Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday June 19 2011 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
It has been raining ” cat’s and dogs ” here, on Thursday , tonight[ with a heavy thunderstorm] and this morning, so I guess the drought is over now! Yesterday it was like autumn here with storm [5 up to bft.8] at the coast and rain!!!! London had this weather on Friday!
Finland had good weather again , certainly on Friday, so Räyskälä continued with their Nationals after giving all the sadness a place and also Sweden was not too bad, so the “girls” have already 3 days and one official restday, due to rain!!! I will spend a bit more time on the WWGC as this is , as you know, a world event. ALL pictures by Mikael and when you click on them you can read the text and you can double klick and they enlarge. THANK YOU MIKAEL!!!
The first day in Arboga still gave despite all “lows” hanging around, a window for small tasks; A racing task from 129 km. for club and 157 for standard and 15 m. class. It is just good when you can begin! And….at 11.15 this start of the 6th WWGC was a fact, 47 ladies from 11 different countries, left on track and what was even better…..the weather turned out pretty good.
Not a lot of points to earn or to loose but day 1 was a fact;
French Amelie Audier “received ” 396 points in club class and there was 1 outlanding.
In standard 6 outlandings and 394 points for the winner from Poland Joanna Biedermann.[speed 105 km/h] The shortest distance was flown by the current WWGC champion from France Nathalie Hurlin; 72.5 km. believe me , remembering her from the JWGC in Finland, she will be “on fire ” for the rest of the comps!!!!!
In 15 m. class the 3 Czech, “ova”-girls , worked well together and earned for being 1-2-3, 274,272 and 252 points,; 1 outlanding here. ” ova” girl 1,” Alena Netusilova, had a super speed of 132 km/h!!!!!
My expectations; Of course the German team is a very strong team with 2 current WWGC champions and with on top of that a REAL team captain , Uli, who gets paid for doing the job at all different airfields at all different top comps. He is a very nice guy and has loads of experience he can share with his girls.
With also their own meteo, I expect a lot from the German girls. But also the UK has toppers, Gill Spreckley former WWGC champion, as well as France, with young lady Nathalie Hurlin defending her title in club class and another very experienced TC Eric Napoleon and I never underestimate the Polish and Czech girls, the last with a top pilot as their TC,Petr Krejcirik.
I would like to see Elena from Italy doing well, as well as Orsolya from Hungary, they are young , I met them in Finland during the JWGC and talented. Also one of my good friends Teresa , hopefully flies well. Anyway I wish them all good luck, may the best win.
On Thursday the organisation found again a “window ” to fly in with distances of 135 km. for club and 162 for the other classes. With such a good predicting meteo- man Gunnar Karlsson, another soarable day 2, with maybe too short distances like day 1, [always easy to say when the day is over], but it is better to have then all home and not somewhere in a paddock, or the side of a lake, even during a WWGC .Nice to hear “former ” top pilot Gill van den Broeck has arrived to support the ladies.
Day 2 started at 12.00 for club. In the beginning, 0.6 lift up to 900 m. At 13.00 the rest was launched, while some club classers could not stay up and had a re- launch. The day turned out good enough to bring them all home. Only my friend Teresa landed after 52 km, loosing just over 400 points on the number 1 in 15 m. class. Best speed today 96 km/h. In standard class the German ladies advance on to the top and in club it was good to see that Orsolya was 2d, missing out on just ONE point to win the day!
Day 3 Friday, started with lot’s of rain , so the day was at briefing declared as an official rest day!
grid yesterday
Day 4 , yesterday, had an A and B task as the organizers were not sure enough about the weather.In the end the girls flew a C task, 151 km. and 173 for the others!! Small tasks but at least they FLY!!! So 3 days out of 4 till now! A bit Dutch “hanging-in-weather,” but unfortunately NO Dutch or Belgium girls in Arboga. Dutch weather is also familiar to the the UK girls and the Danish girls and that showed. In Club the UK girls were 1 and 2 and the Danish lady 3d. In standard; 1 Denmark, 2 UK. only in 15 m. the French ladies were on 1 -2 and the German girls were on 3-4-5, so they knew also how to deal with this weather.
After 4 days and 3 days of flying; the overall result in
club class;
1. Amelie Audier [France] 1251 points
2. Ayala Liran [UK] 1236 and winning yesterday
3. Elisabeth Sparrow [UK] 1201 and 2d yesterday.
standard class;
1. Joanna Biedermann [Poland] with 1233 points
2. Sue Kussbach [Germany] 1090. Sue is the current World champion.
3. Helle Lundgren [Denmark] 1087. She won yesterday with the best speed of 114 km/h.
Spot 7 still has 1062 points!!!! EVERYTHING is possible as long as they can fly!!!
15 m. class ;
1. Anne Ducarouge from France with “only ” 1112 points.
2. Susanne Schödel [Germany] 1009 points. Susanne is the current world champion and German champion in 15 m. class.
3. Jutta Storm [France] 972 points. Jutta is one of my Facebook friends!
The 3 “ova “girls are on 4-5-6 !!!Alena Netusilova on spot 4 was world champion in 2003.
One point I noticed; quite a few penalty points yesterday , for crossing the finish ring TOO low and missing the startline in both standard and 15 m. class.
Today Sunday is cancelled! Let’s wait for the good weather with 1000-point-days.
Something totally different! KLM has a Delft-blue 777-200 !!!??? 4000 ” tiles ” have been glued on the fuselage. The tiles are from a special folio and people have been asked on Facebook and Hyves on the KLM page, to send a tile with their picture, a few words or a drawing and 120.000 tiles have been send from 154 countries. GREAT idea!!!Each of the tiles is 30×30 cm. and is covered OVER the normal blue parts of the plane. Saw it yesterday on TV and you have to see it close by , while flying you barely will notice it, but then it is fantastic.
Räyskälä’s National competition is over and as we all know by now, if you want it or not , life continues, so did the comps and on Friday the pilots really had to forget everything and concentrate on longer tasks; standard class 371 km. on day 4 with Markku Kuusisto winning the day,and 2 outlandings and 344 km. on day 3 for both 15 m and the 2 seaters. In 15 m. a few of my friends did well being 3-[ Martti] 4-[Martti] and 5 [ Kari] for the day and Visa Matti was 3d for the day but still on spot 1 overall in the duo discus.
In the end the winners in each class were; Juha Sorri, Martti Koivula and Visa-Matti Leiniki. Kari was 5th and Martti Sucksdorff 7th. Young Aku Jaakula was 4th in his LS 8.
By the way, I was impressed with the Räyskälä home-site, clearly from the hand of webmaster / designer , Katja who really has her own style and…. a good and young one! The JWGC site in Musbach is hers as well.
“A typical Australian winter-day “ is the comment on OLC from David Jansen flying a 316 km. from Kingaroy! A day also on which Mick Sly flew his gold C from the same field.
Great also to read and feel the enthusiasm of flying with a coach in a duo-discus over the mountains from Vinon. One of our young Dutch pilots is doing so, Alfred Paul. He flew 5 days with another young pilot from Belgium , Paul Janssens, who was his coach and I love the way he ” lives his dream of flying the Alps” .
By the way the 18m. and 2 seaters will have their National Championships in Vinon from July 9-16. Just to let you know.
AWE stands for Aviation and Women in Europe, I just made myself a member as I liked one of their goals in life, ” to encourage women to seek opportunities in aviation.” They have their 7th conference in Amsterdam in September from 23-25. Will keep you updated, though I never got a confirmation that I am accepted!
Last but not LEAST, the 5th Helli Lasch Challenge ??!! I had not heard from Helli Lasch till about 3 weeks ago. Helli Lasch was a passionate, inspirational and charismatic man, who not only loved skiing and was good in it ,as well as in golf and tennis, but also gliding and went solo in 1947 in a Grunau Baby [like I did .] His story reads like a thrilling book and you do not want to stop.
The Challenge, with his name, is every 2 year at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve; it is an exclusive, invitation only, all-paid event for current world champions in open, 18m. 15m. and standard class with their partners.It says more;
—Uniquely the Helli Lasch Challenge combines staying at one of the finest game lodges in Africa with some of the finest soaring in the world.—
When I was talking to Iain during the Dutch Nationals I heard about this fascinating story first and asked if I was allowed to use it for my blog. I received it straight away, but had to wait till today to share it with you.
I kindly recommend the whole story, written by Iain Baker from JS1, on the next link on their new web site,[ better as copying and pasting it from word!]as I loved reading it and got to know much more about this Mr. Lasch and his family;
http:// ww.jonkersailplanes.co.za/index.php?pageid=105
You are more then up to date now, so CU next time!cheers Ritz