Alphen aan den Rijn  Sunday  September 2 2012 

ritzdeluy@hotmail.com     www.glidinginternational.com     www.soaringcafe.com

Another link to a great photo series from Bert Schmelzer jr. This time about flying from Vinon. Here is the link and the above pictures are his as well. He takes you with him during his flight explaining where he goes and where he is/was. Fabulous!

https://picasaweb.google.com/101367179377196465151/TheBestOfVinon2012

We are in September already. Time to think of autumn , overseas soaring and travelling to Australia or Africa, to New Sealand or the USA. Last time I spoke about the few days with over 2000 entered flights on the OLC. Checking the year 2011 it was even less only ONE day with 2816 entered flights on June 12.
Getting MORE curious I had a look at 2010 as well with this result:
May 23 2306 flights
May 29 2202 flights
June 26 and June 27 were good days with 2603 and 2081 flights
July 18 with 2553 flights.
July 31 with 2058 flights.
So …a pretty good season in 2010!

The season is nearly over but the USA still has some great soaring weather. As I heard from most pilots visiting Uvalde, they had a great season. Still now they fly up to over 700 km. in Moriarty  [yesterday 747 km.] and Boulder. In Europe Rieti [Italy] Vinon [France, last Sunday 1.137 km. by Gilles Navas!!!] and Fuente [Spain] showed some longer flights last week. 
AND…….YESTERDAY Holland was good, while coming back by train from the S. I could see nice cu’s everywhere so checking Holland on the OLC I found great early autumn flights; Nico Koster in the ASH 31 ;649, and I say it again, no wave, no mountains, only flat-as-a-pancake-Holland.
595 km for Jeroen Kole in the discus…..young pilots Alfred Paul and Bart with  614 and 514 km.in LS 8 and st. cirrus. A total of 106 entered flights ..not bad!!!!
Also from the N. of Belgium 2 LIBELLE flights all over Holland, one from Bert who flew with us in the past in Tocumwal;
—”a great team flight with Bert Van Eyken! Started out with the idea of a FAI500 Diest, Hoogeveen,Dinsdlaken,Diest. When flying north it looked like overcast in the direction of Dinslaken so decided to fly further North so we had 245km out of Diest and then returned. When we turned south we thought we would never make it back home. Some great thermals surprised us in the evening, a whopping 2m/s above Lommel @19h in the evening !—”
Today looks a bit grey so it might stay with this ONE GREAT day in Holland, but atleast they had that day!

I did not even know it existed but just received the results of the 14th FAI World Helicopter Championships. Clearly is that the Russian friends are good in this, winning OVERALL and with the women in their class on spot 1-2-and 3 as well.
Russia won the team cup too , before the UK and Germany ,…but in the groupe of juniors are no Russian pilots in the top 1 and 3 is for Belarus and 2 for a young German.
The comps were in Russia at Drakino Airfield. Just to let you know!

Schiphol Amsterdam International Airport was in the news this week and though it was n’t all so important it stirred a lot of  noise. First they found a German WW2  bomb [delays and cancellations, certainly for hall C and less for D] and let it explode controlled. Better then in Germany where they found one in an area in Munich, an English bomb this time and that one could  not be moved,  so they tried to explode it controlled as well…AT the spot. But that worked out not too good, as some houses got fire and lot’s of windows were broken.All people were before evacuated  and fire brigade was ready to get in action straight away!
Back to Amsterdam,  where a Spanish prize- fighter from Vueling [A320 with 180 passengers!] entered Dutch airspace without using the radio. No contact was possible so 2 fighters [ F16] according to the routine in cases like this, [quick reaction alert] went up to accompany the plane. The ”tower ” had heard Arabic music and combined that with the fact they had no contact with….. maybe a highjack.
Another “thing” triggering the huge reaction was that when there was short contact with the pilot, who said that everything was ok, the plane went in  the opposite  direction as was said by the tower….mmm… maybe a silent sign something WAS wrong. But no…all was OK. Funny was that the people in the plane knew that nothing was wrong and with their social media contacted family and friends not to worry.
Good exercise for our anti-terror-unities.

Last Thursday Andre Kuipers was officially welcomed back on earth here in Holland [Noordwijk] where he lives and works [ESA] .He himself found it too much honour [ the crown prince and premier and thousands welcomed him!] , but we all think he deserved it as he is a “master-entertainer” with his stories and the way he even got me interested in a 193 -day-life around the world in a small , he thinks it is big enough, station.

Last but not least; There was a bit of pressure on me[ did that myself!]  in Uvalde to also have the story ready for Gliding International. John the editor had the September/ October -issue on hold and waited for the WGC-story , send to him straight away after the scores were known , so with only 2 days delay it was send to the printer and yesterday still before September 1,  I had it already on my doormath. Great job from them. The scores are also shown in a new format.
The centre spread has a TOP picture from Maria Szemplinska!!!!! www.glidinginternational.com
What’s more in it? A salute to DB ]Dick Butler]; his CONCORDIA project deserves the highest salute! A pity that cause we were all so busy there was not a lot of time to talk, but I read all about the CONCORDIA at SOARINGCAFE.
We had however  one evening time for a few words .