Alphen aan den Rijn Sunday June 14 2009 blog 204
Here we are again. After a week with lots of rain on the coast , but ….at-least 2 minutes or more sun on each of our days, we are back well rested and full of impressions on great little towns as Knokke, Zeebrugge, Nieuwpoort and De Haan. If you like a natural environment on the beach, the Belgian coast is great and “only ” 80 km long with a tram driving all the way up along the coast from the Dutch border to the French border.
With my arrival I got the news that our cat Denimpie had died in Australia, where she lived with Sue and Nathan. Sue adopted her when I left Australia and did a great job. Denim must have been 13 years old and was a “caracter”. Most guests from Sportavia knew her, sitting on the roof of the big WW 2 hangar, when she was a tiny little one and not knowing how to get down [ atleast that was what I thought] so our tuggie , Anthony, had to climb up the stairs to save her but she was down earlier then he was. Or …when she walked around with baby brown-snakes in her mouth, trying to let them play with her and all of us scared to hell that she might be bitten .Denim was a good cat!!!!!!!!!!
In between the combined Czech and Slovak Nationals have been held in Partizanske, as I heard from my friend Tibor . In 15 m class his best friend Brano was the winner. Indeed I missed that one. Sorry about that! There were 75 participants flying in 3 classes and several well known pilots as Tomas Suchanek, Tomas Rendla, Milos Dedera who flies WGC’s as long as I am in gliding and Miloslav Cink , one of the top juniors.
Our Dutch juniors are on their way to Finland travelling by car with trailer on the boat. I remember my excitement for the first time on the boat to Turku, sleeping, talking and looking amazed around how many restaurants, bars. etc there were on a ship. I was “old ” already then, so it must be adventure for those young ones!
In any case nowadays they have wireless on the boat too I heard, so not too bad!!Some of the pilots will be still ” sailing” some will be flying and practicing already in Rayskala. Yesterday I had a look at the dvd from the Europeans in Rayskala with that magic 1000 km on the first competitionday! I hope we will have this year such weather again! Saturday I will arrive in Helsinki.
The WAG finished yesterday and not Sebastian , not Ronald or Giorgio , but a for me unknown Italian pilot was number 1 before the last day. On this last day the best 6 finalists , out of the 11 invited glider pilots, flew together to decide who would be the winner of this WAG.
Sebastian [Poland] won in the end the final race and with that the WAG and Giorgio [Italy] was second and “our” Dutch pilot Roland ended up as number 3.
4 rounds of flying during this WAG to decide the best 6 and each day had atleast one out-landing.
The last day round 5 was the final and a distance of 141.50 had to be covered in a good speed. Sebastian flew it in 1.42 with a speed of 83km/h., so he was a good and tactical winner.
One of my friends followed it on lifestreaming. He is not a real fan of this way of flying neither of the Grand Prix, but I still share with you his opinion.
It is as he says, a way of presenting the sport but with respect to the content read gliding-competition, it is nothing!
The presentation and comments , in this case specially the comments from Stefano Ghiorzo, get better and better, the race can be followed very well at home, but he calls it more the Final Glide Games as each individual action is punished by the more powerful, read faster flying gaggle.
Ronald flew the WAG, so I will ask his opinion as well.
The USA Nationals are about to begin for open and 15 m. class in Montague California. If you are interested you can follow it on weblink: http://www.williamssoaring.com/nationals/Contestants.htm
And then Morocco!! Still the place to be it seems, when you love flying long and fast over the Ridges.Ouarzaztee had wonderful flights again last week, with more 1000 km.tasks, all in open class however.
I noticed that the journalist from the Aerokurier Gerd Marzinzik flies there as well.
But yesterday was a good day for Europe too as most countries had good flights on the OLC. In Holland a pilot even flew his 750 km. task, unexpected as he says. He flew some kind of double out and return to Germany in a Ventus 2CT.[761 km.] Not bad and that for Holland!!! But…I could see from my home the fantastic clouds.
Well, NOW we have rain here! So not much flying today here in Holland! A pity as the meteo promised a great weekend,[yesterday was super!] though…they said some showers maybe thunderstorms for sunday, but also 25 dgr. and lots of sun. But the day is not over yet.
Did you know that they have calculated that the energy released on February 7 2009[ the day of the huge firestorm in Australia] was the equivalent of 1500 Hiroshima bombs or the total power consumption of the state Victoria for 12 months. I received a mail from a friend down under with this info. Interesting!
That’s it for now. See you next Wednesday and after that I ” invite you to follow me to Rayskala ” on www.jwgc2009.fi
I look forward to meet new young pilots and all my “old” friends in Finland.
Cheers Ritz