Alphen aan den Rijn March 17 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
” They ” predict that Spring starts today, with maybe temperatures up to 17 dgr. tomorrow. OK , good ….I am ready!
Though spring , [the astronomical at March 21] is coming and already 88 pilots sent their file to the OLC last Sunday, the best flight that day with a sunny 27 dgr., was from Benalla in Australia in autumn ;512 km. by Tobias Geiger in his LS 4 with a nice polygon with 4 TP’s. I know Hiroko was very happy with her flight from Toc. also in LS 4; 393 km. Worthwhile for her to travel up all the way from Japan.
Chris flew in his ASW 27 a good 457 km. distance. Also “the Club” in Toc. had a great day with their first solo pilot. Well done!
Interesting to see that the South, West and East of Australia, still have great autumn weather .
One day earlier on Saturday even more pilots “went up” world wide and a good amount of 176 world , enjoyed good to very good conditions. The UK had wave at their mountain area and with 610 km. a nice up and down flight across the ridges was made in a DG 400.
In Calcinate in Italy, several of my Italian friends are flying a high performance -mountain-competition / training-camp, organised by the Centro Tecnico Federale. Between March 12 and 20 , 38 pilots will fly in one class , 23 participants , the rest coaches. Interesting is that top pilots as Georgio Ballarati, Ricky Brigliadori, Stefano Ghiorzo , Alberto Sironi and Luciano Avanzini and more, are coaches to fly with pilots, who are interested. They even had to refuse pilots in excess. They had a racing task of 254 km. to start with. The weather was good yesterday and the pilots flew 315 km.
Today I spend some hours in Hoofddorp on the CAE NLS flying school. As they are the main sponsor of the Dutch Gliding Nationals ,I was interested who they are and what they are exactly doing, to promote them in our best way. The CAE stands for Canadian Aviation Electronics and they are a type rating training organisation, for pilots from all over the world.[TRTO]
They are the parent company for the NLS , which is the Dutch Flying School and they are a Flight Training Organisation.[FTO]
It was a very pleasant atmosphere in which I was even allowed to make a little trip in a Full Flight Simulator [737] . VERY EXCITING!!!! This was one of the 7 simulators they have.
The school counts 144 students per year and there is an average of 4 women on 24 men, though this year they have one class starting last September with 7 girls.The NLS has their own finance system, so that pilots- to-be, between 18 and 28 with whatever financial background, still can do such an expensive study. For more news look at;
www.nls.nl and for selection procedures at; www.therightwaytotheleftseat.nl
And then this……..It should have been a wonderful Sunday-afternoon for father and son. The 42 year old son took his dad 71, for a nice ride in a home built Ultravia Pelican [1998] , but….they got engine problems, in fact the engine totally failed in the air and the pilot could not reach anymore the strip he started from. He had to land in a field , hit with one wing the ground first and “fell on his nose”. A bit of a different afternoon then hoped for and expected, but they have a lot to talk about,as a bit of excitement like this will be a hot item on many parties to come, as luckily dad and son were unharmed. The plane however was pretty badly damaged and the incident is under investigation.
And what about this……..a jogger enjoyed his run along the beach in North Carolina [USA] but….was hit by an Experimental IV-P Lancair making an emergency landing at the beach after loosing oil. This oil splashed on his window so he could not go to the closest-by airfield, due to lack of visibility. This story is sad as the jogger did not survive. But what a terrible way to die, though most probably he never knew what happened to him.
Sorry I was late today.
Cheers Ritz and…… fly safely!