DECEMBER 1 2021;post 1.306.
the beginning of the winter here and the summer down under.
They predict for The Netherlands ,a cold winter with snow and lot’s of ice for [speed]skating. 11Town race????? [Elf Steden Tocht???]

The soaring-weather was not very flash in the beginning of last week. Tocumwal was wet, Narromine even wetter, so not a lot of flying, whilst it can be SOO good.
That showed on Monday , a few days later, when Grant in his St Jantar flew a distance of 710 km. from Tocumwal.
One day later 743 k, direction West, super job and on top of the worldwide OLC list !!!!! Grant was a hang glider pilot before he learned to fly gliders with us and straight away showed his huge potency.
Eddie wrote; “An early start for Grant today 10:50 …..knot thermals to 3500Trying for. 1000 km in the Jantar standard UKP”
He needed ONE MORE GOOD CLIMB. But 743k. is a huge job as well.
“1000 was the hope, 700+ was the reality“
As Eddie said; “Generally the west is not as good as north east (the land of milk and honey) All this season so far the West is best by a large margin.”
Interesting!!!

On Monday the weather changed and they even flew a nearly 1000 [912 km.] from Raywood in Victoria in an ARCUS M. So pretty good in Victoria and the border of NSW. [the South of Australia.]
More West , down under, on Friday , Norm [Bloch] even flew 768k. from Beverley in his 18m. JS 3 and with that flight he topped the OLC , this time for a chance, not Kiripotib or Bitterwasser ,Veronica or Pokweni, but Beverley in the West of Australia.

—–In the beginning of this week, the 1000 km-“rain” stopped in Africa as well. They had more problems as on November 26, Bitterwasser shared the message;
“Fire hazard !!!
Namibia is dusty again .Nice for soaring as it gives strong high-performance thermals. But just not for the country. The vegetation is very anti-inflammatory. And forest fires keep happening. The drought is hard to imagine. Thunderstorms, lightning set the dry vegetation on fire.”
Daan and Thijs still flew 837 km. during their last flight for this holiday in Kiripotib and topped the OLC list on Thursday.

On November 27 the wind was the spoiler of the day.
“Stormy days in Bitterwasser
The forecasts from TopMeteo for Namibia in the last few days have been a nice promise. The potential flight distances (PFD) told from many kilometers. But it wasn’t that simple.
The flights had to be fought hard. Only a look at the wind maps showed the problem. The working altitudes in the blue thermal in the afternoon were 5000 meters MSL and more, but in the heights and already well below it was blowing at 60 kph plus. Wind shear did the rest to stir up the thermals vigorously. Only the strong and then tight lifts made it all the way up. Lots of clubs and a high tolerance against shaking were the order of the day. If you liked that, you could also bring together decent daily distances, like the Italian TwinShark team Pietro Sileri/Gaetano Benincasa with almost 800 kilometers.
Another challenge awaited the returnees when they had to land in the 30 knots northwest with gusts of up to 46 knots. The photo shows the current weather on the afternoon of November 26th. In Bitterwasser that wasn’t that big a problem. On the large pan, it was possible to approach and land exactly against the wind.“

But last Monday the weather gods were good again for Namibia and the 1000 k’s were back;6 over 1000 and 5 over 1.100.

Also Worcester had a WE COACH-super Monday with 2x a 1000 in an Arcus M.
Put 2 kilometer eaters, Mathias [Schunk] and Uwe [Thiele] in an Arcus M and you get a great flight over land and sea.
Mathias shared this picture [more on the OLC]

And another phenomena also from Mathias during their flight and shared by Sven [Olivier]
Never even heard of such a “thing”.

AND,…then there is of course the new mutation of covid -19, the omicron -variant, hitting S.A. but also Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Zimbabwe .
On Friday the 2 planes coming back from South Africa could still land here in the Netherlands, but the passengers had to go in quarantine straight away; in the plane first. After, they got food in a closed area and were brought by bus to a test location. Weird end of a most probably lovely holiday. Also for Daan and Thijs, but they are back home again.
From the 600 passengers on those 2 flights 61 were diagnosed with covid, 13 had the new omicron.

Kiripotib shared this news on November 30 ,so yesterday.
“While more and more facts about the new virus variants are available we would like to inform you about our further plans regarding the flight operations in Kiripotib. Thanks to the great support of the organizing team and the additional help of some enthusiastic gliders we are able to maintain flight operations at the level expected by you and us until the end of the season, mid-January. The decision whether or not to take up your reservation is of course yours. We are aware that travel regulations, flight availability and personal circumstances vary from pilot to pilot. The situation changes daily and future developments are unpredictable. We respect each and every decision you make and are confident to find a fair solution together that takes into account all financial aspects. We are looking forward to welcoming you in Kiripotib! If not this year then next year.“

Pffff,…..it’s a difficult world at the moment!!!!!
We got new sharper, stronger rules/lockdown, on Friday evening as well.
A lock-down between 5AM and 5 PM.
Unfortunately we have about 1.5 million people, who are not …do not want or can’t….vaccinated.
87 % is. Those unvaccinated all get corona now and the hospitals are full and in preparation for code black ,so that people who are vaccinated but need p.e. a heart, kidney or hip/knee operation can’t have it. This hospital -infarct they expect already next week. Some hospitals work already according to this rule.
This is the world we live in NOW.

—–All those problems are of course, weird as we are not used to them, but also huge and shocking.
My own problem is compared to the world problems, small, but it still makes me sad and angry!!!!
Eddie Madden from Sportaviation Tocumwal, flew over the cemetery and missed the beautiful red flowering oleander behind the stone of Dennis grave.

It was an umbrella of flowers growing around the stone. It was there for over 30 years and planted by “good old Jim” the gardener from Sportavia.
It was a point -of-recognition for overseas friends and locals.
It seems the council workers have cut it to the base.

Truly sad, disappointing , distressing and unforgivable. All our soaring mates who flew at Sportavia in the good old times, will remember the red oleander.
In the beginning Dieter Dundee, took care of the grave, when we were not there and Eddie and Bones prune nowadays ….doing a real good job.
All for nothing,…so sad!!!!

–—-On another more private note, also very annoying,….Somebody in this world wanted to be me on FB.
They tried to steal my identity taking over the picture from me in the Grunau Baby, but you could see all kind of colored signs on the fuselage, making it fake. They started a new account in my name and when people reacted to be my friend on the fake account, they answered as well.
Luckily some people checked with me and my daughter noticed it too and stopped/blocked via FB the whole nonsense!!!
As said ,…a weird world.

–—One of our Japanese guests in the past, Takeshi Saito, still flies in Japan. When I was there a long time ago, I told you that they have small airfields /strips, behind a dyke along the river. They still do now as you can see on the picture . And it is ALL working well, even with mouth caps.

—–And to finish this great picture from 08-09-2018 over the Wasserkuppe.
A formation from 3 vintage gliders DFS-Habichte ,a super happening.

I had to check what kind of plane it exactly was, but heard that it is a pre-WW2 training glider, meant for the training of pilots for the ME 163 rocket fighter. They had a variation in wings from 17,13 and 6 meter.
They look a bit like minimoa’s.

CU next week
Cheers Ritz