May 1st today! April 30th was a hectic Day of Labour, certainly for those who are cleaning Amsterdam after the celebrations. What a day it was yesterday, SUNNY AND DRY for all national and international visitors in Amsterdam.
After more than 100 years we have a KING and are grateful for what the Queen has done in her 33 years of hard work. Now she is not going to sit behind the geraniums but still will deal with official visits, as princess now.
The International press was here in Amsterdam with over 1500 and EVERYBODY except a handful of republicans LOVED the Royal Dutch HANDOVER as CNN called it.
Historic and traditional ceremony first during the morning and afternoon and….then,…party time with world-best DJ Armin van Buuren, and Andre Rieu and many other artists, as well as sporter Epke Zonderland and our famous speed skaters.
Before all royals went to dinner, a group of F-16 fighters with one ORANGE F-16 in the middle, “raced” over Amsterdam in a perfect formation and one pilot had a dashcam aboard!! What a great finale to an awesome day!

 

Our royal family and the “old” generation Beatrix, the new generation Willem Alexander and Maxima and the furure generation Crown Princess Amalia in the middle.

Not all people looked at the TV all day (fabulous presentation  by the way by the NOS), like I did as the weather here was AGAIN too beautiful to NOT fly!!! Several flights over 600 km were made in the good lift. Spring is just so good in Holland!

Flying was more important but the orange feeling was also in the glider.
Courtesy of Jeroen Beeke.

I wrote earlier about the 600 km flights from the north of Belgium to nearly the north of Holland (Hoogeveen) by pilots from Keiheuvel and Diest last Saturday. It happened on Sunday as well!!
Two of them are practising team flying for the Leszno JWGC—Jeroen Jennen and Niel Deijgers.
Jeroen made some pictures of Neil in the Libelle while flying the 560K task .

 

Courtesy Jeroen Jennen
AND
MORE LIBELLES

 

What a great good looking and still perfectly performing toy the Libelle is!!
Courtesy; Niel Deijgers at the Airfield AEROCLUB in Belgium (Brasschaat)
Look for Neil’s story (in English) at http://nieldeijgers.blogspot.be/

And more “Libelle news&#8221—this time from a young Dutch pilot. As he shares with us, ” he was not allowed to sleep with his girlfriend when he would not fly over 300 km “ To be sure he would not be cold and alone, he flew his first 500K in a Libelle. Isn’t that a sweet story,&#8230talking about support!?

In Holland we had 119 flights on Sunday with the best distance 638 km (509 km triangle) from Texel, one of the islands up north, in a DG 400/17 m. Not bad, certainly when you see that the pilot flew over water and close to the coast, but also south toward Terlet in the middle of Holland!
On Saturday 107 flights, so lot’s of fun for our Dutch pilots in springtime. Yesterday 90 flights were added, 12 over 500 km.
Belgium had 17 and 18 mostly in the north of Belgium. On Sunday even 819 km from Weelde (Ventus 2ct/18 m) all the way to the north of Holland and even the north of Germany.

Also at the AERO last week—an art exhibition by Katrin Wötzl from Pilotessa Desing .com . She was very succesful and you could even win one of her paintings.

as shared by her on FB.

 

” First flights in Finland with Duo Discus XL(T) OH-1017 “EIK”.”, I read on FB.
Good to see this glider in Finland as well. Schempp-Hirth is pretty active with the ARCUS, QUINTUS, Duo Discus and Discus.

A late day, but a day, at least for two classes last Sunday in KLIX, as the first pilots left on track around 16.00!!

Pretty marginal flying though in club class with a B task of 123.7 km and five of 25 pilots managed to finish. The girls, Sabine and Swaantje, started together, managed to fly 90 km and both got 80 points for doing their “job”. The winner must have been happy with 129 points.

In 18 m/open some action as well—136.44 km (B task) and here 16 of 24 finished. With late starts at 16.07 (some left at 17.47!!), the two Swedish pilots—one of them well known Börje Erikkson—won the day in their ASG 29s with 393 and 392 points.

Europe is not THAT big, but you can see the difference in weather within Belgium and Holland on that Sunday.

I’m having ome problems with my blog, so I’d better quit now. Back with more news on the weekend.
Cheers…Ritz,….on Wednesday May 1 2013. By the way, the first day of May started in the night with MINUS 3. That’s nice dry, cold but great soaring air is still here.

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