Ready for the WEDNESDAY-news straight from my “office” in Holland. Now straight… is a bit much said,  as I am late!!! Problems with my laptop again; the user profile service did not accept me on my own laptop. Could not do a thing! The PC doctor just left and it took him an hour to get me into the system, but he is afraid my hard disk is slowly giving up on me. So ,..when you do not hear ” a thing ” anymore you know the reason! Have to find a new laptop again I think! But I was so happy with this one!

The first competition of the 2013/2014 season is in progress, as we “are speaking”! In South Africa  in Potchefstroom,   37 pilots are trying during this regional competition to be the best in each of the 3 classes!
They started on Sunday [practised on Saturday, but the weather was not good enough!] ] and continue till next Saturday. What happened till now?
Most of the pilots fly  high-level-competitions, or are running glider field/ resorts so we could expect some great soaring…weather-permitting of course, as it is still early in the season!
Sunday…;unfortunately not good enough , a too small window ,but they tried hard!
Monday…;better… with tasks from 145 km in Club class, 219 in 15 m. and 269 in 18 m. class and winners and “loosers”, as some outlanded and straight away lost “expensive ” points.
Yesterday a task from over 500 km in 18 m. class so the weather has improved. Uys Jonker tops this class after 2 flying days.
For all the results  you can go to www.soaringspot.com

Talking about S.A…..JS has finished serial number 53 of the JS1-C .
“And another one is completed … JS1-C serial number 53.  Alexander Georgas, our first customer from Greece, is visiting JS soon to enjoy “SB” in the strong SA summer thermals!”

  

Good call-sign “SB”  in Holland always used by double world champion Baer Selen.
As shared on FB.

By now most of you know Sarah ,who flew the WGC in Chaves, the WWGC in Issoudun and was the CD of the nationals at her airfield at Chilhowee in Tennessee, a few weeks ago. The club over there is very active  and even I , far away got a nice invitation for this October Fest 2013;
“Register now for dinner tickets on Oct. 11 & 12. Friday night is awards night followed by a bonfire and movies at the clubhouse. Saturday night live music by a local bluegrass band, the “3rd Degree“.”
A pity it is SO far away. But one day I will visit Chilhowee.
Other friends ,Corinne {Australia}  and Dieter Dundee , several Dutch friends and most probably a few Munich gliding-friends as well, will visit the Oktober Fest in Munich for a REAL big beer, called a ” ein Mass” ; cost 9.85 E.
They expect 6 million people from all over the world. What a boost for the economy!!!
I read that since October 1950 till 2010 the prices of a beer at this event, have risen  with 1081 %. In the beginning, beers were not allowed at the OKTOBERFEST, you could only buy them outside the festival area. When they started the beer- marquises ,”anything went”.

 

Chilhowee not only ready for the Oktober Fest but also for joy-flights.
Picture courtesy; Russ Ferrell, great picture…. compliments.

Last Saturday was the premiere in Amsterdam from the Disney movie ” Planes“. In Holland some of the voices are from well-known pilots as astronaut Andre Kuipers and Frank Versteegh, who is a former Red Bull Air Racer and now still is a keen aerobatic pilot ,as well as a very good key-note-speaker and he wrote the book you- read -in- one -go, Niet voor piloten [Not for pilots] .The revenues from this book have been donated by Frank to the KIKA [Children cancer] and the Ronald Mac Donald House. The English version will be out soon. Will keep you informed about that!
www.aerobatics.nl .
Some pictures from the red carpet moments, as shared by Frank  and with his permission.
“Together with astronaut Andre Kuipers I had the honour to voicecast one of the the two jets helping out Dusty the Cropduster in the Disney movie Planes.”

  

Red carpet moments.

Frank and Andre with one of their fans in the awesome vintage/art deco looking Tuschinski theater.

The Tuschinski in Amsterdam built in 1921 and THE PLACE TO BE for a premiere.

When you love your hang gliding I don’t have to tell you to read the reports from USA blogger Davis Straub, who I met in Tocumwal. He is a real ” guru”  in this sport, not only as writer but he is an excellent  hang glider pilot himself and already for many,  many years.
At the moment he flies the 2013 Santa Cruz  Flats Race [Casa Grande in the USA] and was after 3 days on a 3d place from 39 participants in Flexible Wing section. Jonny Durand was on a 10th spot. But after 7 days they finished the comps on spot 21 and 6 [Jonny] .
Chris Zimmermann [USA] was overall on spot 1 for 4 days but on day 5 he blew it by being 20thiest.In the end Zac Majors won.[6114] and Chris was the runner up[5506]
Here you find Davis’ blogs.

http://ozreport.com/blog.php

Last Monday I visited Amsterdam and caught up with Susie and Ian Cohn and their son Nick and daughter in law, Marianne.Ian is a member from the Mount Beauty Gliding Club in Victoria Australia. He updated till now every month,the Mount Beauty digital magazine and just said farewell to his readers after 146 editions, as he finished his job. They visit their family here in Holland and as we have never met only written to each other, it was time to have lunch together.

With Ian, Nick, Susie and  Marianne in @SEVEN for a lovely lunch.

Before they visited the WASSERKUPPE.
They had a look in the Gliding Museum and looked at Olympia, KA 6,Phoebus and the Grunau Baby 2.
After they visited the Alexander Schleicher business in Poppenhausen and caught up with Uli Kremer. One of the high lights there was a look at the already completed fuselage of the new large 2-seater ASG 32.  Interesting to hear also that 80 % of their gliders now have an engine installed. Got some pictures as well:

  

When I asked permission I got a nice mail from Uli Kremer giving the latest details about the progress; they are now busy with the last part of the wing mould, so in a few weeks they can start with the building of the wings for the prototype, as most components for the wings, wing ribs, steering controls, ailerons, flaps and winglets are already available. The glider has integrated bug wipers , an optional retractable and steerable tailwheel and an integrated LED strobelight on the nose of the tail.
And…. they expect to fly the proto type for the very first time this upcoming winter. Will keep you informed!
[Thanks to Rene for the translation of some of the German words.]

 

courtesy Uli Kremer.

More news about the ASG 32 on www.soaringcafe.com written by Gerd Marzinzik.

Always interesting to meet new people and never a dull moment. Heard from Ian’s son Nick who flew gliders and power planes as well in the past, that he is involved as a volunteer Ambassador in Bloodhound SSC. One of the 600!!! I see you think….I did the same, so as it has to do with speed, and we all love speed,  I asked him to write me a bit about it. Certainly very interesting;
” The Bloodhound Project wants to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. They are doing that by building the fastest car in the world! The car is being built at the moment and should be finished early in 2015. The high speed runs will be done at Hakskeen Pan in the north of South Africa. Some of the amazing numbers are:
Length:  13.5 metres

Top speed:  1690km/h (1050mph – Mach 1.4)

Current record: 1228km/h (763mph – Mach 1.02) see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKFDcZuM40M

Powered by an EJ200 turbofan engine from a Eurofighter Typhoon and a rocket EJ200 Turbofan would suck the air out of your house in just 3 seconds.

Rocket burns solid rubber fuel and hydrogen peroxide as oxidizer.

750hp Formula 1 V8 engine pumps 800 litres in 20 seconds at a pressure of 75 bar. This would fill a normal bath in just 3 seconds!

20,000kg thrust, roughly 135,000 horse power, as much power as the QE2 ocean liner.

15,000kg drag at 1600km/h

90cm diameter solid aluminium wheels will rotate at up to 10,000rpm. That will produce 50,000g at the rim of the wheels.

20km distance in less than 2 minutes.

2g acceleration, 3g deceleration. That’s 0 to 1600 km/h in just 55 seconds and 100km/h per second deceleration – in your car 100 to 0 km/h in 1 second would be a crash!

You can see an interview I gave to ING’s internal video magazine on my you tube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpq5Kz4fq_k

 

Nick Cohn one of the 600 volunteer ambassadors!
All of you should join in the engineering adventure at www.bloodhoundssc.com!

build progress

External view front

 

From fast cars to long-distance-flying-gliders.Last Sunday Kingaroy enjoyed a real good early-spring day already. The Trotter’s Lisa and Peter flew 584 km in ASW 20 and LS 8. One of the Kingaroy pilots mentioned;
“Cu-blue-cu. Great day with some good climbs and some streeting. Bubble thermals.”
6 Over 500 km. flights ,1 by Butch [ASG 29/18m.even over 600 km. The overseas season has REALLY started!
“Kingaroy Soaring Club is  in the heart of Australia’s cross country heaven. Located at the Kingaroy Airport we soar all year round over the very well known Kingaroy Valley and the Darling Downs.
Featuring an all weather strip and two runways Kingaroy Soaring proudly has some of the best facilities in Australia.
Kingaroy Soaring has over 60 members who enjoy a very modern fleet including the latest Schempp Hirth Duo Discus X”
The next 52 Multi Class Nationals will be flown from Kingaroy between October 14 and 25 2013. At this stage 54 pilots have already entered, the ones who flew on Sunday had really good practise already.
Very nice to see that Danish pilot Arne Boye Möller is going to make ” soaring-life difficult ” in Kingaroy, for his mate Bruce Taylor.

At the moment the East of Australia “suffers” from hot spring temperatures up to 34 in Toowoomba and even 41 in Mount Isa.
The Darling Downs might even break the all time maximum September temperature records.
We here have had our normal-for-this-time- fog but also a temperature of 22 dgr. and some of the leaves are colouring already, whilst some daffodils think they live “down under”.

 

Just a street in Amsterdam and SPRING-flowers in the park.

You are up to date so CU next week HOPEFULLY or on Sunday in the SoaringCAFE.
Cheers Ritz on Wednesday September 25 2013, the day Brutus really has his [50thiest] birthday, [ he is just back from South Africa!!] so does Peter Menhennit  in Tocumwal and Paul Wijsman in Holland.
Happy birthday.

 

 

To make the new over-seas soaring-season a good one , owners of those business have been in full action over their winter,  but in  Tocumwal where Eddie and Cheryl run Sportaviation ,”they don’t bet on one horse” over there, it was already  busy on good days through the winterperiod, with ultra light flying. Last week they were even more busy with  the training of 4 RAA students on the Fox and of course some went SOLO.
Soaring will start soon now.
http://sportaviationtocumwal.blogspot.nl/

 

Tocumwal a while ago as seen by Ronald Hermans.

Also in Tocumwal the SRGC [Southern Riverina Gliding Club] cleaned and swept the hangar for a new season and invited their members for a BBQ , an award- presenting- evening and a meeting about proposed constitutional changes. Good to see , that the new president Zack Lutovac,  shares his thoughts in a new monthly journal on internet the “Soaring Herald”.
Also their site will be renewed/updated over the next months and…. I agree a bit more action on it would be valued a lot.
The number 1 and 2 issues of the Soaring Herald are to be read at the still ” old” site
www.srgc.com.au

Ingo Renner [here with Tocumwal Dundee aka Dieter Albrecht] is the CFI from the SRGC.

 

Corowa is busy as we speak/read,  with preparing and then packing their containers in Holland [ September 20/23 and departure from Rotterdam at October 1 and arrival in Melbourne at November 11]]  and on their site they look ahead already on 2015 as well , when the new ASG 32 MI will arrive in Corowa.3 Containers will go down-under this year .
For all the latest you can read; http://www.australian-soaring-corowa.com/

Corowa

Narromine started the season with the election of a new president;
Here she is”:Went out to the Narromine Aero Club’s annual general meeting today and ended up as president. What a huge honour and a challenge to follow in the footsteps of all those wonderful past presidents who fostered and promoted aviation in Narromine for so many years. The club is the oldest regional aero club in Australia being established in 1929 and I am its first female president. I am so proud.”
Congratulations to Anne she will do a great job , knowing her, as she is a “peoples-person”.
www.narromineglidingclub.com.au and www.soarnarromine.com.au

Narromine

Benalla, host of the flapped WGC in January 2017  and in the years before for the pre-worlds practise, is ready for the new 2013/14 season.
They had some nice early-spring- weather already with over 2 hour local flights.
All news at;http://www.glidingclub.org.au/
In November G Dale will be in Benalla for 2 weeks of XC training as coach, maybe better said; SUPER-coach.
All news on http://www.glidingclub.org.au/2013/04/xc-coaching-weeks-nov/

 

Benalla

One of the Aussie soaring-bloggers and keen glider pilot and FO on a Fokker 100,  is Adam, who knows what he wants and…if they both succeed,  we will see in the end of the season,:
“Like father, like son. Dad & I working on final preparations for the upcoming Summer. Dad plans to fly 1250km this year for a continental record, & I’m shooting for a 15m national title, as well as a 1000km in the Cirrus [dry].”

Bitterwasser has packed the gliders in  7 containers not bad!!! Brandnew gliders  , “old ” gliders , so a lot of work to find out how to pack it in the best and safest way. But also here ,….experience is the word.
Look for the pictures at their site;
http://www.bitterwasser.com/
It’s getting easier to get from Germany to Namibia, as an A330-200 from Air Namibia starts end of this month to fly between Frankfurt and Windhoek .Even 2 of these brand new Airbusses will fly this route in the future.

“Gliding with a Difference” , that’s written on the site of
http://www.soaring-safaris.com/
Host’s Dick Bradley  and his daughter Jennifer ,  Reb Rebbeck and Claire Durston are ready to welcome their first guests already early in the season for the Summer Performance Camp at Bloemfontein starting on the 27th of October and continuing to February 15 2014.

Kiripotib will have an early season as well with “Flying with the champions” , in the beginning of November, a busy period as they were last when I mentioned it, nearly  booked out. You remember the names of the champions you can fly with and refresh your skills? Here they are again.
Janusz Centka….Wolfgang Janowitsch….Andy Davis…..Stefano Ghiorzo….Holger Karow….Uli Schwenk….Pete Harvey…Reinhard Schramme.
Gliders have been packed last week in 2 containers.

 

Containers from Gariep Gliding , in the middle of SA, will be packed around this time. They start their season in the beginning of November till the end of January when the gliders will be packed again. Have fun and fly safely is the motto!
http://www.gariep-segelflug.com

The season in Potchefstroom will start with the North West Regionals between September 22 and 28 with 37 entrees . The NATIONALS at WELKOM are a bit later between December 12 and 21.
The REGIONALS named the Spring Games, “will change the club class handicaps to align our upcoming and experienced pilots with the International Gliding Commission club class rules. A list of your glider’s handicaps will be available on The club’s website.”
Oscar Goudriaan will be one of the 37!
For all the news ; http://www.potchgliding.co.za/

A day out for our KNVvL  director since August 2009 ; Ronald Termaat tried parachute jumping!!!On the first picture he is surrounded by nice girls so no worries, he is ready for a tandem-jump……Also Tim Kuijpers “tried” this other sport.
On Ronalds  FB site you can see him,  still smiling,  in a video from the jump. GOOD ON HIM!!!!

 

 “Moments before my first para jump. I sure hope it is at least half as beautiful as it looks like now!”

 

both Tim and Ronald are ready to go for it.
Courtesy Frouwke Kuijpers.

A great idea from the KNVvL [Royal Dutch Association for Aviation] to get familiar  with  more sports on their annual -staff-day-out on September 12; they did already gliding and flew in balloons in the past. What’s next?

You might have noticed on the OLC some 500/600 km. flights in Australia from John “Butch” Buchanan [ASH31/21 m. ] and Pam and Gerrit Kurstjens.[Quintus and ASH 31 /21m.] They flew to Burketown from Jondaryan, and as I heard had fantastic weather, great lift over inhospitable  , unlandable areas, [They needed that flying over a huge area of just NOTHING!!!] final glides from 150 km and they FLEW THE MORNING GLORY!!!!!! More to come as Pam has kept a diary for her club and they will share it with me/you.
Looking forward to that!

Flying in Holland is not over yet and Sikko had a lovely flight last weekend going for his annual autumn-flight to the SW of Holland [Haamstede] and when you look at his flight of 413 km. , that is directly to the border of the Nord Sea.
http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0/gliding/flightinfo.html;jsessionid=2FA3D4970C14F415D72952A85915C85B?dsId=3382352

He shared some pictures as well on FB so here you are ,….specially for the non-FB-reader. ”

   

 

Courtesy Sikko Vermeer.

And last but not least; “we ” as bicycle-country, finally got the record back on being the fastest person on a bicycle!!!! 133.78 km/h. 6 Days they tried hard , not on a normal bike you sit on, as we all do here in Holland, but a bike on which you “lay ” on and for that it seems, you need “specific” muscles. Anyhow the bike was designed by students of the University of Amsterdam and Delft and the bicyclist is well known for being fast!
Now he was fastest  and that after technical problems in the beginning and some less good weather, but on the last of the 6 days , he succeeded even with wind on “the nose” over there in the desert of Nevada. Well done for the Human Power Team.

Cheers Ritz CU next Wednesday.
On Wednesday September 18 2013 the day the South of Holland [Eindhoven] finally was free from the WW2. AND,…on September 21 is the FEMALE soaring day from the ZES.

And then I am talking about Aboyne [Scotland-UK Mountain comps 2013], where the “hoped-for-clearances ” , not arrived …..so more scrubbed days, but nice pictures and a great video, from wave and other interesting clouds, at ;
http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=ukmsc2013&s=int

In the 16 year history , they have had only once a 2 day camp, this year will be added, as the last day was cancelled for  cross country, after trying hard.
Winner from the distance competition is Ian Tait and from the height-climb Stuart Naylor; 31.726 ft.
John Williams one of the participants [ he finished the comps as number 3] flew yesterday,  South from Aboyne,  a 661 km flight [ 330 FAI triangle] in the ANTARES 20m. and topped the OLC list.
“Low level wave for a 300km triangle at 134kph“. Not bad!!!!

Also marginal flying in Chilhowee, but still 6 out of 9 days!!!
Rand one of the co-founders of SOARINGCAFE flew this competition and said:
“Sunday brought the only decent weather of the contest, and was the only day when everyone finished the task.  Our CD, Francois Pin, did a masterful job in task calling of extracting the best out of a difficult situation. We were lucky to
get 6 official days out of the 9 scheduled. ”
Rand will write an article about these standard class nationals for soaringcafe.

Anyhow they finished with an optimistic look on their week of soaring: Here is the text from their site and there is more to read , to see [slideshow] and all the results are there as well;

http://www.ssa.org/Contests?cid=2222&display=results
“We’ve arrived at the end of an interesting contest week at Chilhowee.

It was a full week of amazingly weak, difficult weather – which was actually the best week of soaring weather in eastern Tennesse for about the past two months.  We saw not one day of strong conditions, but ten days in a row were at least flyable, and we finished with 6 of 9 valid days in Standard Class, and 3 of 5 days in our Regional class.

If you accept the argument (easy to support on past history) that weak weather is the best test of soaring ability, then we have a worthy Standard Class champion in Bob Fletcher.  He was the most consistent pilot here, and as a result of this win qualifies for the US Team.  He’ll compete with teammate Phil Gaisford in WGC2014 at Rayskala Finland, next June.  And don’t overlook Rich Owen: he finished second in his first national contest, and but for a landout about a mile short of home on the second-to-last day probably would have won it.”
This way you know the USA standard class participants in Finland as well.
Thanks to Andreea to check with the SSA if I could use the text.

Holland had fabulous weather, not so much soaring-weather but nice warm with 2 days over 30 dgr. which is as we call it a “tropical temperature” and NOT normal in the beginning of autumn. On Friday afternoon at 4 we had a light thunderstorm but great rain for the dry gardens. The weekend had rain again and now we are more or less suffering from REAL autumn weather [ rain and wind up to 8 bft. in the W and coastal area and only 2 in the east and that in such a small country!!!] !!!!

2 Excellent  pilots in a XLT Duo Discus , Giorgio Galetto and Vittorio Pinni, flew last Friday from Rubbiano 772 km. Nice autumn weather in Italy. Slowly , however, the number of pilots entering flights on the OLC goes down,……. it’s that time of the year again.

Some great pictures from the Libelle by Marcin May in Leszno during the JWGC and shared by Jeroen Jennen, with the comment ;
“This picture describes the whole competition! Thanks wingman”

 

Getting older I “love” the Libelle more and more!

Talking about the JWGC; “Our” brand-new Junior World Champion, Peter Millenaar,  already announced news about his business in his interview in soaringcafe.
Here is the latest ;
“We are proud to announce that from now MillenAir is the official dealer for LX navigation in the BENELUX! We will also provide service, repairs and all warranty issues.
Please let me introduce to you the high-end LX Zeus 5.5 IGC navigation system! For full specifications check out the website: http://petermillenaar.nl/shop/index.php?route=product%2Fproduct&path=84&product_id=105
Good on him, good luck and congratulations, Peter.

the LX Zeus 7.0

Received some short news from Mount Beauty [Australia] ;
“It’s been quite wet and the airfield has been very boggy and flying over winter
has been a bit subdued, although we have had four wave flights each time getting
up to around 10,000 ft in front of Mt Bogong using our ASK-21mi.  This has been
the first time in a number of years that we have been able to wave soar in
northerly winds.  We have also had a couple of first solos – Josh New and 16yo
James Rowe. 
There are a few pictures on my Facebook page, the MBGC Facebook page and http://www.exalander.com/mbgc/mbgcnewspage.htm
Summer will be there soon.

As well as in Kiripotib ; 2 containers will go full of top gliders as I mentioned already on SOARINGCAFE. Ludwig writes;
“we had to bring four gliders, our two arcus, the ASH 25 from Christian Hynek and our brand new Antares 23E to the harbor of Koblenz, where Bernd Dolba had organized the packing of the gliders for Kiripotib. Luckily two of our gliders where at the Lange factory in Zweibrücken, so until now we had only 3700 km to drive, to have three of them there. The two containers for Kiripotib will leave on Monday the 16th of September  from Germany and will arrive there on the 25^th of October.

End of October I will be in Kiripotib as well, to help Bernd, Christian and Janusz to unload the containers, we will need the first five gliders on the 1^st of November for our Event “Flying with the Champions.  We are very lucky with the booking, we have 4 trainees in the first block and 6 trainees in the second block, so we are nearly booked out. ”

AND,….also news about the ANTARES 23E.
“ Only the Antares 23E is still at Lange, some final adjustments have to be done
until Axel Lange will do the maiden flight on Tuesday. [Yesterday!]
This Antares is the first 23E with the big rudder as the serials will be. Last year in Uvalde the wings of our gliders where still mounted to the small fuselage of the 20 Meter glider. On Wednesday, Wolfgang and I will drive again to Lange and I will make my first flight on the 23E , if everything is ok, as I think, it will also be packed on Thursday.”

 

Ludwig in his new “toy”, with a “roomy” cockpit.
Courtesy; Ludwig and for more news you can read the Lange Site;
www.lange-aviation.com

Good soaring weather already in Australia specially in the East , where Geoff Pratt flew today a nice 520 km cross country [ 357 FAI triangle] flight from Mareeba in a PIK 20!!!!! Nice height as well; up to 2868 AGL .

That’s it for now CU next Wednesday and on Sunday I will be back on soaringcafe, this time no parties , so …in time.

Cheers Ritz

With 31 dgr. tomorrow and 28 today life is good in Holland with a great summer and even after-summer-period. Still ……some pilots are busy already with their next project; continuing their soaring where the new summer starts.

As soaring-life continues in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, for the lucky ones DOWN UNDER or in South Africa, Namibia and for great [wave] flying in New Zealand or France/Italy!
From South Africa the next news,  straight away on the beginning of the season and shared by Oscar the next news from AKAVLIEG Potchgliding:
” The 2013/2014 gliding season in here!!!
At the SSSA AGM held this past weekend, a call was made to gliding clubs to promote cross country flying, as studies have shown that developing cross country flying leads to more enjoyment of gliding and the retention of members.
We will therefore be starting a club competition this coming Saturday, which will run until the end of March 2014. Scoring will be OLC based, and the rules will be developed as we go along. The rules will however favour less experienced pilots flying lower performance gliders. The winner will receive a prize at the end of the contest.”

And only three weeks to go to the Potch Spring games!!!!!

It was interesting to see , that after all the comps in the middle of August , it was nearly quiet in Europe….that is with soaring-comps .
Now it is waiting for the toppers; would you be in the team/squad or not for the upcoming CAT.1 FAI  events?!
Or ,..when you are not interested at all in comps, it’s waiting till next season to fly again.

But there still are a few comps as the UK MOUNTAIN Soaring Championships at  Aboyne [Scotland] between September 1 and 7. They flew a 315 km. task on Monday and the first 1000 points were for Ian Tait in a Grob Twin Acro. John Williams was runner up!
It’s not only flying distance here but also height. They open the wave-box as well and best on this day with the best height-gain was  Stuart Naylor with 16.929 ft.
Day 2 had a 2.30 AAT and was won by “home”-pilot Roy Wilson with 280 km in the ASH 31 MI/21 m. in 2.33.
The wave box was used to the best top-height by John Dunnington  gaining 10.833 ft.

CHILHOWEE

I had planned to go to the Chilhowee Standard Class Nationals this week, but some important parties I had to attend, stopped that, but for sure I will “do ” next year one USA competition.
Chilhowee started last Saturday and will continue till the 8th of September. Competition Director is Sarah Kelly Arnold, who flew so well during the WWGC in Issoudun in France this summer and before in the WGC from Chaves.
They were a bit unlucky with the weather but “better” air  arrived soon, though later than hoped for.
They flew on August 31 and then again on September 3 with an AAT of 159.25 miles and a late start around 3PM, but A START!  http://www.ssa.org/ContestResults.asp?contestId=2222&ContestDetailId=7988&ContestName=Standard+Class+Nationals

Evening flying; can’t call it night soaring as sunset is sunset but some members from the club from Soesterberg, amongst them Sikko, flew on August 28 some nice evening-flights; 60 in total.
5 Were made in the Slingsby-T-30 Prefect , one by Sikko; distance 68.6 km. and speed 33.9 km. THAT IS soaring!!!! He even reached 1400 m!!!

 

Sikko ,here at Keiheuvel, picture made with wrong setting. Sorry!

First National Air Games Grand Prix day here in Holland at Teuge , last Saturday was a success, even with live-tracking!!!Pilots as former and current EGC and JWGC champions, Ronald Termaat , Rene de Dreu ,Tim Kuijpers  and Peter Millenaar participated.
Winner was Ronald Termaat and the spirit from Kees Musters flew with him, as he ” used” the MS for this event. Even an old Citroën , as Kees had, was part of this event .

MS and Citroen shared by Ronald and a nice demo from Sape Miedema, shared on FB.

Ronalds comment on this first-time-event;
“Back into memory lane. MS , ex Kees Musters. The plane Kees let me fly on when I was only 17. Flying it today at the Dutch Air Games again. Retrieve car is a Citroën CX, just like Kees had.”
He will write more about this event for Sundays blog in SOARINGCAFE.

LIVNO!

Some of my Belgium friends visited LIVNO this year and I heard,  as you know,  that some pilots think that this is the “place -to-be-“for the future. Here are some pictures ; “a story told by what you can see ” by Bert jr Schmelzer. Just clicking on the pictures gives you the story;

https://picasaweb.google.com/101367179377196465151/0103082013LivnoBosniaHerzegovina#

ZWOLLE

 

It was Brutus 50thiest birthday party [real birthday is later in September!] but we all had a great time. For all SPORTAVIA fans here some pictures from the event and from Zwolle, what a great place that is;

Happy 50thiest still young looking-birthday- boy!
Courtesy Indya.

All friends who have been at Tocumwal plus Natasja.

 

The most beautiful food , good drinks and company.
Dundee [ lives 6 months in Tocumwal ]and Corinne [lives permanently in Toc.] gave an international tint.

 Bilderberg hotel Wieland in Zwolle; Love that hotel and the hot apple pie!!!!!!
Been there 3 times this year.

GLIDING INTERNATIONAL  edition September/October 2013 arrived all the way from NZ in Alphen in Holland and again John and Chris and their team managed to create a great reading magazine with all kinds of news.
As John Mentioned; another special issue and it is.
Of course great pictures again by Maria, their official photographer.
Stories about ;
——Dynamic Soaring,
—– about the 13.5 m class,…the marketing-battle begins,
—–Jean Marie Clement writes about his 11th expedition to Patagonia,
—–JETHAWK, a high performance 15 m. glider
—–European AIRSPACE and TRANSPONDERS…. why a near-miss in Germany with a 737 and a glider, with lot’s of comments
—–wing-shape of the future and fuel cells, Stemme relaunch Brand,  Austrian Gliding History and MUCH more, 63 pages !!!

And to finish a nice 3 minutes video shared by many so I can only add it for those who have not seen it yet, by born2fly.lt.
Thanks to “Juliette Charlie”  for sharing it with me.
https://www.facebook.com/Born2flylt?notif_t=fbpage_fan_invite

by clicking on the stone in the hands of the child you can see the video. Enjoy!

See you next week on Wednesday and on Sunday evening late or maybe Monday morning [Dutch time] at SOARINGCAFE.
Cheers Ritz
On Wednesday September 4 2013, the day my granddaughter Indya celebrates her 10th birthday!!!!! Hiep Hiep Hoera for Indya! Off to Amsterdam now!