Alphen aan den Rijn    Wednesday December 14 2011

ritzdeluy@hotmail.com     www.glidinginternational.com     www.soaringcafe.com

John Coutts [NZ] from my Eskilstuna dvd.

It seems that “after a night full of rain  they woke up to sunshine at Welkom “ [Bruce] to start the S A Nationals and all pilots including quite a few international pilots, were ready to go for day 1 . Most of them fly in 18 m. class , where a 3 hour AAT was set.
Good old John Coutts  [ from NZ and winner  of the WGC 2003 in Poland and 4th at the 2001 WGC in Mafikeng in SA in st. class] won this day ;382 km. in 3 hours and ONE minute, speed 126km./h.
Dutch pilot Ronald Termaat was 2d with more kilometers [ 429 km] but he “used” more time; 3 hour and 24 minutes.
In club class the Schmidt family did good business by coming home from their 3 hour AAT as the only 2 finishers [from 12 participants] in ASW 20 and Speed Astir II.
  

Ronald Termaat [2006 Eskilstuna] not only an excellent glider pilot ……..

Day 2  gave for both classes a distance of 200 and 278 km. In 18 m there are 17 gliders and 10 are JS 1’s.
Here is Bruce for those who do not have FB after asking ofcourse permission from Anita first [to NOT disturb Bruce while flying] ;

“Just gone to task C here, as it looks to be very slow to get going. Blue to 10000 feet is the forecast – sounds ok, but that is only 5500 above ground. 280 km to fly now, mostly west of Wellkom, which is still a bit wet from the rain last w/e.
Results from yesterday were not too flattering for me- about 13 kph off the pace. It was one of those days when you are just not in tune with the weather. See what happens today.
Still not a perfect race for Bruce. Uys and Ronald did better in being 1 and 2.One of the Schmidt family , Maneste, outlanded after 41 km. costing her a lot of points.
Day 3  had an A and B Task in both classes, as the meteo was divided in their opinion. Wind, rain thunderstorms , it was all possible but at what time . Atleast  it was 31 dgr. BUT……
Only ONE pilot finished. Holger Karow from Germany, dealing best with the bad circumstances from wind and heavy rain. He just passed the finish line, landed about 2.5 km from the field [read the news on www.soaringspot.com ,good news/blog by the way] and it took them 3 hours to come back home. Atleast 1000 points were his!!! Not a good day for John Coutts outlanding after 132 km gaining only 331 preliminary points, dropping from 2 to 9 overall. After 3 days Ronald is on spot 1 overall with Danish pilot Arne on spot 2.
Here is what Bruce said on FB; ” 

 Courtesy Bruce Taylor via FB. Sunset in S.A.

After 1 cancelled day  the juniors [under25] started in Kingaroy their Nationals with a 2 hour AAT and Andrew Maddocks got the first 1000 points, for flying 162 km in just under 2 hours. On day 2 Andrew won again. [228km.task]  Today brother Nick flew the 320 km. just a fraction better, but Andrew was 2. After 3 days Andrew tops the overall scores and Nick is 4th.

On December 10  the first flight of the season for Swiss pilot Jean Marc Perrin was immediately a good one. He settled down  in Argentina[Esquel]  and flew in a 15m. conversion DG808 , 1.708 km with a nice speed of 136 km./h. Will Patagonia, stretched over Argentina and Chile be “hot” again this season for the pilots who love to fly over there ???

And……on December 12 it was Namibia -day again, with 8 x1000 km. One from Kiripotib in Ventus 2CM/18m. with a speed of 127 km./h and one from Pokweni , the rest from Bitterwasser. By the way, the first 29 flights on that day on the OLC were flown from Namibia.
Nice 1000 km. triangle from Dmytry Borovyk [Ukraine] in the Nimbus 4DM.
Since December 10 Kilometer -eater Alexander Müller is back in Pokweni flying the EB 29. Looking forward to his flights, ……will he fly as much kilometers as last season.

And here is the translation from an exclusive “retrospect” by Fabian Peitz  who flew HIS first and Australia’s first 1000 km. for this season. The first 1000 km from Stonefield as well, Fabian put it on the map!!!
—-It all started on the evening of the day before,  when Benni studied the weather , looked me in the eyes and said ” Tomorrow you are going to fly  1000 km”. I did not believe that straight away , but on the same evening we set 3 possible tasks to have different options on what ever way the weather should develop.

In the early morning ,a last view on the weather maps and I was convinced;” When not now, when then”. We arrived at 8 , punctual, at the airfield.The glider Discus 2B “YB” was filled with 100 l. of water the day before , I prepared myself for 10 hours of flying and Benni prepared the winch.
One more time-briefing, hopping in the glider, checks, the rope on the hook and at 10.20 local time, it all started.

But…..what was wrong with the air???? It was so quiet, no bumps it was as if I was flying trough butter, no positive news from the vario either, not while turning left , not right. Then…0.2 ,….but after trying hard I had to land again.
Straight after landing I wanted to go up again, but allowed the Nimbus 4DM to go first. I looked if the Nimbus would put off the engine and was able to thermal after 10 minutes. If not I would wait a bit longer.
Around 11.10 I really was keen to go for it. Everything necessary was done again and straight after I had released ,  I felt lift under my left wing;1 m/s., not long after 2 m/s . It had started and with one hour delay I went for it,” if you don’t try , you never win”. After 50 km I turned in 5m/s. up to 2800 m. the race was on!!!
I flew up north passed Burra, Peterborough and Hawker,  still 80 k to go to the first TP and at 14.00 I turned 320 km out from Stonefield at ; Wilpena Airstrip.

 A lot of “nothing” , but atleast a “street” to follow!!!

I was back on schedule [time] and I quickly found out looking at the last 60 minutes, that everything was  still possible. Now it was going South and as fast as possible over areas I just had seen under me. Burra was the next TP , checking on speed I noticed I had flown with 125 km/h.  Quickly to not loose any time, I carried on direction N. In between it was 16.00 and all went according to plan , as I wanted to have  the last 200 km to the next TP behind me, at 17.30. Cloudbase  at 4200m. was perfect, lift up to 6m/s was excellent and the speed over the task till now was just under 130km/h.

 At 17.20 I turned for the last time the TP up north and now I was going S. again and only 260 km from the magic 1000 km. dream. Still 2 hours of thermal activity and I was sure I was going to make it as the lift was strong and reliable. At 100 km. out,  I had 50 m . height left with arrival , enough but not too much, so I remained concentrated but felt some happiness inside.The next 40 km. were straight on with no sink , still 60 km to go …and lift from 2m/s. up to 2500 m. On final glide I really enjoyed the quiet evening circumstances in which I flew “home”. I put  the [whole day beeping]  vario softer and listened only  to the noise of  the soaring glider , sliding through the air.

 An exciting feeling…nearly home…1000 km.

After 8 hours and 20 minutes I landed, everybody was excited and happy for me. We finished the day with beer and an Aussie BBQ.—–
Well deserved and….. thank you to Fabian for writing his story and Benjamin for sending it to me.

Enough to read again; next time the finish of the Welkom Nationals and what’s more! To finish a picture send to me by Guy Courchesne via Glider Forever.

Cheers Ritz