It was not meant to be.. the weather forced Nitra to give up! Torino had 1 day! Goondiwindi 6!

ALPHEN AAN DEN RIJN SUNDAY APRIL 7 2013

ritzdeluy@hotmail.com www.soaringcafe.com www.glidinginternational.com

A GREAT pity!!! The weather gave up on Nitra , so Vladimir and his team could not do what they wished to do so badly; set a great competition to win the Pribina Cup.
Next year all pilots surely will be back and it will be a great event again as before and as used in Nitra!

briefing in the bar!With Reitze and Jens.
courtesy FAC @ NITRA.

This is the official announcement;
—“Briefing is over and so is the competition….
The weather forecast for the next few days days looks very unpleasant and wet and the runway will not be usable probably for the rest of the competition. Therefore, after a long term discussion, Vladimir and Dominink decided that there is no reason to elongate the waiting. Pribina cup 2013 is called off. The weather did not favour us this year and there is no way we could influence that. We are very grateful for everybody who had taken a long journey and had come here and we hope to see you next year. You, pilots are the ones that make this competition and we thank you so much for the patience with this year Pribina. I bet you will recall to all the nice flight you have had here in the past and you will come again. Drive home safely.—“

Pilots and crew who really enjoyed themselves in Chaves and visited Beuenos Aires ,see now that the weather , which was not TOO good during the WGC either, could have been even worse.
In the beginning of April there was one ONE day as much rain as normally in a month, killing 75 people and creating chaos, flooding and also a lot of other damage due to very strong winds.
The Argentinean weather institute claims that at some places they measured 150 mm. in 2 hours time.

What happened with this nice-set-up?

Buenos Aires town, the damage was in parts of the province Buenos Aires.
Courtesy Frans Guise!

The Queensland Easter comps also continued after Easter! So DAY 4 was another interesting day; 2.30 AAT for the 3 classes!
Goondiwindi is a nice place by the way, not that I know it well, but travelled through it several times on my way to Brisbane and Noosa? To be honest I did not know there was a soaring field over there!

POSITIVE soaring news on day 4 from Bruce who flies his JS 1 in sports class.
—“More people should go gliding. Today was another load of fun, helped by a well-set task. The weather was forecast to be blue west of us and to have some clouds to the east, and that was pretty much how it happened. At launch it was very slow to start, and the cus were far away, but shortly after the start we contacted …some nice clouds and then it was go – go – go!! I went as Far East as I could and then ran south down the edge of the Great Dividing Range to stay under the fattest clouds. That seemed to work well, and the good conditions remained until right down at the bottom of our second (final) turn, where I had to glide out into the blue to ensure I didn’t get home early. After I turned it took a little while to connect and get up and running again, but basically I had a good run today. I know the eastern area a little; even though I haven’t flown there a lot it is very similar to home, and I felt comfortable. So, tomorrow is my last day of flying, as Anita and I are going to a wedding in Sydney on Friday and I will be packing up tomorrow afternoon. I’m not sure I will have time to write anything after I leave, but we’ll see. Thanks for the support, see you all again soon. BT.–“
So far Bruce , who is so kind even during a competition, to share his impressions with all of us. Thanks for that BRUCE!!!

Day 5 started like this with the message from Adam; task AAT 2 hours!

Adam ready to go, on what he thinks will be a great day!

And a great day it was ,…according to Allan Barnes who flew his LS 8 in the sports class.
—“Great day – 2:45 AAT down to Moree [South from Goondiwindi] then Mungi. I decided to start early, had a couple of 4kt climbs then hit a beauty 9kt which made me slightly overestimate the strength of the day. Pushed hard into the Moree sector but had to take 4kt that grew to about 7. Turned there, and headed NW into the second sector. I had gone deep enough in Moree that I only needed to touch the sector before turning for home, but I hit a nice cloud right on the boundary so pushed through to the far side of it before turning. The final leg was a little slower, into wind. Came home 10 minutes or so over time for 111kph off the stick.—“

The last day , yesterday the weather was as I heard ” so-so” . The day was cancelled!

All in all I only heard HAPPY comments on this first great competition from the airfield of Goondiwindi.
You might have noticed some problems with the scores. Those from club class were under 2 seater and they got stuck more or less after day 3. But ,….the scorers worked hard to get their act together and produced the scores and the final scores.
We forgive the scorers , [all beginning is difficult and fair is fair, they had the results on the last day AND the final scores] and look ahead with the pilots to more comps from this field.
Results from 6 days out of the 8 with “normal” scores and Aussi rules scores;
Club class; WINNER; Adam Woolley ,[4896] winning 3 days, did not fly on day 1 [lay-day, you can skip a day in an event which has not the level of a National competition and get the average of the points so you can have a rest in case you need it!] and 2 times 2d! Winner over 5 days and as winner awarded of ” our three best performances ” .

2 seater class; Winners; team Kingaroy [ Greg Schmidt (President, coach) & Nev Donald (coachee)] with the Duo Discus XL with 5719 points.

Sports class; Winner;Lisa Trotter [5436] and this was a close call as she was just 6 points ahead of Tom Claffey. Allan Barnes was the number 3 also in the 5000 points, the rest had lower points. Bruce Taylor won 3 days but did not fly every day.
Looking only at those 3 days he was the winner, with “scores of the best performances of the week.” In that case, Lisa, Tom and Allan followed.
As Adam said in his blog:
” Ladies & Gentleman, that’s it for another AUS soaring season. The QLD Easter Gliding Champs are now over, next up is my Finland adventure before the AUS Winter sets in..!
I managed to jagg my first seniors win of my soaring career, both on aggregate after flying 5 of the 6 days, & also on the best three performances of the week!
Thanks to the CD & his team, an amazing competition, very friendly, very safe, just brilliant! We’re all hoping we’ll return here soon .
Thanks to all my competitors in Club, you really pushed me along – looking forward to seeing you all next time. Congrats also to Bruce Taylor for taking out Sports, with Lisa Trotter close behind in a very competitive field.”

AND,… “My father came 6th, 1st of the ‘rest’ (ie, he was beaten by all the current Uvalde WGC team.”
Thanks Adam for your contribution!

Puimoisson, Serres La Batie, Sisteron , Vinon; all those places are busy and buzzing with pilots from all parts of Europe. The mountains seem to be happy with that and provided them last Wednesday, with pretty good weather with lot’s of over-500 km. flights, a few over-600 and even over- 700 km.
Lucky ones ; Italy, Spain, Portugal and Slovakia still suffer from rain.

From Torino , where the 41 st Trofeo Internazionale de Citta di Torino, is in progress since March 29, the next news on April 5 by Clara ; ” Oggi meteo pessima: i tutti a terra!” Only the word pessima says enough! “The weather is not good, ALL over the world!”
Last soarable day was Saturday one week ago ,so only flying on March 31.
They tried hard yesterday; briefing at 10.45 than 12.30 and 13.00; task 120 km. BUT the weather was just not good enough and at 14.30 the day was cancelled , so with one day , won by Luca Di Marchi, [ 514 points] this competition finished. A pity!!! “annullata per insufficienti condizioni meteo” even I do understand that!

Better weather still in Australia where Ingo flew a nice over 500 km. flight in his Discus from good old Tocumwal. He even “topped” the OLC list on Friday.
And 324 k. in the Kestrel is not bad either from Temora.
Nice ridge flight by the way from Ridge Soaring in a PIK 20B on Wednesday ; 900 km. even with a “loss” of more than 3 hours to fly home due to a ” block-of-the-road ” by snow showers.

AND,…….YESTERDAY we had an extremely good soaring-day again here in Holland. Nice cold [-8 to, – 10 up in the air!!!] unstable air, dry and strong thermals , [from nice big-well-formed-cu’s] , as I could feel in my garden again.
Flights from 602 km. in an 18 m. LS 8 in the N. of Holland flying direction E. into Germany by Siem and Rene flew in the ASG 29 from the same field [De Voorst] into Germany; 647 km.
On the news in the evening they showed during the weather great cloud streets!

One of the Dutch pilots , not in the air as you can see, noticed the cloud streets as well.
Courtesy Alexander Venema via FB.

Not difficult to guess that the N. part of Germany had strong soaring conditions as well with 705 in an ASH 26 from Boberg. But also the UK had great weather!!! David Masson managed to fly 693 km from Lasham direction N.
Also Booker and Dunstable had great flights for the beginning of the season.
But with 1595 km. in wave, Jim Payne topped the list yesterday from Minden ; as he mentioned “Minden Rocks” so to see it did!

They say that this upcoming week will “FEEL” more like spring here, 10 dgr. today[ normal average is 13] hope it is true , as our farmers are getting sad/worried about the in their eyes longest cold-period in history. Everything that grows is slow now!!!Too slow and it is VERY dry at the moment as well! But with the SW wind it will be warmer and we will have rain!
Normally this time of the year I see the most colourful flowers along the rails when travelling by train to Amsterdam. Now it looks a bit like the desert in Australia!

And to finish a few nice pictures from a young, Belgium blogger Niel Deijgers. [in English]www.nieldeijgers.blogspot.com/