Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday January 17 2010 ritzdeluy@hotmail.com
First of all a reaction on some comments I received a few days ago ; I wrote somewhere in December that a challenge for Klaus Ohlman might be a 3000 km flight! And….of course he FLEW a 3000 km flight already in 2003!
Very CORRECT! Sorry about that.
THANK YOU , for reading with me and correcting where necessary!
Then the Nationals in Australia. Last Friday was the last flying day and the pilots in standard class went for a 2.30 h AAT .
Michael Durant won nearly all of the 8 days except for the first and is the well deserved winner in this class. [7635 points]Runner up is, WGC 3d place winner in Italy, Peter Temple and Peter Trotter is 3d!
Nine flying days in 15 m. class and a 3 hour AAT with John Buchanan winning the last day AND the competition, before Lisa ,Terry and Helge.
I know John since 1984 when we met him in Rieti during the pre-worlds and he was and is a very good pilot.
An AAT in 2.30 was there for the 18 m. pilots and winner of the 8th day was Bruce Taylor who was with that also the new 18 m. champion! Runner up was Lars, who really did well. He never flew WGC’s as Bruce did but is an excellent pilot! Sorry to see Tony drop a few places overall, he ended up 5th. after a bad day 7!
In open class a 3 hour AAT gave as winner on this last day 8 my friend Gerrit and as expected glorious overall winner David Jansen. He is absolutely ready for Szeged!
Good to see Gerrit on place 2 as runner up and Finnish pilot Eric ended up as 3d. Great effort! For sure Antti had a great time as well.
All in all I heard it was a great competition and what about that speed!!
The African season started VERY good ,had a bit of a dip and is good again now for some places! Gariep Dam had a few very good days in January again and several pilots flew nice distances , both my friends Klaus and Hans used it to fly an 815 and 760 km. task, last Friday. Hans flew in January 8 flights between 697 km. and 914 km.
In Australia they flew last Friday flights up to 926 km. ,in Benalla 671 and Narromine 715 km.
Yesterday Corowa still had a [just] 1000.29 km flight in the duo discus! And Kiripotib a 948 km. flight. Both in Australia and Namibie they had to avoid thunderstorms and they had to make speed as the days are getting shorter.
Pepe had a very interesting flight as he writes in his comment and as he claims not recommended for nervous people; he was blocked by a massive storm 300 km. north of Corowa. You cann read it on yesterdays OLC [44] and he even made 5 pictures which you can see at the Corowa site [www.australian-soaring-corowa.com]
And…….Corowa is cleaning their containers already for the way back half of February, so not long and the “over-seas” season is over and I guess to full satisfaction of [nearly ]ALL pilots.
Good to see 2 real kilometer-eaters back in Tocumwal both flying LS 4; Jan and Stefan. Not to forget that Terry Ryan is one as well and Jari is still there too and flew a 700 and 600 km. flight.
During his 1029 km flight in JJ his LS 6 , to Ungary and Sayers Lake, Jari was at 16.45 still 400 km away from “home” at 100 km West from “the middle of nowhere Ivanhoe” , he found after the 2d TP however 9m/s to climb to 12.000 ft.. A final glide of 110 km. brought him home at 20.20. Excellent flight!
The disaster after the earth quake in Haiti is felt by everybody in the whole world! Though the help started [too] late , they still found/find survivors. There might be 200.000 people dead! Just unbelievable and too sad for words.
Action ALL over the world to help. Even the tennisplayers in Melbourne ready for their first games tomorrow , played for Haiti and straight after this game 200.000 dollar was on the money teller . All toppers [ Federer, Clijsters, Nadal, Djokovic ,Roddick and Serena Williams] gave a , sometimes hilaric tennis show and all spectators payed to see them, but the money went to Haiti.
Holland lost a few parents , who travelled to Haiti to collect their adoption child!!!!Parents and children died on what should have been their finest moment. How cruel!
Ritz