Well, that’s over and done with for another year. What a good one- and- a -half -day it was.
Pick- nick at the river on Sunday afternoon with some of the girls and yesterday a great lunch in the Antique shop , one of the sponsor’s of this multi class national competition.
73 Now…hope to continue for a few more years!!! Thanks also for all the flowers, bottles, messages, FB messages, emails , phone calls and all other personal congratulations. I felt very much “loved”!

Back to reality and back on track.
For sure they flew here over those 2 day’s I was celebrating. Sunday only a small task for open and 18 m; 154 km. Won by Adam.
Yesterday a longer task for both classes; Butch won the 361 km. task in 18 m /open with a speed of 111 km./h.
Tobias Geiger from Benalla won the other class ;312 km with a speed of 99 km./h.
For today a 3.15 AAT is set for open/18 m and a 4 hour AAT for the small ships.
As Diana won the protest she filed, she is flying the comps now till the end and she is a very happy girl “singing” through the hangar.
It means that due to lack of chairs in the briefing room…there are enough for the pilots… I will not go there as Diana occupies her chair now!!!

Brasilian Nationals;
Congratulations to Henrique Navarro who won the Brazilian Nationals in open class; 4.816 points for flying 6 out of 7 day’s in his Nimbus 4T.
He won 3 day’s and was 2d on 3 as well and Egon Rehn who was runner up won 3 day’s as well.
Egon flew his ASW 22 BLE and lost about 180 points on day 1.
It was more a Henrique /Egon show over there in Palmeira das Missões,

In racing class Luis Affonso won in Jantar 3 [4.537 points] and in club class Sergio Bassi in Elfe S4.[4.586 points] .

The South African Nationals are still in full swing too …they started on the 14th.
As said, Oscar won day 1 with 369 km. with a great speed of 149 km.h. with Klaus Kalmbach from Germany as runner up.
Day 2 was for Arne from Denmark a 288 km task and it must have been a difficult day as the speed was 88 km./h.
Yesterday they had 375 km and Oscar added another 1000 points to his total. Arne 996 points. Both flew 103 km./h.
” Despite a lot less wind, it seems as if conditions were not so easy – not getting that high 9 – 9 500 ft, and broken not very strong thermals 1 – 1.5 m/s.”
2 Outlandings!
Will keep you informed.

11 AM;
The A task for today for 15 m and standard

and for open and 18 m.

12.15 AM;
The windsock hangs a bit and looking at the far East it’s pretty hazy.
The tuggies are going to the field.
The sniffer reports 3 to 4 kts. and best height till now was 3300 ft.according to the pilot.

12.35 AM;
All pilots are asked to come to the front of the grid! The sniffer, a 2 seater Janus with call sign ZAV, just landedat 09.

1 PM;
First launch. I can just see them climb pretty good to the SW of the field , though the visibility in my eyes is very low!!
The small ships were “up” in 20 minutes so their line opens at 13.45!!

1.35 PM;
Heard a pilot over the radio;”I am not flying with this visibility to the N.”

1.45;PM
The organisation advises about visibility; “12 K at Narradera and 18 k at Albury.”

2 PM;
have to sort things out again first !
Well it is 4.30 now. I went to Vicky as she does the radio calls and checked if the line for the small ships indeed was opened at 13.45.
It was.
Then due to more smoke coming with the N E- sterly the day was cancelled.
I thought for open and 18 m. only ,as the line was open for the small ships and according to the rules I learned when I was steward, you can only cancel the day in the air, then, when everybody is notified personally by radio or phone.
BE AWARE…..That rule might have changed and I do not have the annex with me.
So I have no opinion now and wait to find out how this is going to be solved. When all pilots in this class were notified and all knew it was cancelled, there will be no problem.
The line for open/18 m was never opened. The safety officer asked advice from some experienced pilots ; their advice was to cancel the day.
At soaring spot all classes were later cancelled.
Interesting day. Looking forward to see how this works out.
In my opinion cancellation of the day was a wise decision others think a visibility of 5 km is still good enough. Mmmmm…

2.30 PM:
4 Pilots asked permission to continue flying among them Butch and Adam who asked for it. They were allowed and were at Urana already.
Adam shared a picture from the air.

I felt sorry for the safety officer,he had a tough job to advise the pilots coming back and in between advise guest- power -planes ,who wanted to land here or depart. He asked those pilots if they had seen the NOTAM.
In the end it all went smooth and disciplined.
Here is the weather forecast from my phone. Will see how accurate it is. Was already happy it found Tocumwal.

Another day over and it will be hotter tomorrow,
Wednesday 40 dgr.C and 03 bft wind from the East, that’s not what we want as it might bring more smoke.
Thursday will be sunny with clouds and up to 42 and a change of wind to W 4 bft. and
Friday will be horrible with 46 dgr.c here in Toc sunny and some clouds and maybe 0.7 mm of what they call rain, it might not even reach the ground.Wind NW 4 bft. that might help.
Saturday ;41 dgr.C as top, 0.2 mm of rain, wind W. 4 bft.

Let’s wait and see if this all happens.

Off for dinner now with some mates.