Post 1.525 on August 14 2024

WGAC,….mmm…what was that again??
And when I looked at it better, it was easy….
I did know “we” were pretty good in it, but GOLD…..
Yes we ,[ I am still in Olympic Games-mood ] ,The Dutch, I mean, have a new WORLD CHAMPION.
His name ; Lars Hofman and he flew in the recent “World Advanced Glider Aerobatic Championships“.

What did he achieve?
1. Flight 1 [known] gold
2. Flight 2 [unknown] 4th
3. Flight 3 [Free] silver
4. Flight 4 [unknown] gold
5. Flight 5 [unknown] gold
6. Flight 6 [unknown] gold
UNKNOWNS combined; gold
Individual result GOLD medals and CUP!!!!

Also the Dutch team was number 1; GOLD

Oschatz [Germany] was the place to be between July 31 and August 10!! They hosted the 26th FAI World Glider Aerobatic Championship and the 14th FAI World Advanced glider Aerobatic Championship.
Lars flew a MDM-1 Fox and there were 34 pilots in this class including 6 ladies. WOW!!!!!!
I don’t know anything about this sport, only that it looks a bit “scary” ,but also fantastic. I do know however Marianne and Sape Miedema, who are heavily involved with this sport and in The Netherlands important “engines” behind it.
So congratulations to all of them.

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The 22d EGC in Tabor.
3 August 2024 – 17 August 2024

We continue where I stayed.
Sunday August 11; task 6 from 8.
15 m;  341.45 km….27 started and 3 did not finish and those 3 were already very good in the earlier days; Rasmus from Denmark dropped from 14 to 19 , Ricky from Italy from 7 to 15 and Vladimir from Slovakia 12 to 20 !! Ouch,….That’s not funny!!!!
Dutch pilot Stephan Grunder, won the day; 109.32 km./h . He is flying really good!!!! Though he was not the daily very best. HC pilot Henrique from Brasil was a tiny tad faster; 109.37 km./h., but to give Stephan the 1000 points Enrique got 1001!!!
Standard; 325.41 km…and 1000 points for Henry [Inigo-Jones] from the UK. The JWGC brought him to Tabor in a “good flow” ! Luca from Italy was in on spot 26. All after him did not finish! His mate Lorenzo did not fly. So 6 were” out.” Among them my Belgian mate Jeroen after 257 km. Another OUCH, he dropped from 2 to 19….. bummer!!!!!
Club; 314.18 km…..  Kim Toppari, the other JWGC topper brought also his “guts” from Ostrow to Tabor and won the day; 94 03 km./h. His mate Tapio was 3d. Great to see how good Gyorgy from Hungary still performs. He was on spot 5.
39 started and 34 finished.
Michaela’s view on “things” on task 6.
“we are all grateful to our weatherman again ,as his predictions bring optimism into our otherwise negative forecasts from other models. All the classes flew over 300 km racing tasks with blue or 1/8 cumuli conditions, sometimes with cloud bases up to 1600 m AGL and 3 m/s thermals.
Nevertheless, each class had a very different experience of the day. The 15m class flew to the SE and then NE. The standard class had the task first towards NE of Tábor and then SE, and finally club class flew all the way to the borders of Czechia and Austria then up north and home.“

Monday August 12; task 7 from 9.
Michaela; ” the pilots are already on task with completely blue conditions and high temperatures, so let’s hope they at least get high enough to cool down a little bit “
A blue day, but a strong blue day means…. “no worries”.
15m; 219.04 km…..And Ricky [ Brigliadori] showed that his “out-day” was just a “mistake” as he won the day; 91.57 km./h ,after a late start at 15.31,47. In his JS3 jet with call sign LEO after his dad Leonardo; a real nice guy and friend in the past ,as was his mother. Both passed away just TOO young.
27 started and 6 did not finish. Unfortunately a less good day for “our” Stephan; spot 14 but still 13 points ahead overall on runner up Karel from Czech Rep. These 2 pilots are in the 5000 points-range now together with Lucasz [Grabowski this time] from Poland …… never under -estimate him.
The Luxembourg instruments seem in a better state; George was on 6 now.
Standard;  210.15 km….31 still in the race and 29 finished. Daily winner; Norbert Scarlat from Romania; 93 km./h. In his Discus 2A he leads the overall scores with quite some marge; 5.502 for 5.320 and 5.298 for the 2 Czech pilots Jan and Lukas. Though, we have seen pilots loose over 600 points on 1 day.
Daily runner up our Dutch Frank ; good on him ;92 km./h.
Club; 203.66 km… good to see former and maybe still, hang glider pilot Tomas Suchanek win the day with 86.60 km./h. On an overall spot 2 now.
Runners up ….the UK boys, James and Toby and even with the loss of some points, due to an incorrect PEV procedure, they were on 2 and 3.
39 started and 4 were “out” also 2 good French pilots, Nicolas and Hugo,[dropping from 2 to 9] after a late start.
From  Michaela Rendlová ;”Yesterday, the second week of our championship started with yet another racing task. Horác is keeping us optimistic and all the classes flew over 200 kilometers in completely blue conditions. Luckily, their time up there was not a complete survival game in the extreme heat as some were fortunate enough to climb up to 1300 m AGL. “

Tuesday August 13; task 8 out of 10. Something about SAFETY. I hear that this is high on the list of the organizers, but some think it stays with words only, they don’t see action!!!
Now they have promised, that who violates the rules gets penalty points. It’s already week 2 ,maybe those points should have been given EARLIER!!!!! Please stay safe!!!!
It’s hot , so concentration suffers a bit as well.
Hot here too 35 dgr.C!!!!!!
15 m; 2.45 AAT….and the Danish pilots had a good day again, it’s going up and down with several good pilots. Filip and Rasmus were on 1 and 3 with great speed ; 142 km./h and136.59 km./h with in the middle Hungarian pilot Tamas.[136.67 km./h. On task 6 our Danish mates were on spot 17 and “out”. Now they are “going up” again. From 9 to 5 and from 19 to 17. Good on them. By the way, Filip flew 400 km!!!!!!
Standard; 2.30 AAT….32 started and finished and great to see that 1 of the top French girls won the day in her Discus 2A; Aude Untersee; 142.85 km./h. She is a real good “little” pilot. Never won a WWGC, till now, but was often in the top.
Robin from Germany was runner up; 141.28 and our Belgian mate Jeroen was 3d.140 km./h Also he had an off day on task 6 with an out landing, but does n’t give up.
club; 3 hour AAT….Jacek Flis from Poland had his 3 daily win and flies pretty consistent. No secret he leads the pact with over 250 points. Today; 378 km with 125.53 km./h!!!!! He is the only one in the 7000-points- overall-marge.
All pilots started AND finished. GOOD!!!!

So after another few days of soaring and with only 3 days to go there is still a lot possible.
Here are the overall scores from today after 8 out of 10 days.
15 m; 1. Stephan Grunder from the Netherlands with 5,985 points, 2. Karel Novak from Czech Rep. with 5,917 points ,3. Lukasz Grabowski from Poland with 5,877 points.
Standard; 1. Norbert Scarlat from Romania with 6,222 points, 2. Jan Pavlik from Czech Rep. with 6,024 points ,3. Robin Sittmannfrom Germany with 6,007 points.
Club; 1. Jacek Flis from Poland with 7,079 points, 2. Tomas Suchanek from Czech Rep. with 6,751 points, 3. Gvidas Sabeckis from Lithuania with 6,665 points.

Michaela on task 8;”Thank you the WGC organisers in Uvalde for sending us here a taster of your weather. Even though the weather did not seem so at the start of the day, when the sniffer team had spent almost 2 hours searching for the first thermals in blue (and had to use the engine twice), the weather Gods have suddenly switched the thermals on in Tábor too, and at 12:45 first cumuli started appearing and so did the starts start too.”

In the evening the always successful INTERNATIONAL NIGHT was on the menu.
This is ALSO the EGC and the International night for Danish Rasmus!!! Love it. When I met him first at a JWGC long time ago, I told his mum that I expected a lot from him as pilot. Then he was still young not married and no children. Time flies. In 2018 he was world champion in club class at the Ostrow WG

Wednesday August 14 task 9 out of 11 and the 6th successive day for the pilots.
After a night with international food AND drinks, [ for crews only!!!] the pilots have to go for task 9
15 m; 2.45 AAT
Standard ;2.30 AAT
club; 3 hour AAT so same as the day before, but other directions.

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UVALDE TEXAS 2024
14 August 2024 – 30 August 2024

Looking ahead;
The last gliders have arrived in Uvalde and that is about time. The Aussies really had to wait LONG to rig their own glider, but some were fortunate enough to fly on gliders from USA mates.
Lumpy, from Tocumwal, owner nowadays of our WWII hangar, has rigged his own LP now at the Uvalde Airfield.
He keeps a blog; Tocumwal Soaring Centre and he mentioned about the delay:
“my glider has arrived and she is ready to fly tomorrow for the first time in the USA
This was the result of a mad dash to Houston this morning after I finally got a long awaited email.
It was getting rather tight, but thankfully it all came together…. I say that easy, however there was a lot of people assisting to make this happen both back in Australia and here in the states. I had a very kind offer of a glider if mine didn’t make it and the gentleman also offered to deliver it with a car and crew if needed …. Honestly thank you Gary Osoba” more in his blog.

Unofficial training is fabulous; On August 12 German pilots Stefan Langer and Simon Schroeder flew 165 km./h over 418 km. I remember Simon as a young kid with his parents eating in the same restaurant, in Uvalde as we did. His dad flew the Worlds then.

Today the official training starts and there is an official TC briefing.
The opening is on Saturday and as every year it will be BIG!!!!!!Mostly those flash, typical American huge cars are involved.
There are 66 pilots in 3 classes.; 33 in 18 m, 16 teams in multi-seat and 17 in open.

Adam started writing already in his Adam Woolley’s Gliding Adventures
“What a fabulous day, I’d say, a classic Uvalde day, finally I feel like I’ve experienced one, yet I’m sure they get even better than today!
We spent most of the day at 100-110kts, bouncing between 4-6000′, taking 6-8kt climbs! The varios in the glider are good, I can manage with them, but still require a little fine tuning to really have myself dialled in with them.
We finished with 149kph for memory, another smoking fast final glide from a long way out & a long way below.“

You never have to worry about the weather in Uvalde , though in 1991 and 2012 we had some big storms. In 1991 even during the finishes. Team UK shared this picture with the great looking skies, 2 days ago.

–—-In between more than 14 over 1000 km flights have been flown in France and Germany last Monday. 1By a Belgian mate [Fayence] and 3 by Dutch friends not bad!!![Puimoisson]
1.246 km. by a German pilot was the best from Fayence in a Ventus 3M/18m. .
Hot weather at the moment in parts of Europe!
AND,….WeGlide about Monday!!!!
“Epic Gliding Day in the French Alps!
Yesterday was nothing short of legendary for our gliding friends in southern France. With perfect weather and breathtaking conditions, we witnessed a record-breaking day that will go down in history!
19 flights over 1000 km were flown—the most ever in a single day since WeGlide started tracking. The cloud base was above 4000 meters, and pilots were absolutely tearing it up, with tons of 2-hour sprints averaging in the 140s kph.
What a stellar day! Congrats to all the pilots who made it possible. Here’s to a happy and soaring gliding holiday!”
I can only AGREE!!!!!!

I guess more news on Monday.
Cheers Ritz