AGAIN… Soaringcafe is an addition to the official WGC site, like the many GOOD blogs which are written this year by nearly all countries. Good on them…. so we promote in our own style/language our beautiful sport. I started blogging before the word blogging was invented , is what a lot of people say, now I am proud that this way of promoting soaring, is POPULAR!!!!

It was a short day yesterday , in 18 m. the day was devaluated for that reason so that day-winner Tom Claffey [on the picture below] did not win the 1000 points but “only ” 972, in other classes 1000 points were available for Sebastiaan Kawa in 15 m. and Michael Sommer  in open. Tom missed out earlier on 1000 points by having 50 points of penalty so , he tries again.

Overall scores after 5 days in 15 m. class:
Sebastian Kawa [Poland] with 4880 points
Matthias Sturm [ Germany] with 4857 points
David Bauder [Germany] with 4681 points.

Overall scores in 18 m. class after 5 days;
Zbigniew Nieradka [Poland] with 4840 points
Lucasz Wojcik [Poland] with 4825 points
Mike Young [UK] with 4791

Overall scores in open class after 5 days;
Laurent Aboulin [France] with 4760 points
Bruce Taylor [Australia] with 4712 points
Michael Sommer [Germany] with 4559 points.
As you can see EVERYTHING can still happen!!!

Got another reaction from a pilot who flew in Benalla in 1987. It was George Schuit, known also by a lot, as  my ex husband and still hood mate. He flew with our son Dennis . They were the first father-son combination ever at a WGC, in the first one where 2 seaters were allowed in open class. Here is his comment;

—From someone who flew that longest task in Benalla.

 The task was 841.6 km. Take-off was somewhat delayed because it took some time for the temperature to rise. The first 70 kms or so where difficult with the top of the thrermals around 3,000 feet. Then, north of the Murray River,the speed picked up and cumulus formed, initially at 6,000 feet bit gradually rising to 11,000 feet. Most open class glider where around the second turn (Booligal) at 18:00 with still over 300 km to go back to Benalla. As we progressed towards Benalla the weather started to weaken and about half the open class met again, quite low now, just south of the Murray River again with about 80 kms to go. All had dumped their water about during the preceeding long glide because the conditions where so weak. The whole group eventually made it back and it was indeed Ingo who won the day. It was the 30th of January 1987.—
Thanks for all those comments, we know now!

 

GAGGLE TALK today;
wished I were at Ed’s concert. I am a fan of his since the late 70ies. It’s time that his songs are passed down to a new generation. This was one of the comments on Ed’s visit to all of us here in Uvalde.
 Absolutely correct!!!!What a great singer he is. He entertained us for an hour and started with a new lyric on ythe music of one of his songs, handed over to him by Kerry Claffey and song about the USA pilots and Aussie pilots here in Uvalde NOW.
He had never done that before but did it without hesitation and the song was cool!!!Bought his 2 cd’s.

Ed was in gliding between the 60thies and 90thies in the times with Charlie Spratt and Karl Striedeck, George Moffat and Doug Jacobs. I met them all as well in the past. 

Loved the way our hosts had set up their party on a small airfield which is for sale . More later!

Was on the grid already , in the tent and off to the briefing now, it starts to look like “WORK”.

CU later.