Alphen aan den Rijn      Sunday July 12 2009

 It feels and looks like autumn here!! The summer has left us ,hopefully only temporally, but it should be back after this weekend with up to 23 dgr. On Friday we had 17 and rain and forecast for severe wind and even hail. No weather for soaring here in Holland at the moment, though yesterday was unexpected good here in Alphen!!

Silva , the competition director from the 6th Junior World Comps, wrote a nice thank you on the JWGC site;

THANK YOU ALL!For making this Contest a fair sporting event! We were unbelievable lucky with the weather which made it a real gliding competition. More than 800 flights, more than 280 000 kilometers practice days included was much more than we expected.I am very satisfied with the safety in this contest. Only occasions were two minor damages during outlanding which indicates good airmanship. From the results we can see you are the top of the world already now!I would like to thank you all for the smooth and relaxed feeling during your stay. You made this competition to stay in our memories rest of our lives. Your smiling faces will stay in our hearts forever!We wish you all the nice and good things. See you some day!Silva and the Organization of the 6th JWGC.

And what about the web statistics!!!!

Period

Visits

Hits

Files

Pages

KBytes

20.6.-6.7.

109 539

12 991 597

8 192 177

1 399 352

168 420 324

So who says that a gliding competition is not a “tool” for PR????????A competition with live coverage and great videos from big FAI events , might be another key for promotion for soaring. Silva had both, live coverage with the Ritz Corner and videos with Hubi!!!Of course the names can be different it does not have to be Ritz or Hubi,…

Summer continued in Finland when we all left. Some of the pilots said while saying goodbye,” Now we are sitting in the cold and rain again, no gliding for another 4 years”. They were clearly a bit too “gloomey” and for sure sad that we were all leaving.When you look at the nice flight from top junior Miloslav Cink who flew 769 km. one day after the prize giving, then the ” doom and gloom”,  was not necessary. And on the same day 2 other nice flights in Finland, one 806 in ASW 22 and 2 more flights over 600 km.
Jyrki wrote ;
–We have had a variety of weather here with thermal enough for good soaring but rather cool. Yesterday at 2000 meters in cloud it was well below freezing with ice in the wings. It melted only below 1200 meters. meters ;light rain in showers . After 5 hours it was time to land to warm up.–

Specially the last couple of days Fuente and Ocana and Cuenca Sotos in Spain had their annual guests enjoying  great soaring.

The EGC is over and it was interesting to follow it. What about 2 points difference between Pete Harvey [UK]and Laurent Aboulin [FR] in open class. Pete is a great pilot and I am not surprised he won, but the last 2 days nearly made him runner up with 721 points  for him , 772 for Laurent and 1000 points for Tomas Rendla
Most impressed with Francois who won 2 days and missed out on day 1 due to some damage on his glider while bringing it to the grid!
In 15 m class the French did well with a number 1 and 3 position. Runner up from Poland was Lukasz Wojcik and former world champion Leigh Wells was 4th.
In 18 m. class not Wolfgang as winner, a bit of a surprise for me, but Russell and Mike from the UK, both by the way, great pilots. Poland , Holland and Austria [Wolfgang] were on place 3-4-and 5.
With 9 flying days a great,  but weatherwise not all too easy competition.

Back to my family, waiting downstairs for coffee, so till wednesday with more!!!!

Cheers Ritz