All guests have left and it is more quiet here again, so back to the normal twice-a-week- publishing of the soaring.eu blogs. Otherwise they are getting TOO long and too “old”/out of date and old news is NO NEWS.
It’s autumn here, grey and wet. Temperatures dropped from 22 to 11 and you can feel it. We even had on Friday the -coldest- ever -11th- of- October in history with 8.6 dgr.C.
Time to change from summer clothes and open shoes, to winter outfits and boots.
The Alps normally give a lot of joy certainly for the pilots , but a couple of days ago heavy unexpected snowfall created chaos in those areas. The South of Germany was hit as well. Due to the fact the leaves were not yet from the branches of the trees [the weather was not yet really windy and cold over there] lots of those branches became to heavy and broke off, creating problems for trains and cars.
ALL fall – in Holland- pictures in this blog are from ; Ineke Oorthuijs , wife from Sikko Vermeer, well known Dutch glider pilot flying WGC’s and EGC’s in the past and still a very active pilot. Great pictures and typical Dutch.
They only needed 5 days to win the World Solar Race over 3000 km.; the students from the Technical University of Delft!!!!
The happy Delft team winning for the 5th time and this time with a brand new model on 4 wheels. TOP!!! UNIQUE!!!
Courtesy Hans Peter van Velthoven via NUON sponsor.
And the last day was not even a sunny one as they had to cope with rain and wind.
Their 5th win, so compliments to the university, the 16 involved students amongst them glider pilot Annemiek as the only female driver in the team and all sponsors and others involved in this success!
By the way, the team leader was a young lady as well; Marlies Hak.
Team coach was “our” first ever astronaut Wubbo Ockels, who went in Adelaide on the shoulders of the young ones! Wubbo has a pretty bad form of cancer, so all very emotional and pretty special he could be there.
Runner up was the University of Japan who won the last 2 races!
The team from the University of Delft, with Annemiek 2d to the left and Marlies 4th to the left.
Courtesy; FB site Annemiek.
On the last days of the 2013 OLC season I noticed the arrival in Tocumwal, from Stephan Soll. Not only with son Aljoscha, but also his younger brother Niklas is with him this time. Great to see that a young new generation starts to fly where their dad flew so many LONG and happy flights for ages. Stephan was already in Toc. in the 80thies!!! He has an LS 4 stationed at the Toc airport and came/comes back every year sometimes twice to enjoy down-under-soaring in Tocumwal.
In the beginning of October Austrian pilot Hans Peter Ueblacker tasted a bit of soaring in Toc as well.
The last week of this OLC season was and interesting one. 1.053 km for John Williams from the wave resort Kinross in Scotland [UK] in a 20 m. ANTARES!!! GOOD on him.
He saw the East and the West Coast , have a look at his flight on 10-10-2013.
In the same week ONE day later, 2x a 1000 from South Africa!!!
The 18 m. ANTARES M version
The Jonker brothers had some good flights from nearly 800 km. from Potchef in their JS 1 and Wayne Schmidt a fantastic flight in his ASW 20 from 718 km.[513 FAI] Yes indeed the overseas season really started!
Even better the first 1000 km flights have been flown in SA on 11-10-2013.Here is the flight from Oscars together with Pieter!!!!
Not just a flight but a set FAI 1000 km. TRIANGLE!!!!
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html?dsId=3402475
And here is part of the news shared by Jonker Sailplanes!
“ The first two 1000km flights for the season in South Africa were sucessfully completed today by Oscar Goudriaan and Pieter Nouwens.
Oscar and Peter declared a FAI triangle from Potchefstroom with turnpoints Delportshoop and Vorstershoop – a task of well over 1050km. They launched just after 10h30 and set off at 1000m AGL fulfilling the FAI requirements.
The weather was not as good as expected, with only a few 4m/s thermals around the task. The last turnpoint was only rounded at 16h00, with still almost 400km to go.
Jonker Sailplanes saluuts you – these flights were the 1st declared 1000km fligths in the JS1-C 21m! Well done!
In the club class Ronald Taljaard and AP Kotze completed declared 500km [602 in total] in their Cirruses. Well done boys. Seems if they not only good at developing gliders at JS – they can use them also!”
Congratulations, great effort so early in the season.
WOMEN IN GLIDING AUSTRALIA…..just to let you know!
“Girls- just- want -to -have- fun- gliding- week 1-7th December at Bathurst Soaring Club. Free accommodation available in caravans and bunkhouse. Gliders, instructors and fun planned for the whole week. Come for a few days or the whole week.”
And more women in the news last week; Here is a link to Sarah Kelman’s story about “Gliders might improve pilots’ upset flying skills”. Sarah once was WWGC champion but I also remember she had a pretty nasty incident in Rieti one day with her glider .
You can also read the article in SOARINGCAFE.
I wrote you about flying in Brasil last week, it seems that Pepe who flew in the past many years with us in Tocumwal and later in Corowa loves Brasil as a place-to-go-to as well. I noticed nice flights from Luis Ed. Magalhaes on day 4 of the Brasil Nationals. Gugui Pernhagen , who runs Bahia Gliding, is one of the competitors and they had their last day on yesterday.
“Bahia Gliding is a Glider Resort in Luís Eduardo Magalhães City, west Side of Bahia State!
Bahia is in North east Brazil.
This place is Probably the Best Placê To Sailplanes in South América“.
I asked some more info and will receive that from Gugui, after the comps are finished.
Day 5 at LEM, was a good one with flights up to over 400 km. Pepe flew the last 3 days with Marco Junqueira in the Nimbus 3D instead of the ASH 31.
Day 6 even had up to nearly 600 km. flights.
Women win PRIZES; Malala did not win the Nobel Prize for peace as , [ the in Holland -The Hague situated OPCW, an organisation fighting chemical weapons won the prize] they said she was too young and they were afraid of her well being, but she won the prestigious European Sacharov prize. She also got an invitation to visit Obama.
In literature, Canadian short story novelist Alice Munro won the Nobel prize. In 2009 she won already the prestigious Man Booker International Prize .
Women in Formula 1; a more sad story as I read that the 33 year old formula 1 test driver from Spain, Maria de Villota, driving for team Marussia, is found dead in her hotel room.
Tragic was her race on the circuit of Duxford last year where she crashed heavily and was badly injured. For a while she was in coma and she lost one of her eyes.
Her book “Life is a present” was supposed to be presented tomorrow.
Poor parents [ dad was a racer as well!] and family and friends. It looks her death was a result of the accident last year.
Today her Formula 1 mates kept a 1 minute silence tribute for her in Japan. A great race by the way!
Maria as shared on internet.
Generous women; In the USA a “nice” [understatement] lady donated 100 million dollar to her former school!!!As a property developer she earns enough money to make the school REALLY happy!!! Good on her!
I was looking forward to a nice friendly fight in Kingaroy between Bruce Taylor and Arne Boye Möller , but,…it’s not going to happen. Bruce is not flying the 53 Australian Multi Class Nationals, but was so kind to bring his car and Brad Edwards ASG 29 to Kingaroy for Arne.
That’s what we did in the past as well. We swapped our glider and car for somebody in the Aussie team in Europe for one to fly in Australia. Too easy!
The comps start tomorrow on Monday October 14 with an official practise day and continue till October 25.
During free practise they had a blue day according to Mandy, who regularly is the TC for Australia at WGC’s and a windy one.
“Today was another blue day with climbs to 6000’ AMSL or 4500’ AGL….
They set a 2.5 hour AAT which a few pilots flew.”
“Weather at briefing and the forecast 30kt winds have persuaded all but a few hardy souls ,to have a rest day.”
You are up to date enjoy and CU next Wednesday,
Cheers Ritz
on Sunday October 13 2013.