Alphen aan den Rijn Wednesday October 10 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
“Silence before the storm “! That’s what ‘s happening here. A Dutch meteo forecaster called “weer plaza ” , has announced the first real autumn storm with wind up to 9 bft and gusting to 10 bft. for Thursday and Friday, specially for the North and NW of Holland. The KNMI the DutchNational meteo-forecaster only advises from 48 hours onwards, but they say that it will be stormy and keep a good eye on things.
9 bft. happens here 3 or 4 times a year , 10 even less. Warnings have been issued! Due to lot’s of rain over the last weeks , trees might be in weak ground and could fall over, so do not parc your car under a tree. Let’s wait and see!!!
Quantas has announced last Monday, that they have found oil leaks in the Rolls Royce engines from the A 380. More investigation is necessary to find out why, and till further notice all their flights with the biggest airplane in the world are suspended with at-least 72 hours. They found the oil leaks in 3 engines on 3 different aircraft. All engines from type Trent 900 Rolls Royce are new and will be replaced!!! Luckily Quantas had 3 spare ones!
Quantas had to put on additional flights as 30 passengers had stranded in London and 500 in Los Angeles.
They co-operate with Airbus and Rolls-Royce to solve the problems as quick as possible.
Singapore Airlines has the A 380 as well, but they have different engines, so they normally fly. ……till today , as this morning I heard that they have grounded 3 of their Airbus 380 planes as well after inspection of all 11 planes . They replace the engines of those 3.
Several airlines [11 in total] received huge bills for not sticking to the freight cartel-rules. KLM-Air France and Martin Air belong to them. Also Quantas got an 8.8 million bill. Not good as Quantas was hoping to REALLY celebrate their 90thiest birthday in a better way then loosing money to a fine or having problems with their new A 380 engines !!!
Several friends are flying for Quantas so still HAPPY 90thiest anniversary.
When you are interested what they write about it in Australia here is a link I received from Vanessa;
After the accident in Austria last June with a Blanik, all Blaniks are grounded. As Bill Riley [founder of Sportavia,] in 1979 imported the Blanik from Czech Rep. to Australia, quite a few were sold all over Australia. We had several in the past , real “work horses” they were/are and easy to fly, but when the wing can separate from the fuselage something is terribly wrong. Peter, one of my Dutch friends found out a very interesting link with information about the grounding of the Blanik L 13 and I share it with you. With the EASA [European Aviation Safety Agency] all European countries have to stick to their rules, but here you can also read what happens to the Blanik world wide.
http://sites.google.com/site/blanikspar/home
Last Sunday a few of my friends started their overseas season with good flights to start with. Activity enough at Gariep Dam, Kiripotib, Pokweni and Bitterwasser . A day on which you find [NA] Namibia and South Africa [SA] frequently back in the top of the OLC list.
757 km was the best that day , but to be honest/realistic, the longest flights were flown in top- open -class -gliders, nothing wrong with that but I do not have to tell you that they just have a better performance. Yesterday 806 km was the best result.
On November 8 I was impressed with the ridge flight , starting at Mifflin County from a pilot in a Discus 2; 1.126 km., with a speed of 123 km/h. Same day on the other site of those mountains from the Ridge Soaring -field well known USA pilot Tom Knauff flew in a duo discus a flight of 757 km with a speed of 142 km/h. Hope the passenger had a good stomach! They had blue conditions , thermals only up to 4000 ft. due to inversion, but great wind and super ridge- conditions!
No good news for Boeing as well. One of the Dreamliners they are testing got smoke in the cockpit. Only technici were on board and the plane landed without problems, but…you can’t sell a plane which produces smoke to the passengers in the cabin or chase the pilots out of their cockpit. A new problem for the Dreamliner which might postpone flying again. The Dreamliner Boeing 787 was supposed to fly 3 years ago already but all different problems occured.
As promised the link to the award winning video ! Enjoy, worthwhile looking !!!Thanks Kees!!! Here is first the link to the AWARD winning video from last year 2009;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwdFycGgh4g
and here is the link to find the winning video from 2010 on YOU TUBE flown in the ASH25 over Aosta! As said ENJOY!!!!
ATMOS-SFEER
Last Sunday I gave you an address to reach Uli as the new Jaxida owner. Last but not least, here are 2 more used ones I received from him when you want to know more about the covers.
www.Jaxida-Cover.deund Uli.Schwenk@Jaxida-Cover.de.
Cu next Sunday, cheers Ritz