TODAY Wednesday July 23 is a day of NATIONAL PUBLIC MOURNING for the first MH 17 passengers who arrive this afternoon at 4 at Eindhoven Airport. One minute of silence at 4 in Holland where ever possible,[ planes will not start, busses/coaches will wait a minute, so do the trains]!!!!
Flags half-mast.
A Dutch Hercules and an Australian Boeing C-17 Globemaster will bring the first bodies to Eindhoven.
It will be a tough day!!!!A day of National Mourning has not been set in Holland since 1962.
Our Dutch royals, government officials and families of the passengers will be at the tarmac when the remains arrive. After a solemn ceremony, the bodies will be taken in more than 60 hearses, to a military facility for forensic testing in Hilversum.
The main road from Eindhoven to Hilversum will be closed at that time.The airfield at Eindhoven will be closed for all traffic between 15.45 and 18.00.
Words fail……..a nation in mourning! A world in mourning, as ALL bodies will be going back home via Holland!
All around 1200 wind mills in Holland will be in mourning-stand/state.
Picture shared by the Wind mill association.
BUT<…life continues and it is good to go away for a couple of days to clear the mind, so I managed to organize with help from Frans and my daughter Inge to get a ticket and a room for Leszno flying to POZNAN on Friday August 1 arriving in the evening at Leszno and departing again on Monday August 4 in the afternoon.
Looking forward to that!!!!!!
More comps are on , a few have finished again. A short retrospect and a look at what’s going on at the moment.
During the SUMMER COMPS at Malden in Holland, the pilots had after a no-or-nearly-no-points-day-1, a long task on their day 2.
Though to be honest the 137.1 km . from Nick Hanenburg on day 1 you can only call GOOD; he deserved more than the 54 points he got , as the runner up ” only” flew 82.1 km.
306 km. was set for club class and the winner was,….Steven Huiskes , [St. Cirrus] who flew in the past JWGC and WGC [ Uvalde] . Patrick [LS1f ….was Dutch National Champion and flew JWGC as well ] was now the runner up with 988 points. Mind you Steven is still a JUNIOR .
In open class 364 km. was set and Steven’s dad, Harry [ Ventus 2CX/18m.] put the 1000 points in this class in his pocket.
Next day had a 3 hour AAT won by Steven in club class with 266.5 km. and dad in open class with 341.4 km.
They tried hard to add 2 more days but though they flew 1 more with best distance 50 km. in club and 86.9 km in open, it was over and out after 3 days.
Results; Steven wins the club class with and Harry the open class with 2000 points.
By the way the club class podium was filled with 3 JUNIORS, Steven, Sander and Nick. Good on them!
2 Of them , Steven and Sander flew the identical -twin-Cirrusses, with call sign AU and AG. These gliders belong to the Foundation Soaring Events Holland and are fully equipped by the sponsors Glider Equipment and Glider Pilot Shop.
Our TOP juniors!!
Picture shared on their FB site.
The female Nationals in Poland were won by Joanna Biedermann. The ladies were flying on 8 days and day 6 even had a set 500 km. ; unfortunately no finishers but still 474.3 km. by the best pilot of the day.With 2 more over 300 km. days this was a good competition and Joanna had a total of 7201 points and runner up Judyta 6824.
The French club class Nationals are in full swing in Vinon. FULL is maybe too much said, as the first 2 days were cancelled. Day 1 was won by Didier Hauss [Cirrus] and runner up was Gilles Navas.[LS4] Both fly/flew already in the top for ages.
From the 19 only 6 finished.
The 3 hour AAT yesterday was won with 278.4 km. in time 3.18, by Yvon Puyou in a Pegase and with that 45 points more were scored on Gilles and 100 on Didier.
In the USA pilots are flying the Club and Modern Class Nationals from Midlothian in Texas and have flown for 5 days till now, with 2 days to go.
After 5 days Francois Pin leads the club class in the SILENT 2a, before Danny Sorenson and Boyd Willat, both flying a DISCUS.
In the Modern Class the CD from the WGC in Uvalde, Ken Sorenson, nearly won every day and leads with more than 600 points .He flies his Ventus 2 cxa.
HOT in TEXAS!!!
As shared by the SSA.
Yesterday started the official training from the WGC in Leszno. They had great weather!!
The Aussies were pleased with ” their weather”.
Great skies and an (unintentional selfie) after installing the KANGAROO.
Pictures shared by Aussie Team
Fixed tasks from over 500 km. were set;
610 for open, 500 for 15 m and 522.4 for 18 m.That’s called GOOD PRACTICE!!!
In 15 m. it was PHIL JONES, [129 km./h. in Ventus 2cxa] ] this time not Howard or Steve but Phil got the 1000 practice-points.
In 18 m. Mike Young [140.8 km./h.in ASG 29] and Russell Cheetham ALSO from the UK, were the best and in open class , surprise surprise AGAIN the UK with Pete Harvey in his new JS 1 C [138 km./h.] and Andy Davis.
Dick Butler in the CONCORDIA was 4th.
Not all pilots did fly on this first official practice/training day.
28 from 47 went up in the air in 15 m. class and 8 outlanded.
In 18 m. 21 pilots had other important things to do, 25 flew and the 2 Belgium pilots Jean Luc and Yves, out landed [in real or virtual] after 20 km. Werner Meuser after 30 k. Better now then during the WGC.
In open class 18 pilots finished after 606 km. ,6 ” out landed ” and 13 were otherwise busy.
Today tasks have not been set yet.It looks like 2.30 AAT’s in each class.
They all departed on Monday June 23 and arrived as a team or as sole pilot in 4 classes on different days and times.
HERE are the results of the 2014 EUROGLIDE.
The PURE gliders; 14 teams or gliders
Number 1 and arriving on June 27 at 13.36 UTC, was team Sikko Vermeer, Bart Renckens and Hans Makkee in the DUO DISCUS. The next team arrived one day later on June 28 at 8.05 UTC . They, 2 pilots from Eindhoven Thom and Jacques flew the LS 6 /15m.
The low turbo’s; 14 teams or gliders
Dirk and Joost Wolf [father and son] and friends Eric Borgmann and Max Bloch arrived on the 26th at 13.10 UTC at Malden in the ARCUS. 2 Teams in a Duo Discus arrived one day later 7 other teams only on July 1.
The high turbo’s; 12 teams or gliders
They did well as 5 teams arrived at June 26 and 3 one day later.
Best team was from Limburg, Robert Werts, Bram Winters and Mathilde van Lieshout. They arrived at 15.34 whilst the other teams arrived at 15.55 and 16.39 and 17.04 and 17.34. That was a real race!!!
The self launchers; 24 teams or gliders
Also here a REAL RACE, as 11 gliders arrived on June 26 at different times. The best time , 12.03 was flown in the Nimbus 4DM by Max Leenders, Wolfert Voet and Marc Ruhe.
Belgium pilot Geert Van Duyse arrived in his ASH 26 E, only half an hour later. Good on him.
3 German teams arrived at 14.36.
Now it is 2 years of waiting before they can all go again. They love EUROGLIDE those pilots.
CU next week,
Ritz