Alphen aan den Rijn February 21 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
Looking outside I still see snow but…. some glider pilots in the East of Australia at Jondaryan, where you can fly all year around, enjoyed their Valentine Day with superb flights, p.e one in LS 1f by Allan Barnes;710 km. a big polygone to the S and N West of Jondaryan. Great effort!
” Poor Italy ” has the most shocking landslides after heavy rain in Sicilie and Calabria , luckily people were warned in time and escaped their towns and Belgium suffered the sad loss of 18 people in a horrific train accident. More then 160 people wounded!
Looking at the bright site; spring WILL come , days are getting longer and temperatures end of this week will be around 5 PLUS.
In Taupo in New Zealand the NZ-Nationals 2010 have started with well known names as Dane Dickinson , George Wills and Tony van Dyke. As far as I heard the NZ season was not the best and also now rain was spoilsport. They hope however to fly tomorrow. The comps count 41 competitors in club, standard and open class and started on February 14 with a practise day and Dane used it to still fly a 197 km task, though the forecast was not too good. They go till February 25. Will keep you informed.
Yesterday several planned flights to the Canarian Islands were cancelled due to winds up to 120 km /h. Result for that day; 9000 people could neither go home nor to their holiday destination. The meteo had given a weather-alarm for all the different islands.
Last time I mentioned the Pribina Cup in Nitra [Slovakia] and Fatraglide also in Slovakia at Martin Airport, both celebrating their 10th edition, today I would like to mention the 2010 Trofeo Internazionale Citta di Torino in Italy as well. This is planned from March 26-April 5 for 15m. class[handicapted]
And very important for glider pilots is as well the next IGC MEETING in Lausanne on March 5 and 6 2010. Delegates from all countries have been invited! If you are interested the agenda for the plenary is to be found at ; www.fai.org/gliding/igc_plenary10
Air Berlin is willing to upgrade their interest in Niki, an Austrian price -fighter and owned by Formula 1 legend Niki Lauda, from 24 to 49 %. Air Berlin is the second biggest passenger carrier after Lufthansa and last year 8.3 million passengers choose to fly with Air Berlin. Their co-operation started in 2004. [source; Der Standard]
While doing research for my article for the Dutch Gliding Magazine Thermiek,because of the CAE NLS Dutch National Championships in Twente early in May, I found on google that 74 years ago, in 1936, the first Dutch Gliding Competition was in Twente as well. One of the well known soaring editors writing p.e about the past, was Ary Ceelen and he mentioned in an article that 50 pilots and 14 gliders arrived for that event. Gliders as Zogling, ESG and Grunau Baby[ I went solo in a Baby in 1967].
Goals of that first Dutch competition were; reaching best heightgain over start height ; this time 380 m., the biggest distance , this was 39 km. flown by the winner and the longest flight and that was 100 minutes!!!!!!!!! Only 3 flights were allowed and you got points for them and out of that the winners were selected.
During that competition 1 pilot flew over the “magic 100 km.” and one flew over 50 km, so 2 pilots were the first to fly their 50k for the silver C. But…the story says that they did not win any competition-points or got any prize” ,while they had used their 3 flights already on other days”!!!! What about that!! But the silver C’s must have felt like gold!
That’s it for today, still enjoying the Olympics to the fullest. Sorry to see the organizers in Richmond struggle so badly with the ice and their machines. We , Dutch, are a real ice-skating-nation and all our millions of toes were “bend”, from frustration. We are also still stuck with “only” ONE gold medal, but more is to come, wait and see!
cheers Ritz