HAPPY MOTHER-DAY.
Good morning, a Sunday blog today on soaring.EU. As you might have found out I write a daily blog from Alphen with the help of the social media, tracking and video systems in Sisteron, about the final of the SAILPLANE GRAND PRIX. Enjoy that at: www.soaringcafe.com
EU, it was a late night/early morning with the European Song Contest Final in Denmark. As Holland was in the race for a place in the top , according to the bet -stations, I looked with 180 million other people to the show, won in the end by Austria with a Drag Queen, the ” lady with the beard” ,who got a lot of emotion- votes, as she/he made a statement for FREEDOM in Europe for ALL. I was pleased with that , though I find that a Eurovision festival is not really the place to make statements other then GOOD music. The Queen could sing as well, but I don’t know what would have happened without the ” sentiments”.
Our Dutch Ilse and Waylon , as the Common Linnets, got the 2 d place, the best for Holland since 1975 when “we” won. Good on them, GREAT song!
Ilse and Waylon do not come home empty- handed today, they won the prize for best act and best song as seen through the eyes of the complete press. That says something too.
As shared by Ilse on FB
“Whoooot!!! We already won two Marcel Bezencon Awards for best song and best artistic performance! “
Back to soaring as a lot happened last week.
SCANDINAVIA
Flying over beautiful Norway.
Courtsey Arne Martin.
Scandinavia was blessed with awesome weather in the beginning of May and I wrote already a bit about it. A reaction on that blog from Norwegian pilot Arne Martin, gives all of us more inside- information . That’s, as you know the inter-action, I love:
” I saw you mentioned my flight in Norway in your latest blog entry:
http://soaring.eu/
But that was just the start, the last week has seen some exceptionally good conditions here, and my personal record of 548 km that Sunday lasted only a few days as on Thursday my new record became 725 km.
In total out of 5 flights in just over a week 4 of those were over 500 km.
Considering that I had only once before made a flight of over 500 km, that says something! And I wasn’t the only one, OLC will reveal there were a lot of long flights in Norway, particular from Notodden.
Picture report from my flights:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10152372648735605&type=1&l=2b76d5e40d
[Please have a look at this link as those pictures are absolutely beautiful and interesting stories are going with it , ENJOY !!!!]
And also Sweden had exceptionally good conditions. Wilhelm Wendt and Jim Acketoft did the longest flight ever in Sweden in their EB28.
According to the rules for the Swedish cross country contest that flight was 1200 km!
Meanwhile Jan-Ola Nordh in his Discus 2 did no less than 2 flights of more than 1000 km these days!
Arne Martin Güettler and a BIG thank you to him.
As he added; In total I flew more than 30 hours and over 2200 km over the four days, by far the most and longest I’ve flown in such a short time-span!
Tracks of area we covered in the four days.
Red is first day, purple second, brown third and blue last day.
PRIEVIDZA
The Flight Challenge Cup in Prievidza was blessed with good weather too. 2 Days with over-500-km.- tasks. Out of 12 days they had one rest-day, 3 cancelled days and on all other days they flew .
The 116 pilots finished the comps with a 3 hour AAT in each of the 3 classes on Thursday.
Good to see Lubor win the last day in the mixed class [ 320.3 km. in time 3.03] and he finished on spot 5 overall after 8 days. 3 Polish pilots and 1 French pilot were in front of him. They all flew ASG 29!
3 Different gliders in the top in club class; an ASW 15b, a St. Cirrus and a St.Jantar 2. 2 Czech pilots and 1 Hungarian in the top 3.
In 15 m. French pilot Christophe Ruche lost 250 points on the last day and with that the runner-up place overall. He dropped to spot 4. 2 Lithuanian pilots[ Discus 2A and LS 6] were in the top with 1 Polish pilot.[Discus 2A]
All results are on www.soaringspot.com
BUNO
Venue of the French Nationals in open and 20 m. class.
The French Nationals have continued again after 3 cancelled days,with flying day 4 ,with 223 km. for the double-seaters and 326 km. for open class.
5 From 15 missed out on finishing in the 20 m. and 9 from 18 in open class went in real or virtual ” aux vaches” .
The great pictures are courtesy to Alain Bachellier and there are many more have a look at;
THANKS to CHRISTOPHE for the link to
https://plus.google.com/
Last day was yesterday, but it had to be cancelled. Still enough days to have Champions in both classes.
In open class Peter Eriksen from Denmark was the winner [3232 points] , but the French champion was Eric Bernard in the ASG 29, [ 3186] before Louis Bouderlique. [3128]
Jutta finished on spot 9.
In the 2-seater class , 3 Duo Discusses in the top with Eric Soubrier as the new Champion.[3135 points]
The Champion, runner up and number 3 , with Peter as the best 2d to the r. AND the 20 m. CHAMPIONS.
All other scores at ;http://www.soaringspot.
Aosta, the place we visited in the past to go skiing [me, from Pila] and soaring [height gain for the men] had a good day on Friday. Pilots in ASW 24 and LS 8 flew over the edges of the the French and Italian Alps, distances of 925 km. and 711.
Topping the OLC that day ,was again the DG 1001 M, from Jim and Dennis , with a wave flight from 1.015 km. with the nice speed of 155 km./h.
Also a pretty good day in Israel where pilots from Beer Sheba Teyma, flew distances from 331 km in the DG 500 /20m. with Rafi in it and 258 in a PIK 20. Yesterday Rafi even flew 458 km. in the Speed Astir.
AND…403 km. from Nagano in Japan is worthwhile to mention too.Flown in wave up to 5464m. MSL.[4376 m. AGL]
Nice to see that Shinzo who runs his own flying school in Narromine,-Soar Narromine- is flying the ARCUS T in Itakura in the Australian winter.
Talking about the Aussie winter , have a look at the weather today ; Picture shared by Eddie, owner of Sportaviation in Tocumwal.
Morning wave over the first cu .
And to finish ; This great picture shared by ” Stuff Dutch people like” and I know that more than only Dutch people will like it.
Was the visit from Obama good for the Rijksmuseum, the visit of the wife from the Chinese president , during that Nuclear top was super PR for the Keukenhof. Did they have last year around 30.000 Chinese visitors, now they had 2 weeks ago already 31.000 .So there will be quite a few more, when they close at May 18.
Holland on it’s best.
Courtesy ; stuff Dutch people like.
Cheers Ritz on Sunday May 11 2014. CU later on www.soaringcafe.com