January 8;
A great “morning -tea” for Nicole, Richard and me at Chrissies Bookshop [ sorry…no pictures, no time, too much talking!] and a very good lunch later in Barooga with my longtime friends , Margie, Lesley, Gina, Jill and Deslee. Last time this season I saw Lesley as she lives in Oaklands , not really next doors.But compared to other distances here in Australia not far away either.
With Gina, Jill, Deslee, Margie and Lesley.
We decided right now, to go back to this pub in 25 years………..
Today in a week I will leave Tocumwal for Benalla’s last day and party/closing ceremony/prize giving.
Booked a room and a ticket for the dinner and one of my friends will bring me to Melbourne Airport the next day.
All organized!!!!
Talking about Benalla, I will be going there tomorrow to see and hear what’s going on, now I share what I read and heard.
THEY FLY today. It’s pretty blue here,with high cirrus firmaments and lot’s of airplane-trails.
I heard they pass by later in the day,so I have a look for you!!!
Open class and 18 m. have a 3.30 AAT, 15 m. 3.00 and they should pass by here. All others are flying along this area, about 20 k more to the N. over Finley and Berrigan , Rand and Tocumwal is a border of a cylinder as well.
Later they changed it in a C task for open as Bruce mentioned;3 hour AAT.
Yesterday, 15 from 15 in open class finished and Ian won the day in his JS 1c;136 km./h. That’s about 10 km./h. faster than the Finnish team with Antti in the ARCUS M.
12 From 15 were faster than 115 km. /h.
Antti shared some news from the Masters in Rayskala. I KNOW what a great place it is, I love it!!!! On that first day of the EGC I was there as a steward and it was exceptional exciting such a 1000 on day 1 and lot’s flew it!!!!
” To all my gliding friends: when planning competitions for summer 2016 keep in mind the new international gliding competition Räyskälä Masters. Räyskälä has hosted several EGC and WGC competitions since 1976 when the WGC was held there for the first time. The competition period is 11.-18.6.2016, which is the best period for gliding and long tasks are possible if the weather is at its best. In 2005 EGC we had the 1011 km task on the first competition day. Maybe another 1000km task in next summer’s Räyskälä Masters!
TEAM AM [Lehto/Luukkanen] from Finland.
In 18 m. class, INDEED ,Tom Claffey won and except for one pilot who missed out on 100 k, all finished.Nice speed as well; 131.km./h. Peter Temple was runner up and Hungarian pilot Zoltan was 3th and Czech pilot Petr 5th. with David in between.
In 15 m. it looked yesterday , when I left you, GOOD for Matthew and it WAS good!!! He won again, so 2 daily wins, one a bit of a lucky one as he wrote by himself. All 33 pilots finished so did Swaantje, flying 4 hours and 18 minutes after being SO ill!!!!You can only admire her.
Matthews view on day 2;
” Day 2 – one of those blue days with lots of cu. I saw a bunch of gliders up in wave prestart, and assumed they’d all started out of the wave when they disappeared – seems like they all fell out and started beneath the clouds anyway. Started pretty much as soon as I got up and just managed to catch the tail end of the main gaggle before the cumulus ran out, and worked my way up the gaggle in the blue then lead out onto final glide for first home. Looking truly blue today.”
It looks like a difficult day today for the OZGLIDE pilots. Guess scores will be later in and some out landings are already a fact.
www.soaring.eu for the latest on scores.
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In between a lot of action at the Tocumwal Aerodrome as well. The “Chinese” Arcus M flew it’s maiden flight with 2 instructors and later with an instructor and Andrew “Ping” Du one of the owners. He was so enthusiastic about this flight, that he straight away shared it with “their followers” on FB.
Schempp-Hirth is doing a great job in keeping an eye on things like this and Andrew got their congratulations for the flight over
Tocumwal and now of course , it’s waiting for the first flight in China with this VH-CHA.
As you know they are in the process of setting up a commercial center here in Tocumwal, so it’s buzzing from all kind of activities.
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Cheers Ritz