Now the next BIG event in soaring is coming closer, I take a better look at Chaves. Did that already in my own blog last Wednesday, but here I’ll look ahead a bit more at what’s coming up.
Quite a few faces will be the same there; the president of the Jury, Peter Ryder. Art Grant will be back, this time as chief of scrutineering. He is as good at that as he was as steward. TC Uli and Chrissie with little Fin and also a few pilots have the time and honour to fly in both WGC’s. For those who missed that blog, here is the part about Chaves:
Looking at the entries I thought straight away; would it be possible for Sebastian Kawa to win this championship as well??? And … I guess it is possible, why not?… he defends his 2010 title in standard class and will be very motivated to keep that title. With the winning mood still in his brain, he should do well. His mate Tomasz Rubaj will be there as well and number three pilot from Poland in standard is Michal Lewczuk. BUT… of course there are more potential winners!!!!!! Twenty-nine competitors in this class will do their utmost to win. In club class there are 44, with USA tuggie now glider pilot Sarah, as somebody we met already in Uvalde, as well as the Russian pilot Dmitry Timoshenko and Louis Bouderlique, who was so unfortunate to be involved in that midair in Uvalde on the one-but-last-day. Wishing him this time an incident/accident-free competition, full of fun!!!! It will be the last time for world class, as they will be on their own in the future and 25 pilots have entered in this PW5 class.
Art Grant in Uvalde as Steward, here with Thomas Gostner.
Picture courtesy Roberto.
Another champion from the last WGC is Arndt Hovestadt, who has to try and defend his title in club class [standard libelle]. Last Friday he was number 4 on the OLC list flying from Rinteln in Germany a nice 524 km flight in a Discus A. Good practise far northeast of Oerlinghausen where as he mentioned the wind was TOUGH!!! Up to 80 km /h.
Frenchman Laurent Couture was the winner in 2010 in the PW 5 class and this class will be not combined anymore with the 33d WGC in Poland [flapped] and Finland [unflapped gliders] in 2014. Those pilots will have their own comps now. The 20 m 2-seater class will replace the world class and pilots in different countries are trying to qualify for 2014 in Räyskälä.
Brian Spreckley will be the chief steward and the stewards are from Argentina: Mario Reynoso, who I met at several comps in the past, very nice fellow (he even flew one of our gliders in Benalla in 1987) and Renato Tsukamoto, whom I’ve never met.
Peter will have two virtual jury members, Angel Cassado from Spain, who I had the honour to work with in Italy as steward and Arturo Diez who I do not know.
The vice director is Daniel Dekker with a VERY DUTCH name. He is Dutch I heard once from Horatio. The chief scorer is Sergio Reinaudo who was the Argentinian TC in Uvalde.
Sad accident from Phoenix Arizona where a young 19 year old Dutch boy” had to do his flight test with his Dutch examiner and a USA instructor. They were missing and found after 2 days about 15 km from Phoenix. Though they are not yet identified the CEO of the KLM Flying school believes it’s his team and they sadly enough did not survive. The Piper Archer they were flying is /was from the CAE Oxford Aviation Academy, yes the sponsor of Dutch top soaring.
Cheers … Ritz
